4 Ways to Boost Your Brand Experience

When we talk about branding, we talk about “the experience your brand delivers” everywhere your clients, customers, community, employees—or even potential employees—interact with it. It’s helpful to think about branding this way, so that you don’t think of your brand only as a series of assets—such as your logo, packaging and website. Those assets aren’t your brand; they are elements of your brand that contribute to the experience.

The best brands aren’t just seen, they’re felt—they create a positive impression at every encounter. These brands work hard to understand—and then to fulfill—the needs of their audience across the entire customer journey. That’s why, when we’re working with a brand, our team walks through all of the major touch points where an audience will come into contact with it, looking for opportunities to boost the experience.

We think about what the audience might want to see and hear from the brand in that moment. The question in our minds is only partly, “What do we want to tell you?” and mostly, “What do you need from us right now—how can we help?”

Here are four ways you can boost the brand experience you offer:

No.1 Walk a mile in your target audience’s shoes

Recently, we took a day to walk through a customer journey for a client from point A to B. It’s amazing what an outside team can see that a client no longer sees, especially within their own workplace environment. We pretended to be their audience and stopped at every touch point along the way, from the apps to the physical locations, and asked, “If we were a customer, what would we like to have/know/feel right now? What would make this experience better? Who’s competing for our attention? What’s an easy fix?”

Walking through your brand touch points and identifying the gaps and opportunities in the experience is one way to pick some low-hanging fruit that might boost your brand experience. We go into more detail about how to audit the experience you offer in our blog, “How a Customer Experience Audit Can Help Grow Your Business”.

No.2 Piggyback your brand event on another brand

Another way to boost your brand experience is to piggyback your brand event on another brand that already evokes positive feelings in your audience. This strategy isn’t just about attracting numbers, it’s about doubling down on the positive associations. ?

In September, we helped CORE Site Solutions?launch their new brand at the Barnside Harvest Festival.? We had worked with the client for the better part of a year to create the new brand and its assets, and the project team wanted the same level of quality and detail to show in their brand launch.

In its first year, Barnside Harvest Festival proved it was an event worth attending—and 2024’s music showcase promised to be bigger and better than ever. CORE knew that their clients, who were mostly from the heavy construction industry, would welcome a free ticket to the event, along with reserved seating by the main stage and hosted food and drinks. People who might not show up for a brand launch alone, would be drawn to this combined event.

CORE reserved a VIP tent at the festival for the entire weekend, along with a reception tent to celebrate with their staff on the Friday night. Their plan was to introduce clients and staff to their new brand at the event. Our team’s task was to think through the experience and ensure that the brand introduced itself to CORE’s guests in a way that set the tone for the company going forward.

No.3 Build your brand experience in layers that support each other

Prior to the CORE brand launch, we created a series of email invites that built anticipation for the launch and answered key questions clients —and staff, in particular—might have about the new brand. We didn’t want to give away too many details, such as the new look and name, but we also didn’t want to create anxiety about how the new brand might affect someone’s job or customer service relationship. The final emails in the series were post-event—a full explanation of the brand and how it would operate. The emails answered the question, “What will guests want to know at each stage leading up to, and after, the event?”

Then, we considered the brand experience from the time the guests arrived at the festival, to their first drink, to the visuals in the tent. We created wayfinding signs, brand introduction signage, video for the Main Stage screens, a branded truck to park inside the tent, and—most fun of all—branded Barnside beer with a custom CORE Site Solutions label. At the end of the evening, guests took home branded apparel and promotional materials.

Our team also designed and developed a landing page for CORE’s new website, so that our audiences would have somewhere to go to learn more about the company. It was part of a layered approach to building and launching the new brand that considered user touch points at every step.

No.4 Align your internal brand experience with your external one

Clients don’t always think of their employees as a brand audience, but they are the foundation of your employer brand. It’s important for brands to “walk their talk” externally and internally—especially brands that rely heavily on customer service, or a motivated team, to deliver their customer experience.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” goes the saying. That means that it doesn’t matter what brand goals and strategies you have in place–if your workplace culture doesn’t support them, it will derail them. We’ve all been on the receiving end of a customer service person who feels alienated from the company they work for—it’s not a positive experience.

Look around your workplace. How can you increase the sense of belonging and teamwork? Do your people know how their work connects to other people’s work, and adds value to the whole? Do they feel heard and valued? As author Tracy Brower says when writing about happiness in the workplace, “…people don’t just want to lay bricks, they want to build a cathedral.”

When CORE launched their new brand, they knew that one of the most important groups they had to bring onboard were their crews—these were the people who would be representing the company on worksites and explaining the new structure to other companies working alongside them. They were going to help build CORE’s “word-of-mouth” reputation.

CORE’s leadership team took care to explain the benefits of the new brand to their employees, invited the entire company to the Harvestfest launch, and made sure each employee received a generous bag of swag to take home. As the company works through its first year under this new structure, they’re making sure their employees know that the new brand will bring everyone up with it.

Step back and take a second look at your brand

Boosting your brand experience is a matter of stepping back and taking a second look: at the gaps and opportunities in your customer’s journey, at creative ways to amplify positive feelings associated with your brand, at adding layers to the experience, and at the needs of all your audiences, including your employees.

If you’d like us to help you boost your brand, please get in touch. Indalma offers both brand and customer experience audits that can help you identify new opportunities, strengthen weak areas, and explore new ways to stay relevant and competitive.

If you think your brand or business could benefit from 20 years of design and branding experience, please give us a shout – we love to talk ideas and solutions!

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.indalmacreative.com