Ratchet Effect

Long-term success of any brand or business depends on how well it can bond, connect, and keep its clients.

This bond is established in a variety of ways. If one owns a restaurant business, then for a start, the food needs to be great - that's just a must (all my fellow foodies will agree with me on this one); then we have the employee presence, uniforms and communication strategies; is the booking system working smoothly or are there hiccups which could be improved; we can also look at the interior experience design of the restaurant - how pleasant is it, what kind of music do they play in the background, what's the overall mood, are the lights dimmed, or is the vibe upbeat, are the restrooms easy to find (because let's face it, no one wants to feel uncomfortable searching for a toilet in a time of need and that adds to the experience of a service provided)?

You can see that we could go on and keep finding various elements that would contribute to the overall experience of the brand that people have when interacting with it.

To summarise: every brand that is eager to grow and be successful strives for high levels of customer satisfaction in whatever shape or form that may be. They want to fulfil the promise that they gave via their communication, recognition, brand reputation, and all the preconceptions that come with their name stamped on a certain product or service. And that brings us to the Ratchet Effect.

Simply put, the Ratchet Effect is a concept that describes the difficulty of reversing a course of action, once it has been set in motion, and is a reflection of a mechanical ratchet that only moves in one direction. In other words, once we experience something, and if it happens to be good and we like it, or if we implement changes and get used to them, it's going to be very hard to go back to the old ways and function without it; so the result is, we tend to continue going forward in a certain way without reversing back to how it used to be.

Now, you can see why brands generally, even if unknowingly, strive to achieve the Ratchet Effect within their business. Companies want to have loyal customers; they want them to get on board, experience their product or service, and remain their fans indefinitely. But how that gets achieved is a whole different conversation, and mastering the way of acquiring and keeping people's attention, interest, and loyalty has been with businesses since their conception. Why? Because without customers, a business doesn't exist. Without people, there's no income; whether that be via investors, donations, or buyers - people are always the driving factor of a brand's success in whatever shape or form that may be.

So let's get into the fun stuff of how you can create an effective Ratchet Effect for your business.

First thing to bring into your awareness is that a brand is a holistic experience for its customer. Everything from the very first interaction to the very last sale, and all the steps in between, is a part of the brand experience. They are all building blocks in how people feel about the business, how happy, satisfied, or excited it makes them feel, and how well the brand fulfils their promise. In a nutshell, it's all about the emotions that a brand manages to evoke within an individual, and then, in the long run, it's about how it continually delivers on that promise and ingrains the (ideally positive) experience into people's awareness and perception.

Second, know your business well, and know what clients' expectations are towards what it is that you offer. Let's take a florist shop, for example. When I say the words Florist Shop, you probably immediately have a certain "framework" of the experience in your mind that you will have when you visit one, a certain order of steps.

It sort of goes like this, if you are a customer:

1 - You need a bouquet, so the idea of going to the Florist Shop pops into your mind

2 - If you don't exactly frequent them, then really you don't have many preferences, so you will most likely opt for the most convenient one, which is located somewhere along the path you travel, and you can pop in quickly

3 - Once you get there, if you are looking for something specific, you will most likely jump straight to the florist at the counter and ask them to make you the bouquet that you have in mind

4 - Then you will wait till it gets made, or, if they already have something to your liking on a display, you might opt for that and make the process a little quicker (if time is of the essence here)

5 - You will pay and leave the florist shop, headed to your destination

6 - You will arrive at your special someone's place, gift them flowers, and you will get very content and happy with the purchase you've made once the person accepts the bouquet with the biggest smile on their face

7 - Mission accomplished.

Now let's step into the florist's shoes for a moment, which I think is of more interest to you, since you are here reading a blog on branding and how to create a Ratchet Effect in your business.

If you are a Florist Shop owner, I just gave you a whole lot of work with the above steps, and here's how knowing your business well comes in handy. If we just take these simple 7 steps a customer makes on the journey of acquiring a bouquet of flowers, we can use them to analyse, improve, brainstorm, and create original ideas, systems, or frameworks, if you will, guiding a client through your own brand experience. Now, keep in mind, as a brand, you want to be authentic, original, one-of-a-kind, so we want to go out of the usual and out of the norm here with ideas.

