Brand experiences and experiential marketing have become a leading way for brands to get into the lives and minds of their customers. There is strong value in creating a brand experience, especially in the way it supports brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is something every company strives for, but few attain. It has been shown that just a 7% increase in brand loyalty will lead to an 85% increase in customer lifetime value (CLV).
After the last financial crisis, many brands had their brand loyalty put to the test. As their customers scrambled for money-saving alternatives, just 40% of brands managed to retain more than half of their customers. Brands that succeed in creating strong brand loyalty have a strong advantage over those that do not, which highlights the value of brand experiences.
What is a brand experience and the connection with brand loyalty?
First, what is a brand experience? For your customers, your brand experience is the cumulative experience that they have of your brand. It includes every personal interaction, as well as things they hear or see your brand doing. Much of this is outside of your control, but businesses have realized that they can gain some control by creating intentional brand experiences.
What is brand loyalty vs. brand affinity vs. customer loyalty?
Next, it’s important to understand what brand loyalty really is – because it’s often confused with customer loyalty. It’s understandable because there’s some overlap.
Brand loyalty
Brand loyalty is the gold standard for customer retention. It’s when customers are loyal to your brand because they know, trust, and like it. They buy your products or services because of the brand, and not the specific offer. Quite simply, other brands just don’t do it like you do, and they don’t trust other brands like you.
Brand affinity
Brand affinity is part of the brand loyalty-forming process, but it’s still quite distinct. Brand affinity simply means that people like your brand and accept it as part of their own identity. It doesn’t mean that they buy your products/services at all, just that they are on your side and support your mission. If we think about a Star Wars fan who buys a Star Wars sweatshirt or gets a Princess Leia tattoo, we see brand affinity in action. It doesn’t mean they aren’t seeing other movies, just that they really like Star Wars.
Customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is when customers are loyal because of a specific offer, such as price or convenience. As soon as there’s a better reason to go elsewhere, they will. Relying on customer loyalty puts brands in a difficult position, competing on specifications or price instead of their unique brand identity.
Identify your target customers for brand experiences
To create the much-wanted brand loyalty, you need to use a brand story that your brand experiences can fit around. This means looking carefully at your customers to make sure the brand story you create is relevant to them.
Start by breaking down your customers into groups that reflect the people involved. This might be their role, their situation, common challenges, or other identifying characteristics. Demographics can play a role, of course, but these are woefully inaccurate when it comes to understanding individual people. It’s better to stick with stories that are universally human, showing the diversity within customer groups, and to spice it up with a sprinkling of highly-relevant challenges.
For example, if you sell products that help people with personal mobility (like mobility scooters or stair lifts), then it might be tempting to target people over the age of 60. However, this would then also address people who don’t need your product and misses out on people outside of this demographic who do need it.
It’s better to look at a story about a variety of characters (of various ages etc.) encountering the challenge of a staircase or busy road crossing, show how frustrating it can be, and then show how happy these people are to use your products to get around and socialize.
Relevance must be the #1 priority for your brand experience and brand story. You can be quite subtle about this, using imagery and music to show that the message is for them.
And finally, it’s important to be positive. Create stories that are aspirational and inspirational, with a feel-good factor. Think about what makes your customers happy, what difficulties they face, and how you can solve them. Most of all, think about what you do for them on an emotional level.
Using experience centers for brand experiences
Once you’ve pinned down your brand story for each important customer group, the next stage is to create a special brand experience around it. Your own creativity will play a huge role here, but the aim is to immerse them in your brand, its values, and stories about people like them.
Many companies use pop-up experiences. These have a special appeal, and there’s always a buzz around ‘limited-time’ special events. However, it’s also worth looking at more permanent options, like a customer experience center.
Customer experience centers, sometimes called briefing centers, are the ideal venue for creating a brand experience. These are dedicated spaces which have been designed to showcase your brand’s offer. Many customer experience centers are equipped with immersive rooms and other AV equipment that makes it easy to deploy customized digital storytelling.
The key thing with any customer experience center design is a flexible design that enables total adaptability. This way, you can use your experience center for multiple different brand experiences, using distinct digital stories and brand stories for each customer group. The best way to ensure maximum flexibility over your customer experiences is to use digital storytelling software, which enables you to adapt each experience with unique storytelling assets.
Always pay attention to the customer
The most important thing for your brand experience is to focus on the customer, their identity, and their situation and build your experience around that. The whole point of your brand experience is to stay present and relevant in the mind of your customers. This can only be achieved when you create experiences that show how your brand is useful to them.
By focusing on your customers in this way, brand experiences also help your company to pay attention to their priorities and align with them. This way, you’re not just showing them how you are relevant; you’re ensuring that you actually are.