In a marketplace flooded by companies selling the same thing in different packaging, brand experience is what makes all the difference to the customer. Brands that deliver additional value along with their products, going beyond their features and functionality, are the ones who can retain the audience’s attention and earn their loyalty.
What Is Brand Experience?
Brand experience is the feeling a brand invokes in its customers. It’s a combination of marketing copy, content, visual representation and branding, lifestyle, market positioning, customer service, and every other touchpoint your brand has with its followers. In other words, brand experience is where brand identity meets customer experience.
In modern marketing, the brand experience can be referred to both as a single-occasion encounter that triggers an emotional response, and the overall concept customers have of a brand.
Why Creating a Brand Experience Is Important For Companies
People crave excitement and extraordinary experiences that keep them engaged. This doesn’t only apply to the regular consumer, but to B2B buyers as well. When faced with a choice between a dull brand that simply delivers a product, and one that does the same but adds a positive feeling to it, it’s easy to guess what they’d choose.
A unique brand experience is what differentiates a company from the competition. Leveraging its potential, a company can stand out in the crowd and strengthen its position in the market.
A customer-brand relationship has a significant role in the performance of every brand out there. When successfully implemented in a company’s marketing strategy, brand experience:
Builds Brand Awareness
People remember brands that deliver strong experiences. That moment they’ve shared with you, makes them feel like they know you. When faced with a choice, most customers prefer to opt for companies they are familiar with.
Invokes Trust
If a brand is known for the great experience it delivers, new customers are more likely to give it a try. When people see their peers are happy, or cool, or content, they don’t miss out.
Attracts Loyal Customers
Extraordinary brand experiences trigger an emotional response that is recalled every time the customer interacts with the brand. This creates a sense of belonging and can nurture a person’s attachment and loyalty to a brand.
Creates a Community
People love to share their experiences with others, it brings them together and gives them something to talk about.
The experiences you provide can become the connection that unites your customers into a community. And a community of happy customers, excited about what you do, is the best brand advocates you can wish for.
Generates More Sales
Brand experience is all about showing the customer a good time and convincing them that buying your product will make the positive feelings last longer. In other words, brand experience is directly connected to sales.
If a person has pleasant encounters with your business, they’ll come back for more, they’ll bring friends, and your sales will proportionally grow.
How to Create a Brand Experience
Creating a strong brand experience is all about your relationship with your customers. You have to get to know them, make them feel special, and keep them engaged.
There are different brand experience campaigns you can try, but they all start with knowing your customers and their needs.
1. Know Your Customers
Brand experience is as much something a company creates, as it is the product of the customer’s personality and point of view.
Finding out more about who your customers are, what they like, and what their pain points are, will enable you to craft a fully personalized experience. Your audience should feel that your products were made just for them and that they will immediately make their lives better.
To make sure your brand experience campaign is on point, research how your customers interact with your brand and products and what emotional response this communication triggers:
- Monitor Social Media Communities,
- Keep an Eye on Review Platforms,
- Make Surveys,
- Ask for Feedback.
By analyzing the results, you will be able to adapt your brand experience and marketing strategy to fit your customer’s expectations.
Try to identify the feelings your brand brings out in your most dedicated fans and reverse-engineer it to make it into what your brand is all about.
2. Build a Strong Brand Identity
Building a strong brand identity allows you to have control over how audiences perceive you and what connotations they’ll associate with your brand. It should represent who you are as a business and what your goals are and should match your buyer persona’s identity.
People are used to transferring human qualities to brands, like personality, voice, attitude. Young generations, especially, feel the need to be able to identify with the brands, and create their own public persona around the lifestyle they represent. Following brands with a well-defined identity makes it easier for them to discover their own personality.
The brand identity you build should reflect your customers’ best qualities, and, basically, it should invoke a “that’s just so me!” feeling in them.
This way the experience you create is one that brings out the best in the customer, makes them feel good about themselves and inspires them to grow. That’s a feeling people want to hold on to for longer, and if your brand manages to deliver such an experience, your customers will want to retain it.
3. Maintain a Consistent Omnichannel Presence
Modern marketers rarely put all their eggs into one basket, they opt for an omnichannel strategy that takes advantage of the different ways customers interact with brands. By leveraging channels like social media platforms, websites, apps, email, and ads, they streamline the marketing messages to reach the customer wherever they are.
However, maintaining consistency is an essential part of the brand experience. Different platforms have their own rules of communication and the way you express your brand can slightly vary. Nevertheless, every channel should invoke the same feelings in a customer. Otherwise, you not only break the ”brand experience spell” but your customers might feel confused and this can hurt your marketing strategy.
4. Always Deliver Top-Notch Customer Service
Every customer wants to be treated with respect, and feel special and cared for. That’s why businesses that provide better customer service always tend to become the first choice for target audiences.
In fact, the help and attention you pay to customers during their lifecycle are so important that 84% of consumers say it defines whether they’ll do business with a company or not. What’s more, a staggering 95% say that their loyalty to a brand is tightly related to the quality of the customer service.
Customer service associates are responsible for the human touchpoint with your audience, and their competence and attitude are vital to the brand experience your company provides. If you want clients to value your brand and remain loyal, every interaction you have should leave them happy and content.
5. Make Your Ethics and Values Clear
Nowadays a company’s values and the ethics behind a brand can make all the difference. People are becoming more and more aware of the environmental and social issues we face as a society, and to remain relevant, brands have to take a stance.
Sharing your position with your audience and engaging in initiatives related to important problems can strengthen your connection.
As mentioned, people often perceive brands as human personifications, and sharing the same values is an important bonding prerequisite.
A strong social and environmental position can be part of your customer’s concept of your brand, and a valuable shared experience.
6. Keep Your Customers Engaged
Being active on different platforms and keeping your customers engaged allows you to constantly improve your brand experience.
Consider building a customer engagement strategy that will enable you to strengthen the relationship with your customers and regularly provide entertaining content and activities.
Engagement, however, is not a one-way street. Let your followers know you value their opinion and show them your commitment.
Staying in touch with your audience allows you to monitor their habits and behavior and learn more about how they interact with your products, how they see your brand, and what emotions it invokes.
7. Organize Brand Events
Events are a great way to instill people with positive emotions.
They also give you an opportunity to strategically position your branding elements such as logo, slogans, marketing copy, designs, and etc., and invite customers inside your world. Regardless of whether it’s a digital event or a real-world one, you have the chance to meet your audience face-to-face, exchange ideas, and connect on a different level.
8. Consider Investing in Product Placement
Product placement is a type of advertising where you pay to have your products featured on a popular show or used by a public figure.
If done subtly, these star appearances of your products can create a huge buzz and deliver a strong brand experience marketing.
For the fans, product placement makes two worlds meet – the one of the show or celebrity they love and the one of their favorite brand.
This strategy allows you to add more value to your product by leveraging the feeling of attachment people have to fandom and transferring it to your brand to create a powerful lasting impression.
Recap
A positive brand experience can mean a lot to people and create a feeling of belonging and loyalty to a brand. Customers are more likely to trust a brand they have encountered in the past that has left a vivid and positive impression on their lives.
By creating a powerful brand message, you can make people feel younger, cooler, and more popular. You can give them a sense of community and even turn them from customers into loyal advocates.
