Reilly Newman | Related to brand equity, the experience of your brand is equally as valuable when it comes to elevating your business through proper branding and strategy.
When you think back on past purchases, where exactly did your experience with the brand begin to have you follow through on a purchase? Now, where did that branded experience end? Has it truly ever ended?
A brand has two sides. One portion – brand equity – contains some controllable variables like the logo, product packaging, signage, etc. The other – brand experience – however, contains influenceable variables.
These influenceable variables are not fully controllable since we are at the mercy of something as simple as your customer’s mood when they are experiencing your brand. So what’s a brand to do?
Through experience, a brand is able to strategically deploy those controlled variables (brand equity) that you carefully crafted when planning your brand. This comes down to the details of the overall experience — the touchpoints, the interaction with the employees, the interior atmosphere or online presence. Does your physical space, website, or customer support create confusion and frustration for your customer? It’s quite easy to see how a grumpy employee or confusing menu board design can make that unhappy customer have an even worse day… especially when they are hangry or in a rush.
By focusing on your brand experience, you are able to listen and learn on how exactly to improve your brand equity. By creating a feedback loop that refines and perfects the variables you can control, you craft a better experience that increases brand equity overall.
Imagine a customer’s engagement with you as a journey’s path. From the first point of interaction to the purchase decision and transaction, it is definitely not a straight line. If that were the case, business would be easy and everyone would do it. As a business owner you know this and every day should be looking into ways to not only gain more initial engagements (leads), but refine that customer journey so the path is as intuitive and enjoyable as possible.
After all, nature always takes the path of least resistance.
Shouldn’t your brand accommodate for this fact?
As this client-journey’s path represents the different interaction points for the brand, this where you can influence the overall experience and encourage a branded, seamless path that reinforces what your business stands for and the goals you wish to accomplish.
The ultimate business objective as a brand is to curate an enjoyable customer journey path that:
1) Accomplishes the customer’s goal (buying a product, service, solution)
2) Adds value to the customer’s experience of the brand
3) Increases the net perceived value of the brand, beyond just the initial customer goal
4) Increases customer return and referral rate, by customer finding security and identity in relation to the business’s brand.
