The Modern Brand Factors Impacting Your Business

This is my latest post for my weekly Marketing Unfiltered.

This week, I dive into user brand factors and journeys and why it is likely time to revisit, but first

Aisha is a simple persona - image source: Unsplash

This is Aisha, she is a savvy shopper, her journey to buy one single product is detailed:

1. Does she know the brand?

2. Goes to Google (sometimes testing this on ChatGPT, but still loves Google), runs a search

3. Checks out social media for the brand

4. Checks out review sites

5. Then jumps on WhatsApp and asks in her friends and family groups to see who knows the brand and if they’ve had any experience before

6. If all is positive, then Aisha goes to YouTube and watches videos, shorts, product unboxings, reviews - if all is ok…

7. She goes onto the site

   • Reviews the product back on the website (to see if there are any standout product reviews - going from negative to positive)

   • Checks to see what customer support they offer

   • Checks the returns policy

   • Checks the delivery options and who their delivery partner is (she does not like 2 of the 4 available in her area)

8. She then looks for the best possible price and sees if there is a voucher or discount code (often checking influencers or ‘in the know’ accounts’ codes too)

9. And then finally decides on the purchase

This is not the typical journey, but a journey similar to what your core customer goes in 2025.

It’s an important journey for most internal teams, fellow C-Suite members and supporting agencies to truly understand.

It’s rare that even the best-mapped-out user journeys help your business to plan out and connect to the business together.

How To Understand The Modern Brand Factors Impacting Your Business

I have a slide in my conference decks aimed at senior stakeholders, which is meant to help the audience understand how important all the “surfaces” you touch with your Brand, your product or services are and why you have to understand what is

1. In and under your control

2. Influenced by your brand and your activities

3. And importantly, what is out of your control (and influence).

Exercise Time:

An exercise I recommend on the next slide is to put yourself in the shoes of a new customer and question:

Layer 1: Have I heard of the brand? 👂

• Yes or No.

  • If no…

    • What comes up when you search Google and YouTube?

    • What comes up in a News search?

    • Do you appear on AI?

    • How do you appear in AI searches? What shows up for potential customers like Aisha?

    • Are they running ads?

Q: What impression do Google, YouTube and your AI engine give?

Then consider what the trust factors are for the customer to take into consideration the next layers

Layer 2: Do they have? 📲

• A good website?

• Mobile App? If not, is the mobile experience good?

Layer 3: Influence By Social 👍

• Do they have a Social Media presence?

  • Are they active?

  • If inactive is this a good or bad thing?

• Do they engage on TikTok and Instagram?

  • Are they on TikTok shop? (for the good and the bad connotations)

• Size of social media following (older trust signal)

• Number of views on their account (newer trust signal)

• What are the comments under their posts (this is how many people are using YouTube and TikTok, open comments and view video)

• What's been said on Reddit about them (this will almost always appear on your branded or product Google search)

• Are there any worrying signs on niche forums?

• Do they run ads?

Layer 4: The Reviewer: Open Reviews 👁️

• Product Reviews (on-site or off-site)

• Trust & Review Sites (on-site and off-site)

• If there are no reviews, what does this mean…

Layer 5: Tech Checker 💻

» We often forget that our customers are continually tech savvy and look for trust additional signals or ways to save time or money

Do you have a -

• Chrome Extension?

• Does their site rank well? (Can I find what i’m looking for and does the brand actually come up or does another site come up…)

Layer 6a: Chat & Groups 💬

• What's being said on private chat apps?

  • What might appear if someone searched the group or groups they trust most (yes, this is not under your complete control, however, this is something where you have provided a good to great experience will be shared, if it's terrible, people will openly complain!)

Layer 6b: Personal Recommendations 🗣️

» Arguably, for many the most important area

• Is there Word of Mouth?

  • Do I trust who gave the referral & recommendation?

Layer 7: Customer Support 📞

» Do they have:

• Live Chat (available when I need them?)

• A chatbot (I just want to get it sorted quickly)

• Email support (takes too long, often goes unanswered for days)

• Phone number (when bots and agents fail, people want to speak to a person)

• Social Media support (when typing isn’t helping, let’s see how they handle complaints on social media)

Layer 8: Ecom: Easy to order from on… 🛒

• Site

• App

• Third-party site or marketplace (sometimes it's the only way customers can buy a product)

• Sold on Amazon (convenience is critical)

• Sold on Shop app (Shopify)

• How can I pay? (Credit Card, Debit Card, Apple Pay, PayPal, Giftcards, BNPL, future leaning → stablecoin/bitcoin)

Layer 9: Delivery 🚚

• Speed of delivery (remember: we have been geared for Prime Expectations from Amazon, within 24 hours for free)

• Deliver partner (who is it, are they good locally, do they mess up frequently?)

Layer 10: External Trust Signals 🪪

• Are the brand on podcasts? Will you be heard on them?
  Or will a clip surface that helps or hinders you?

Layer 11: Pricing 💷

• Are they offering discounts?

• If they don’t discount - is this a status play?

• Do they work?

• Is it for first time customer only?

Layer 12: Status ✅

• What’s their “status”?

• Seen as cheap, as value for money, as luxury or high end,

• Does the brand or product inflate my own status?

Layer 13: Product Availability 🚩

• How accessible are products?

• What product service are they running? Always has stock available, runs a drop as a strategy or only offers limited runs?

Layer 14: Returns 📦

• How easy is returning something

• Does it cost me money?

• How quick is the refund?

• Do they only push credit?

It’s essential to note these journeys aren’t ever linear and everyone has their own journey to see your brand, check the brand signals and factors and then apply their own logic, however, you will want to under how much you control, how much you influence and then what is out of your control

Embrace Cross-Functional To Win

I will often run through a similar exercise with Product, Growth, Ops, (Ecom where applicable) and Marketing teams to align on how important all of these factors and how we build this in part of our business strategy, not just Marketing must do more. This isn’t just a Brand person’s exercise, it’s often bigger & way more complicated for a Marketing exercise and relies on a larger x-functional workstream.

Brand Expressions

It’s worth considering that across all of these surfaces there are opportunities to express your brand, create experiences and provide great touch points and stand out vs competitors who we haven’t even considered yet…

Boost Q4: With how important Q4 is for many businesses especially while developing their AI strategic pillar (heads up agentic commerce is ramping up with Google AP2, Claude’s MCP’s and banks all combining to set up the framework to push ahead agentic transactions) this should help to give you some clarity or ammo to drive positive change, while understanding if and where you will play in the agentic web.

Thanks for reading again this week and if you have any feedback, happily message me or DM me on LinkedIn

Danny Denhard

» If you need help 🚨: I coach leaders, consult with startups, marketplaces and challenger brands and advise companies looking to grow, so get in touch.