What is Brand Experience – And Why Does It Matter?
Brand experience is the way your brand makes people feel. People experience your brand across countless touchpoints, from the moment they encounter your brand for the first time to the last time they use your product or services.
Creating a memorable brand experience hinges on your brand’s ability to create an emotional connection with its consumers. It’s a strategy that has the potential to have a huge impact on your business: research from Harvard Business Review shows that the most effective way to maximize customer value is to appeal to customer’s emotional drivers.
When people have a positive perception of your brand, they’ll hold you in high esteem. Your products and services will become more alluring, your customer relationships will be strengthened, and your business will grow.
Key Elements of a Memorable Brand Experience
All of the world’s best brands (and biggest businesses) are masters of creating unique brand experiences. If you’ve ever unboxed a new iPhone or walked through the gates of Magic Kingdom, you’ll know the experience felt, well, a little bit magic.
Creating these memorable brand and customer experiences requires you to imitate the recipe used by leading brands like Apple and Disney. Here are some of the key ingredients you’ll need to include to take your brand experience to the next level:
- Consistency: Unified messaging across every single touchpoint is key to delivering a cohesive brand experience. With an ever-growing range of digital channels, an integrated marketing strategy is vital to your success.
- Engagement: Brands are communities, and for people to feel part of that community, you need to engage with them. Feature your customer’s stories, create digital customer experiences, and make everyone feel an important part of your movement.
- Storytelling: Great brands weave an inspiring narrative around the business’s products and services. Creating a memorable brand experience demands you tell this story in a compelling way that resonates deeply with your audience.
- Personalization: Understanding your brand’s customers enables you to create highly tailored brand experiences that foster a sense of personal connection. With the generative AI tools available today, that’s now achievable at scale.
5 Key Tactics to Create a Winning Brand Experience
Blending together the ingredients described will put you on the path to success, but there are some more tangible steps you can start taking to significantly upgrade your brand building strategy.
Here are some actionable strategies you can put in place to create a winning brand experience.
1. Create a Clear Mission Statement (And Stick to It)
To create a truly distinctive brand experience, your brand has to stand for something more than selling its products or services. The best brands have an aspirational purpose that serves as a running theme through every touchpoint of their brand.
Take the example of Nike. They sell shoes and apparel, but no Nike executive would ever say that’s the company’s mission. Instead, Nike expressly states that their mission is, “to bring innovation and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Defining your brand’s mission requires a lot of introspective thinking, but it’s important to involve your customers too. Poll them to determine what your brand means to people and understand the emotions it evokes.
Once you’ve identified your brand’s raison d’etre, stick to it. Writing down your mission statement is one thing: living up to it is quite another. But staying consistent is crucial to building that lasting identity.
2. Go Above & Beyond Customer Expectations
Everyone, almost without exception, loves to have their expectations exceeded. When a customer buys your product or service, they have certain expectations. When you meet those, they’re happy. But when you exceed them, they’re wowed.
There are endless tactics you can adopt to go above and beyond what your customers expect of you. Perhaps it’s sending a meaningful corporate holiday gift to let them know how much you appreciate them, or maybe it’s a free upgrade to a more premium service.
73% of customers report that experience is an important factor in their purchasing decisions, per a PwC study. And when customers have positive experiences, they share them, expanding the reach and reputation of your brand to new audiences.
3. Never Stop Innovating
Creating a memorable brand experience isn’t a project you’ll ever finish: it’s an ongoing process defined by a relentless focus on continuous improvement. Here are a few tactics you can adopt to evolve your brand experience:
- Test and refine new brand activation strategies
- Proactively gather customer feedback and be open to change
- Use social listening tools to understand audience sentiment
- Build partnerships with complementary brands and influencers
4. Bridge the Digital Divide
Today, much of the marketing process takes place on digital platforms. And while there’s no question that digital customer experiences are central to shaping customer perceptions of your brand, they’re not the be-all and end-all.
Hosting or attending in-person events like pop-up shops and trade shows is a proven way for businesses to bridge the digital divide and bring their brand to life in a much more tangible way. These events allow you to carefully curate the ultimate expression of your brand, creating a unique experience that elevates your brand.
Remember, your brand is much more than your website and social media presence: it’s also about your people. No digital opportunities provide a perfect substitute for a face-to-face meeting, and by investing in an in-person events program, you’ll be giving your employees the opportunity to put their best foot forward.
5. Invest in High-Quality Promotional Products
Gifting promotional products is a tried-and-tested brand activation strategy, amplifying the reach of your brand while fostering positive relationships with recipients. There’s no sense investing in cheap, throwaway items to give to customers and prospects – what does that say about the value you place on your relationships? Instead, invest in branded merchandise that elevates your brand, gifting premium brand name products that make your customers and prospects feel special.
Bring Your Brand to Life in 2024
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is an unforgettable brand experience. But the sooner you take action, the sooner you’ll start to see results. In doing so, you’ll create a company your employees are proud to work for and build deeper relationships with your customers – a real win-win situation.
Get in touch if you’re unsure where to start. Our branded merchandise and marketing solutions help businesses create truly unique brand experiences.
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