Guides 5 m October 17, 2021

Brand Experience And Why It’s So Important

Nowadays, most companies understand the importance of providing a great user experience. And while it’s important to create a positive impression for every person who interacts with your brand and offerings, you might miss some opportunities if you think solely about user experience.

Besides a great user experience, businesses also need to create a positive brand experience. Simply put, one can’t exist without the other. The way people view your brand will be a deciding factor on whether or not they’ll interact with your business and have the opportunity to see your user experience.

What Is Brand Experience?

Brand experience is a strategic concept where brands use various tactics to create value for their customers every time there’s contact, interaction, and consumption. Potential customers build an idea about a brand based on their previous experience with it and the quality of that experience.

It takes between 5-7 interactions with a brand for people to start remembering it. And without a good brand experience strategy, your target market might find it hard to remember your company.

Keep note that brand experience is not the same as customer experience. We compared brand experience vs. customer experience, which you can read here.

Why Is Building a Brand Experience Important?

In today’s competitive market, brand experience plays a significant role.

There are four crucial reasons why you need to focus on building it:

It provides deeper meaning. Without a brand experience, you’re just selling a product. But with it, you’re delivering something that has a deeper meaning to customers and provides value.
It builds brand perception. Good brand experience helps the customer see the brand in a better light and think of it whenever they see specific keywords or the brand’s logo.
It enhances brand loyalty. When customers see the deeper meaning provided by the brand experience and have a well-built brand perception, they’re more likely to become return customers.
It helps you stand out in the crowd. Good experiences with a brand and a strong brand image allow you to stand out from your competitors. When you pay attention to details and provide an amazing experience, customers see you as original.

Brand Experience vs. Customer Experience vs. User Experience

These are three very important terms that often confuse people.

Here’s a simple explanation:

Customer experience (CX) is how you treat your customers. Brand experience describes all the promises a brand makes while marketing to customers. On the other hand, customer experience is how well the company keeps those promises.
User experience (UX) describes the experience a customer has while interacting with a brand. The difference between user and brand experience is that UX caters to people that already use the product or service, and brand experience caters to people even before they convert.

How to Build an Impactful Brand Experience? 7 Things to Consider

Now that you know the answer to the question “What is brand experience?” and why it’s important, it’s time to look at what makes a good brand experience.

1. Define the brand experience strategy

To create a stellar brand experience marketing strategy, you need to know who you are and what values your business stands for. This will set the tone for the experience you’re looking to create for your audience.

2. Engage all senses

A good experience requires you to engage all of your customers’ senses: taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch. There are many opportunities for you to engage these senses, such as creating pop-up shops, setting up stands at grocery stores for free samples, and sending out surveys.

3. Make it personal

Customization is an important part of any marketing effort. It’s relevant throughout the customer journey as it helps you create a memorable connection between you and your customers. Customized brand experience marketing requires you to do a lot of research on your target audience, but all of that work will pay off.

4. Create a consistent experience

All of the elements you use to create your brand experience need to be consistent. This consistency needs to be present in your color palette, communication style, and attitude.

5. Measure and adapt

The way consumers find information about products and make purchases keeps changing. If you want to stay relevant in today’s competitive market, you should keep up with all those changes and have a keen awareness of what your customers want to see and what they’re most likely to be interested in.

Consider a form builder that makes it easy to create the forms and surveys you need to keep track of your customers’ preferences.

6. Keep an eye on brand experience trends

Currently, due to the pandemic, there are multiple different trends related to keeping customers safe and healthy such as:

Mobile-friendly brand experiences
Safe sampling with the use of social distancing and PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)
Smart use of space
Digital brand ambassadors
In-home experiences

But every age brings new trends, so it’s up to you to keep an eye on them regularly.

7. Prioritize the experience

Customers will always remember what happened before, during, and after their purchase. This process is known as the three-stage model of service consumption. For a good brand experience, you need to prioritize this experience and make it simple and enjoyable.

Brand Experience Examples to Inspire You

Finally, let’s take a look at some of the most famous brands in the world. These companies recognize the importance of brand experiential marketing and leave a strong positive impression.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s story, “Share the happiness, share the Coke” is world-famous, and it clearly shows us their brand’s experience. It evokes feelings of happiness, love, and sharing. From 2011, their “Share a Coke” campaign also included personalization which boosted their sales.

With their branding strategy, Coca-Cola created a multi-dimensional experience and linked positive emotions to their product. They’re not selling a soft drink; they’re selling happiness and friendship.

X-box

The “Survival billboard” was an amazing advertising strategy by X-box. This promotional campaign consisted of a challenge where eight random participants were chosen to perform stunts on the survival billboard.

It created an amazing brand experience for multiple reasons. With their Survival board, X-box showed impressive design thinking strategy, personalization, and storytelling.

Netflix

This streaming platform’s mission statement is to “Entertain the world”, and they do it perfectly. With a combination of original design and personalization for every user, Netflix provides a unique viewing experience to its users, and with time they keep strengthening their customer-centric approach.

Summary

As you can see, brand experience has a very special place in customers’ hearts. It’s different from user experience and customer experience, but it still has a major impact on customer feedback and your business’ success.

Try to get the most out of it by using the strategies and knowledge from this article. This will give you a much better chance to be recognizable and grow your business.