Walk in your front door and engage all your senses. What do you see right away? Does the lobby smell like burnt coffee? Can you hear private conversations? Does the door handle feel sticky? Your building/office is an embodiment of your brand - make this experience a positive one.

How does your receptionist greet people? The level of helpfulness and positive attitude will reinforce your brand image.

Similarly, if a customer must wade through nine levels of voice prompts (i.e., press 1 for English) before they can reach the right person or department, your brand is tarnished before customer service or sales even has a chance. There’s a reason Dante’s Inferno had 9 levels of suffering – your automation should not.

Should be returned promptly, period. No matter how unimportant the call may seem. Your response to customers, prospects and vendors alike should reinforce your promise.

Make sure your CEO endorses your brand promise and positioning, then have them articulate that to the entire company.

Include a session on embracing the brand and what it means to their particular job. Every single employee is an ambassador of your brand, and if they’re publicly grumbling about what a horrible place it is to work, that influences your reputation, and brand.

Does it match up to your promise? If your promise is value, you better have a great price.

Can they deliver what your brand promises?

Are you in touch on a regular basis to share helpful information, or only when you want to sell them something?

When the customer wins, everyone wins, including the brand. What are you doing to insure #24?

Are they reinforcing your brand promise? For example, if you’re Nordstrom’s, you don’t want your sales people to be acting like Crazy Eddie.

The types of events you sponsor can reinforce your brand. If you’re sporting goods, you support sport events. If you’re in health care, support events that raise money for disease research.

Get your brand in the public eye by offering expert advice or helpful information relevant to your industry.

Do business with like-minded companies. For example, if being green is a large part of your brand, only do business with other earth-friendly companies. Choose printers who use soy ink. Have customer lunches at restaurants that source locally and work to reduce waste.

Responding to a question or problem in a timely, helpful way can show you mean what you say. That will spill over to your brand promise.

Similarly, making returns easy shows you stand behind your promises.

A little follow-up after a sales or service experience (How did we do? Can we do better?) can go a long way toward showing customers you’re serious about being the best.

If they’re impossible to follow, that will leave a negative feeling about your brand. Ask someone not familiar with your product to follow them and see how they do.

If your product doesn’t live up to its promise, whether quality, ease of use, whatever, your brand is irreparably damaged with that consumer.

How do your employees conduct themselves at a trade show, a fundraiser, a cocktail reception? They should all have the brand’s 30 second elevator speech ready to offer when someone asks ‘what do you do?’ (You do have an elevator speech, don’t you?)

It is a holistic approach to identifying and managing the key touchpoints that define a user’s experience with your product or service. Is your experience on target with your brand? See for yourself for a day by going underground (think CBS’s Undercover Boss) and note how you’re treated. Or use Secret Shoppers as many hotels and restaurants do.

If a prospect is looking for you, is your product or service easy to find? Get listed in as many places as you can.

No, we’re not talking about software. Is your company connected to local colleges? Do you offer internships? Are you mentor-friendly? Reaching out to the next generation of potential customers is a great way to establish a positive brand.

Customer Word of Mouth can establish a perception of your brand experience: is it the right one? You’ve heard that – on average - a satisfied customer tells 2 friends about their experience, while a dissatisfied one tells 9. Monitor the blogs and social media and respond when appropriate.

All your visible communications need to speak with a single unified voice: Corporate Identity, Collateral, Advertising, Photography, Signage, Web presence, Point of sale, Trade shows and so on. And that’s where we can help. We understand that within the crazy pace of conducting day to day business, companies sometimes lose track of what their brand is or perhaps never established one. CAGroup’s branding programs can help you establish a new brand or help you get your existing one back on track.