What are Branding Touchpoints and Why Do They Matter?
A branding touchpoint occurs any time a person interacts with your brand, whether it be online or in-store. They might include interactions via email, your website, or social networks, as well as store signage, lighting, and design. These branding touchpoints have a major impact on how your potential and returning customers perceive your business; it’s crucial to regularly inspect and update them to keep your customers engaged.
While investing in digital branding touchpoints like your website and social networks is important, your physical branding touchpoints are just as vital. Signage, lighting, and design are all essential components of customer experience management and allow your financial institution to build a bond with your customers. Let’s dive into the physical branding touchpoints you can use to help attract and retain customers.
Signage
Exterior Signage
Signage is one of the first interactions customers have with your company. Up-to-date exterior signage helps you stand out from competitors and invites passersby to patronize your institution. If you’ve already invested in quality exterior signage, implementing a scheduled maintenance plan can keep your assets functioning properly for years to come.
Interior Signage
After customers have walked through your doors, interior signage plays an important role in upholding the image and essence of your brand. Investing in quality interior signage — including wayfinding signage — demonstrates your commitment to your facilities and tells your customers you care about their experience.
Digital Signage and Experiential Graphics
If your financial institution has static signage, you might consider implementing digital signage to dynamically inform your customers about recent news or upcoming events. You might even invest in experiential graphics, which offer an amazing opportunity to express culture, highlight bold brand imagery, and impact your community, customers, or other facility visitors.
Lighting
Effective, pleasant lighting is key to producing an inviting environment for potential and existing customers. Ensure your lighting presents the correct tone and mood for your financial institution. Then, establish a regular maintenance schedule to ensure your lighting is working properly and not discouraging customers from interacting with your brand.
A recent study notes successful lighting design can influence customer emotions, increase their satisfaction, and improve the chances of interacting with your brand. Both color temperature and lighting contrast play a huge role in influencing consumer behavior, which you can use to your financial institution’s advantage.
New advancements in LED lighting allow an institution to make changes to the brightness and temperature of their lights, making it ideal for achieving your desired lighting. Our experts at Stratus can help you determine what color temperature and brightness is best for your financial institution. We have the ability to perform total LED upgrades or retrofits, based on your organization’s budget and current lighting installation.
Store Design
Your financial institution’s physical store design is also an important aspect to creating a trusting environment for your customers. Gone are the formal lobbies with dark wood and upholstery. Modern financial institutions opt for clean lines and open spaces with a mix of modern and simple details, creating a friendly, approachable environment.
For large organizations with many locations in the United States, ensuring your facilities remain consistent with your brand is a challenging task. Whether you’re looking for a simple brand refresh or major remodel, Stratus can help you ensure consistency across all your stores.
ATM Branding
As more consumers are using ATMs, it’s important to implement effective ATM branding to ensure your systems deliver a unified experience with other physical brand assets. Indicating where ATMs are, providing information about them, and complying with regulatory information are imperative and can all be addressed with a signage program.
At Stratus, we can help with a variety of ATM branding touchpoints. We’re skilled at converting old signage to new branding, implementing illuminated signage and panel capabilities, lighting support and maintenance, and even construction support for interior ATMs.
Refreshing Your Branding Touchpoints Take Your Financial Institution to the Next Level
If you haven’t updated your branding touchpoints in some time, refreshing your signage, ATM assets, lighting, and store design could help attract and retain customers. It doesn’t have to be an expensive or time-consuming undertaking, either. You could opt for a major remodel or complete rebrand if your financial institution is out-of-date, but small refreshes can also have major impacts on the customer experience as well.
Investing in your physical branding touchpoints is just as important as investing in digital touchpoints. Both have the potential to attract and re-engage customers, so it’s important to have a balanced budget between the two. Our team at Stratus would be glad to talk to you about any potential projects your financial institution has planned.
Work with the Branding Touchpoint Experts
Built on 150 years of success, Stratus is a nationwide brand implementation company that serves some of the largest industries in the United States. We employ more than 700 individuals across 29 states and we’re proud to be one of the leading providers of signage, refresh & remodel, facilities maintenance, and energy services for some of the most recognizable brands in the country.
At Stratus, we recognize that your brand is more than just a sign — it’s an experience. When you trust us with your project, we’ll focus on long-term solutions and partnerships and be there for you at every stage of your brand implementation. Whether you’re looking to update existing signage, retrofit an outdated lighting system, or need support with a refresh or remodel, we’ll help take your brand to the next level.
Start Updating Your Branding Touchpoints Today
Ready to update your branding touchpoints? Contact our team to get started.