How To Drive Growth With Brand Experience in the Digital Era

In an increasingly connected world, there is no longer a division between physical and digital retail. As a result, branding now encompasses a much wider set of experiences across multiple online and offline channels.

Maintaining a consistent experience across every digital channel is a significant challenge. 

That’s why brand experience is so important.  

By taking a holistic view of how you market your products and engage with customers, you can create winning brand experiences. You can bring your brand closer to your customers.  

In this guide, we’ll explore what brand experience is, why it matters, and how to do it. We’ll also look at three companies succeeding with brand experience.  

What Is Brand Experience?

Brand experience is how a customer thinks, feels, and reacts to every interaction and experience of your brand. It’s the impression that consumers are left with following an encounter on any online or offline channel.

In the digital age, touchpoints with your brand occur across multiple channels. It can include an ad on social media, organic search results, or an in-store experience.

A positive or negative branding experience will impact how customers view your products and services. It will also affect purchasing decisions.

Brands can influence and construct a brand experience, but the individual customer ultimately owns it. It’s their experience of your brand.

Why Is Brand Experience So Important?

When consumers have access to more information and choice than ever before, the branding experience is a deciding factor in purchasing decisions.

A positive experience can be the determining factor as to whether a consumer chooses you or a competitor. Delivering a rewarding and engaging experience at every touchpoint can forge stronger connections with shoppers, inspire brand loyalty and increase sales.

1. Brand Awareness

Crafting a consistent and recognizable experience is key to standing out from competitors and increasing brand awareness. 

Wowing your audience and being memorable can inspire word-of-mouth as happy customers talk about their experiences. Word-of-mouth accounts for $6 trillion in annual global spending and is responsible for 13% of all sales. 

2. Brand Value

The more value you can deliver at each touchpoint, the more likely your audience is to feel positive about your brand and your offerings. Your customers determine your brand equity. When they view your brand as more valuable than competitors, you can command higher prices. 

3. Customer Loyalty

A memorable experience inspires customers to buy from you again and again. Your brand stays top of mind. Consistent and relevant experiences build trust, which has a knock-on effect on customer retention.  

4. Increase Revenue

Ultimately, improving the branding experience will help you to drive more sales. You can increase revenue by inspiring new customers to buy from you and delighting your existing customers. Brand experience has a tangible impact on business performance.  

Examples of Interactive Brand Experiences

So, what does a brand experience look like in the real world?

There are lots of different types of experience branding. Whether it’s a piece of content that entertains or a product recommendation, the goal is the same – to positively impact how the audience perceives the brand.

Here are three examples of companies succeeding with brand experience.

1. Netflix

Netflix is one of the leading companies when it comes to brand experience. It incorporates design thinking and personalization to provide value at every touchpoint.   

Its intuitive interface is powered by data analytics. Instead of relying on keyword-based content discovery, Netflix uses artificial intelligence to serve users with recommendations.  

Each user receives a customized homepage, personalized emails, push notifications, and more. These recommendations are based on what content users like, what they don’t like, and their previous viewing history.  

The recommendation algorithms drive engagement and improve the brand experience across digital channels. In 2017, Netflix revealed that around 80% of content watched on the platform comes from recommendations.  

2. Benefit Cosmetics

The brand experience doesn’t just exist on digital channels. It’s the sum of the online and offline interactions with your brand.

In 2021, Beauty Cosmetics created an immersive augmented reality (AR) experience to launch its new Magnet Extreme Lengthening Mascara range. The project brought together the online and offline experience to generate buzz and drive sales.

Shoppers that signed into the AR platform could use their smartphones to find and collect tokens in the physical world. Shoppers could exchange these tokens for free products, exclusive discounts, and virtual beauty consultations.

The gamification campaign generated a 50% conversation rate and a clickthrough rate of over 39%.

3. Amazon

Like Netflix, the e-commerce giant Amazon has been a big player in brand experience and the rise in consumer expectations.

In 2020, the company released the “amazon assistant” browser extension. The smart assistant helps users compare product attributes and pricing while browsing the internet.

When users visit a product page, they receive reviews, ratings, and personalized recommendations based on their preferences and purchasing history. Users can also add products from third-party websites to their “Lists” to buy later.

Amazon has maximized existing technology by leveraging the browser extension to enhance the online shopping experience. The solution also keeps Amazon top of mind by increasing the number of touchpoints across every stage of the buyer’s journey.

How To Create a Brand Experience

A brand experience exists solely in the hands of the consumer experiencing your brand. So, you can’t technically “create” a brand experience.   

However, you can create the elements that contribute to a valuable brand experience and ensure consistency across digital and offline channels.  

Here’s the six-step process to create a brand experience: 

1. Create a Brand Strategy

Before creating a brand experience, you need to know who you are and what you promise to your customers.  

• Why does your customer choose you over a competitor? 
• What are your brand values? 
• What is your brand personality? 

These are just a few of the questions you need to answer. Your brand strategy will guide the experiences you create and how you want your customers to think and feel about your brand.  

2. Understand Your Audience

You need to understand your audience and what they want and need. Data analytics can help you rediscover your audiences and identify buyer personas and preferences you may have overlooked. You need to have a clear view of your audience segments and the values they share with your brand.  

3. Audit Your Touchpoints

The next step is to outline the buyer’s journey for your audience segments. Create an outline of the existing experience and touchpoints that contribute to purchasing decisions. The goal is to identify gaps and opportunities where your brand can make a difference with a valuable experience. 

It’s essential to look beyond the purchasing stage to find the touchpoints where you can delight your customers. The most impactful and memorable brand experiences often occur before or after a sale.  

4. Create New Experiences

When you have identified opportunities to enhance the branding experience, you need to build the content assets and capabilities to create and deliver value at each touchpoint. 

Personalization is integral to providing the experiences consumers demand. According to McKinsey, over 70% of consumers expect brands to offer personalized experiences, and 76% are frustrated by a lack of personalization. Crafting personalized communications, offers, and recommendations can increase customer satisfaction and improve the brand experience.  

5. Measure Performance

Measuring brand experience is a challenge that many companies struggle with. Of course, you can judge the performance of individual campaigns, but it can be challenging to gain an overview of brand experience performance.  

Social listening can be a valuable tool for gaining insights into consumer opinions and preferences. You can also use the Net Promoter Score to benchmark your brand experience performance.  

6. Adapt and Optimize

Consumer preferences and purchasing behavior are constantly evolving. To stay relevant and provide the experiences modern consumers want, you need to measure, analyze, and optimize continually.   

It’s vital to keep up with trends in consumer behavior and technology adoption. Winners in the digital age are always looking to enhance the brand experience by incorporating user feedback and preferences into their solutions.  

Succeeding With Experience Branding in 2022

The brand experience is at the heart of the relationship between the brand and the consumer. Shoppers expect meaningful and valuable experiences whenever they engage with a company.  

Experience branding is the present and the future of marketing. 

Prioritizing brand experience can help you improve your customers’ lives and drive business performance. It brings you closer to the consumer, increases brand affinity, boosts awareness, and drives revenue.