When it comes to branding, first impressions are critical as they can have a lasting impact on how customers perceive your brand. There are psychological models on human perception that can play a significant role in how people perceive your brand.
This blog post will look at the halo and horns effect – two cognitive biases that play an important role in forming strong initial impressions of your brand.
We’ll explore how these effects work and provide tips for making sure you’re creating positive first impressions with potential customers.
By understanding the principles behind the halo and horn effect, you can craft better strategies for making a great first impression with your target audience. Let’s dive in.
What is the halo effect and how it works in branding
The halo effect is a fascinating cognitive bias that marketers and branding experts should definitely pay attention to.
Essentially, it’s about how what we feel about a product or brand in one area will influence our opinion of it in another area in a positive light.
A great practical example is how we allow our feelings about a celebrity to impact how we feel about a product or brand they endorse.
If you like a specific singer very much and they collaborate with a shoe brand, it’s very likely you’ll feel positive about the shoe company too.
Similarly, if we’ve had a great experience with a product in one category (like a certain brand of toothpaste), we may be more likely to try out other products from that brand, even if they’re in a totally different category (like electronics or music streaming services).
Understanding this phenomenon is key to crafting a successful branding strategy that really resonates with consumers.
We’ll cover more about this later, but let’s explore the converse, the horn effect, first.
What is the horn effect?
Like the halo effect, the horn effect is where your overall perception of a person, brand, or product is affected by your negative perception of a single trait or factor.
For example, a person who might be poor at spelling or grammar can be perceived as being unintelligent overall. But the reality is that they may be highly skilled and intelligent in areas not related to literature or language.
If you’re in the branding or marketing sphere, then it’s important to be aware of this phenomenon. Because it can apply to your brand too.
Your audience and customers will be quick to jump to conclusions based on their own biases and early impressions. Especially during their first interactions with your brand.
Say, a negative review on one product can potentially impact how they view your other products. Or if a message on social media fails to land, this could affect their overall opinion of your brand.
It can be unfair to have every area of your business judged because of the actions of a few persons or if a few mistakes happen – but the reality is that such judgements do happen. And it’s best to be aware of this so tat you can improve all aspects of your business such as your customer support, marketing, and more.
For the next section, we’ll look at ways you can leverage both the halo and horn effects to improve your branding.
How to use the halo effect in branding
As already mentioned, the halo effect is where one positive trait is extended to judge the whole aspet of a person or business.
This phenomenon is something you can easily take advantage of in your branding efforts.
Learn how with the following points:
- Ensure that you create the best chances of building positive first impressions by showcasing social proof and testimonials. Add them to your website, product pages, checkout pages, landing pages and social media.
- Identify influential brand ambassadors and choose the right people to represent your brand. If you’re a small company and have a limited budget, you should work with influencers in your niche.
- Sponsor events in your community to associate your brand with positive institutions and events.
- Create value for your audience for free by creating useful blog posts and content that answers your audience’s issues indirectly related to your product or service. For e.g., if you’re running a service for car detailing, you can write blog posts on best car maintenance tips and tricks.
- Develop an effective PR strategy that involves print, digital, and broadcast media to reach your target audience.
- Use email marketing campaigns to nurture relationships with potential customers and build loyalty among existing customers.
And finally, remember to take damage control seriously. Whenever a mistake is made, address it and go the extra mile with messages, discounts, and more to bring back a positive image.
How to deal with the horn effect in marketing
You could provide excellent services a hundred times but it only takes one bad experience for a customer to share negative feedback.
And from a single negative response, all areas of your business may be perceived as problematic.
This is the horn effect in marketing, which is why it’s important to be proactive when it comes to customer service and satisfaction.
To prevent the impact of the horn effect from damaging your brand image, keep the following tactics in mind:
- Be sure to monitor social media channels regularly so you can respond quickly to any unhappy posts and comments.
- Build templates with useful responses and messages to address grievances and complaints.
- Be accountable and avoid sweeping things under the rug.
- Respond to customers in a timely manner.
- Make use of the services of a PR agency or assistant to monitor, address, and offer remedies.
- Be careful of your associations with other brands, personalities, social issues, and so on.
- Train your employees on how to provide excellent services with communication training.
- Set up solid values and goals for your business and share them throughout your business to maintain a standard of excellence for everyone to live up to.
- If you have multiple brands, products, businesses, and so on, ensure that you have a cohesive communication system and that everyone is on board with the style of doing business and your values.
I find that the real key is to define your values clearly and make sure that the whole organization stands for doing the right thing.
When your business values are embedded in everyday work life, there are fewer chances of mistakes happening.
Conclusion
Psychology and marketing go hand in hand and a good marketer is aware of the cognitive biases that an audience may have.
This post addresses two specific ones: the halo effect and its opposite, the horn effect.
The real message is that you can’t afford to let things slip in any area of your business. Whether it’s your internal communication, customer service, marketing, or relationships with suppliers.
Whatever happens, good or bad, in any area can impact every other especially in terms of branding and reputation.
So, the key is to define and stand by your business values and share them with your whole team. With everyone on the same page, your business will deliver the best experience consistently and avoid a tarnished image.
