The fight to provide the best brand experience is on! Get ready to take some challenges head-on if you want to survive in this highly competitive marketplace. Competition is no longer restricted to product and prices. Customer experience has climbed up the list of preference and your consumers are waiting for a delightful brand experience. Are you ready?

What is brand experience?

Brand experience is one of the key factors customers consider while deciding if they want to do business with a brand. Brand experience is an amalgamation of several things — customer service, product quality, in-store experience, online ease of shopping etc. It is all about the feelings you evoke, behaviour you influence, cognitions you convey in a customer when he interacts with your brand. It can be done through any brand-related stimuli including brand logo, design, communications, or general brand environment.

If you get the brand experience mix right, you can expect some great impact and results from your branding campaigns. Some of these can include higher brand loyalty, customer delight, increased brand attachment, and immense customer satisfaction. Needless to say, all of this can be extremely critical to surviving in this already saturated marketplace where everyone is eyeing a piece of customer attention. Good brand experience can also lead to a customer willing to pay a premium for the product. So definitely marketers should not ignore the simple looking but harder to achieve – a delightful brand experience.

How to create a brand experience to remember?

Now that you know how important it is to provide great customer experience, you would obviously want to work on a strategy to achieve it. Here are a few tips that can help you start your journey on the path of creating a memorable brand experience.

1. Stay tech savvy: In today’s digital era you have to connect with your consumers online. Your company has to be present at all the platforms where your consumers are there. And the internet is definitely one of them. Plan your online reputation and engagement well to ensure a pleasing and superior online experience to your customers.
2. Human interaction is very important: While we know the importance of digital mediums is increasing, there is nothing that can substitute a human touch. Personal interaction with consumers at supermarkets, tasting and trial sessions, customer meets etc are a good way to re-emphasise that you care for them.
3. Prioritise customer service: There are times when customers expect you to go a step ahead and provide customer service in critical situations. This might be an issue they face in using the product, or the quality of the product or just its availability. Whatever the issue is one must remember that customer is the king and his wish is a marketer’s command. Even if there is no critical issue, customer service standards of a company should be fairly high to ensure a delightful brand experience.
4. Promotional campaigns always work: Everyone loves freebies. Free promotional product distribution at stores or free sampling is always appreciated by customers. Customers who receive free promo products are more likely to do business with the company in future.
5. Organise customer-specific events: Events are a good way to make your customers feel important or cared for. Distribution conferences, consumer forums and meets, recognition ceremonies or just a tête-à-tête with top management can be very encouraging and motivating for customers.
6. Customer engagement is the key: Whether you choose an event, social media platform or free sampling option, the key thing to remember is that no product can succeed without proper customer engagement.
7. Nothing beats a good product and competitive pricing: At the end, as marketers, we have to remember that a good advertisement can sell a product only once. You have to have a robust pricing strategy and more importantly a very good quality product even before you embark on your brand experience journey.

The best part of being in the business of branding is that you always have a customer waiting out there to connect with you, try your brand and attach his loyalties to it. So what are you waiting for? Grab the opportunity and start your journey to create some amazing brand experiences.