Let's play, and ask a few great questions:

"7 - Mission accomplished":

Was the customer journey memorable? Was it in any way different or better from the rest, so that it makes them come back? Did something worth remembering happen along the way of interacting with the brand so that the customer will recommend you to their friends? Do they have a reason to recommend you? Did something about the whole process make them feel special, heard, inspired, and excited? Did it create a "wow" effect and make them want to come back and maybe even buy a bouquet for their own living room just because they enjoyed the experience so much? Is the recipient of the bouquet going to check out your shop and become a customer? Did you give them a reason to do so? Did you inspire them to come visit you sometime? If not, how can you achieve all of the above through the client and convey the message all the way to the recipient who did not have a physical experience in the shop?

"4 - Then you will wait till it gets made, or, if they already have something to your liking on a display, you might opt for that and make the process a little quicker (if time is of the essence here)":

While clients wait, can you make the waiting time feel shorter in any way? Do you maybe have an active social media account and you ask your in-store clients to write down what flowers mean to them, so you can publish it on your feed; and they can do that while they wait? Or maybe you compiled a book with various meanings and history of different flowers we tend to gift to people, and you can encourage the customer to look into that and if they find some specific flower's meaning they like while you create the bouquet, they can give you a nudge and you can include it into a bouquet as well. Or, for those who are fans of "already-made, I need it quickly" type of service, we can look at the bouquets you already display. Do they stand out? Is there a way that you can make them stand out? Can each bouquet have a meaning card along with it, noting the story each flower wants to tell? Can you make each displayed bouquet feel like it's something special and has added meaning or importance to it, so that customers can feel it's made with love, care, and attention? Or, how about those late, past-time buyers? Can you maybe get yourself a flower vending machine? And again, can those bouquets in any way stand out, be different, so that they feel more than "just a bouquet from a vending machine", but have added value and meaning to them?

"2 - If you don't exactly frequent them, then really you don't have many preferences, so you will most likely opt for the most convenient one, which is located somewhere along the path you travel, and you can pop in quickly":

Let's talk location here for a moment. Is your shop easily accessible? If not, can you make the experience of access enjoyable? Maybe show the closest parking spots on a map featured on your website. Or maybe if you know that access can be tricky, can you amp up your delivery options and emphasise their promotion? Maybe you can, in some way, heighten the people's desire to visit your shop, which, if the desire is strong enough, will surpass the inconvenience of location, and they will make the effort to visit the shop. This is where we are truly talking about great fans and loyal customers of the brand. So what can you do to establish that bond? How can you make your location attractive? How can you make people want to come to visit? Can you host events, special offers for in-store visitors, and have classes? Can you make the customer's journey to the store worthwhile with some special "treats" that are only offered in-store? It might just be as simple as an extraordinary customer service, the kindest and loveliest employees, and a great vibe at the shop. So how can any of your actions contribute to that?

You've probably got an idea of just how deep we could go on each and every single step, not mentioning that we could add a whole lot of steps in the first place, since many people have many different scenarios of brand interaction. We could look at online funnel and touchpoints, we could analyse the delivery services and systems running them, we could look at event decoration offers. Just about any aspect of a business can be looked at and optimised in this way, with one overriding question in mind - how can we improve our brand experience in a way that it remains authentic to our brand essence, and simultaneously creates a Ratchet Effect for our clients so that they will choose us, and continually want to choose us.

And that brings us to our last stop, the third thing to keep in mind, which is: Branding never stops! Branding is a continuum. And that's why I want you to adopt a new mindset about branding. I want you to start thinking about branding and brand strategy, not like something that gets done once and that's it, but instead, I want you to think in terms of a constant evolution. That's why I like to call my framework Brand Evolution Strategy, because I believe brands need to actively evolve, grow, and expand. They need to constantly look at their processes and optimise things to best serve their customers. It's not a one-off project. It's a long-term investment that grows, expands, and changes with time. And if you truly want to create the Ratchet Effect, then this mentality is the one thing that needs to be at the forefront of your actions. Because, to truly be able to connect to people on a large scale, over a long period of time, and create an impactfully loyal audience, you need to continually revise and improve your ways of doing business and make people's experience of it the core part of it. Imagine the aviation companies stayed at the level of the first aeroplane models - it would not exactly work, and people would not be impressed these days.

With that said, keep your wheels spinning, keep inventing and re-inventing the way you do business, and make sure your brand is a true reflection of all that you stand for, so that people can truly see and experience it.

Till the next read!

Teja Jereb