If you want to succeed in business, you need a brand that will evoke positive connotations and emotions among as many people as possible. Therefore, today we will tell you how to prepare a successful brand experience strategy.
How brand experience impacts sales
Most purchasing decisions involve a degree of personal and emotional consideration, whether it’s B2C or even B2B. It’s in our motivation as buyers, even if we think the decision is completely rational. In fact, it’s all about our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Let’s say you’re looking to purchase a new bicycle. Of course, price, style, weight, and function are all important. But there’s also a personal consideration with how the product and brand make you feel as you use it, what kind of emotional branding a certain brand generates. That’s why it’s relevant for brands to cultivate a positive connotation and foster an impactful brand experience across a broad audience beyond just their customers.
Examples
Many people decide to try a new brand for the first time because they feel good about it and want to verify their opinion. The examples are countless. People think of Tesla as modern, luxurious, and eco-friendly – it’s a way of showing both your status and environmental consciousness. Nike encourages people to train more and be more active. Visa is all about mobility and freedom. Of course, these connotations aren’t always positive, and not everyone will have the same ones. Thoughts and emotions are very individualistic. Nonetheless, you have to make sure your brand experience is positive.
Failure story
Some time ago, there was a high-profile case of an oil spill caused by BP. Although the official name of this disaster was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, almost everyone refers to it as the BP oil spill. The company paid over $20 billion in fines. It was the largest corporate settlement in United States history. This case severely damaged BP’s brand experience.
In a few moments, we will show you how to create a brand experience strategy but first, let’s clarify the difference between brand experience and customer experience.
The differences between brand experience vs customer experience
Brand experience is a broader term that relates to almost all people – past, current and potential customers. Customer experience focuses on existing (and potential to some extent) customers and is all about ensuring that the transaction process is flawless and easy. Brand experience is less tangible. It’s born from awareness; hence many marketing campaigns are focused on the brand and its image.
Customer experience is all about here and now. Elements like customer service, store design, payment methods, and the entire purchasing process are crucial. Creating a brand experience is a long-term endeavour, whereas customer experience is more immediate in nature. If you want to know more about customer experience, read this article on our blog: How customer experience can boost your brand.
In our other texts, we sometimes talk about storydoing (instead of storytelling). Brands with exceptional brand experience don’t just talk to people but invite them to participate in something bigger and better with them. Here, Patagonia is a perfect example. One of their slogans is “We’re in business to save our home planet”. Patagonia made products with sustainability in mind. Everything this company does is driven by genuine care for the environment and an approach based on conscious branding. As a result, many of their customers identify with that way of thinking and see Patagonia products as a way to express their values. This results in a positive brand experience.
The critical question is: how can you achieve such an effect?
How to create a brand experience strategy
First off, there are four aspects of brand experience that you need to consider. They sometimes refer to the 4Ps:
- Perception
- Participation
- Personalisation
- Prioritisation
Make sure that all interactions with your brand lead to a specific perception (sense) that you want to build. For example, if you want to create a brand experience around diversity – show it in your ads, your communication, and all touchpoints. Secondly, enable people to participate in what you do. Invite them to work with you toward a specific goal. Leverage personalisation – use customer data and available tools to understand your customers and their needs and address them individually. Show that you care and you want to listen to your customers. Lastly, prioritise one or two elements or messages that are essential to you. Your brand can’t be everything to everyone. You need to know who you want to be and focus on that.
That’s the theory, but what can you do in real life?
Find out what people think
Although brand experience isn’t extremely tangible, it can be verified. You can use data from your online channels (e.g., social media), the market, and even customer service (although it’s a way to measure CX) to understand the true image of your company. Here, social listening is something you should implement as well.
Identify areas for improvement
If people don’t think about your brand how you want them to, there must be a reason for that. Maybe you can change something in your communication (or even products themselves) to win people over and help them change their way of thinking about your brand. Maybe your brand positioning is not relevant to your target audience and your brand experience has therefore shifted.
Here, KIA rebranding is a great example. Not that long ago, many deemed this Korean brand a budget solution. You purchased a KIA because you couldn’t afford anything better. Now, this brand has a much better image. They introduced new models (among which the Stinger was the biggest game-changer), and they improved the quality and appearance of their cars. Today, KIA is nearing the premium segment, and people drive these cars because they want to, not because they have to. As David Hilbert from KIA put it:
“The best way to shift perceptions is by people seeing and physically touching the car and seeing how far we’ve come in terms of quality and design.”
David Hilbert, Marketing Director at Kia Europe
What’s the lesson here? Let people see, touch, and feel the new version of your brand. The version that will help you achieve the desired brand experience. Give them a chance to formulate a genuine feeling or emotional connection to your offer and get a taste of your brand experience.
Digital asset management and brand experience
Improving your brand experience means working with your digital brand assets and content. And that comprises of three essential elements:
- Content management
- Creating and managing new websites and communication channels (e.g., newsletters, social media, websites, marketplaces, job ads etc.)
- Training digital marketers and other people involved in brand management
To streamline asset management in your company, you need a brand governance team (we’ll talk about that in a moment) and an advanced CMS solution that will allow all your marketers and other employees to work together with all the digital assets in your organisation. Additionally, many companies decide to create so-called brand portals: digital hubs for everything related to their brands.
You can read more about brand portals on our blog.
Who manages your brand experience
The short answer is the brand management team. Here, you have two options. You can decide on an in-house brand management team or outsource it.
Internal brand management team
In the first option, you need to create such a team from scratch. Usually, there should be at least several specialists involved:
- Web and graphic designers
- Copywriters
- Social media specialists
- PR managers
- Brand managers
After all, it’s a team effort – brand experience should be visible in everything you do, from websites, through ads and newsletters up to press releases and social media activity. It’s also important that your brand management team has a solid understanding of the operational side of your business. Thus, your brand experience can be positive for employees who may not consider themselves so close to the brand.
External agency
If you don’t have a brand management team onboard and don’t want to build it from the ground up, you can opt for outsourcing. In this case, you work with an external branding agency that operates as your brand management team. In many instances, it’s a quicker and cheaper option. More often than not, it’s also more effective because such agencies are experienced primarily in managing brands and their images, and they know how to improve your brand experience. Additionally, external parties tend to have a more objective view into the brand and related brand experience than an internal team examining their brand in the mirror.
That’s one of the things we do here at Admind. We are a global branding agency that works with companies and organisations of all sizes to help them thrive in the market through a flawless, positive image. We’ll gladly help you with your brand transformation strategy as well.
Just contact us, and let’s do something amazing together!
