Your image in the marketplace determines how people respond to your brand and creating the right first impression is vital to attracting long term customers.

A business image is made up of three main areas – your visual image, your sensory image and your subliminal image.  Together these combine to produce the ‘feeling’ of doing business with your organisation.  What kind of feeling do you want your business to convey - trustworthy, dynamic, modern, traditional, fast or caring for example?

So firstly let’s take a look at your visual image. 

Your visual image includes your logo, marketing materials, signage, online presence and advertising.  Everything from the colour palette you select for your logo to the typeface you use in your marketing determine who you are.  For example if the feeling you want to deliver is that of a ‘smart’ organisation then your logo should be sophisticated, clean and modern with colours that promote creativity and professionalism.

Secondly your sensory image.

This is where you can really enhance the company image.  A sensory image is looking at how your business communicates with the customer across all senses of sight, touch, smell, hear and taste.  A local fashion chain for example may create their ‘fresh’ sensory package in the following way – a plasma screen in the store showing people enjoying life in the clothes they sell (sight), convenient, brightly coloured changing rooms where customers are encouraged to try on the clothes (touch), incense or fresh flowers throughout the store (smell), background music or a water feature (sound) and chocolates, mints or fresh fruit at the counter (taste).

And finally the subliminal image.

This is how you ‘interacts’ with the customer from the wording on your website to the way your staff talk to your customers. It’s this image that helps forge a connection between the customer and your brand – the hidden feeling of wanting to keep doing business with you and not your competitor.

Why not test out your business image by being the customer for a change? Come into work as a customer and measure how your business makes you feel then look at ways to improve that experience.

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About the Author

Tony has over seventeen years of experience as a Creative Director in the SMW Advertising and Marketing arena. Working with Fisher and Paykel, Qantas, Maggie Beer and numerous SME’s across the country. At BrandManager, Tony oversees the design, development and management of brands across all mediums from web to point of sale. Tony is also a regular contributor to leading publications such as Anthill, Dynamic Business and Franchise magazine.