Insights:Don’t disappoint with your brand promise.

When you market to a specific audience you are trying to make a connection, to start or continue a relationship. You want your brand promise to become part of that person’s life in a large or small way. And just like a person-to-person relationship, there are many ways to ruin a brand-to-person relationship.

The biggest killer of all types of relationships is to disappoint someone by over-promising or not standing by your word, which makes them lose trust in you. That’s why you want to make sure every message you send out is truthful.

Building up expectations that your brand can’t fulfill will most likely cost you the customer you first mislead, along with all the people that person tells. With the wide-reaching effect of social media, this can be devastating to a business.

It’s very tempting for marketers to stretch the truth to make their product look better than the competition, but there are much better ways to get noticed.

Keep in mind, that while most relationships end because of a disappointment, most actually begin because the person, or in this case a brand, is interesting. Whether what they find interesting is your humor, sincerity or a shared view of life, they feel they receive a benefit with the association.

In the end it’s all about sharing a truth with your audience that you and they can trust in.

Now I’m off to the local coffee shop for “THE WORLD’S BEST CUP OF COFFEE.”