What is brand experience?

Put simply, brand experience is the way in which a brand or business interacts with its stakeholders. For the majority of businesses, the key stakeholders are customers and employees, as both of these groups have the biggest impact upon future success. Others to consider include shareholders, investors, members or beneficiaries and sometimes suppliers and partner channels.

Brand experience may cover all stakeholders, but the experience each individual is looking for will be different based on their relationship with the business. Brand experience can therefore be broken down into specific experiences that target customers, employees, prospects and recruitment candidates. If a company sells products—whether digital or physical—it will also need to consider user experience, which relates to the usability of the products themselves.

The way in which we buy products and services has changed
Over 80 per cent of shoppers now research products before making a purchase, usually on mobile devices so it is essential that you deliver a customer experience that is optimised and user-friendly on every platform. Customers want accessible, understandable businesses that make the process easy from start to finish.

Loyalty? What loyalty?
Today's businesses can expect little brand loyalty from buyers, instead deals are won or lost based on the brand experience delivered at the point of purchase. Customers are quick to go elsewhere if that is sub-standard. It is no coincidence that many of the world's leading brands such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Uber have been built on the back of delivering an outstanding brand experience, one that is simple, quick and user-friendly. This will only increase as the world becomes increasingly digital.

You already have a brand experience, whether you like it or not
Perhaps the most compelling reason to care about brand experience is that every business already has one. The real winners will be the organisations that recognise this and take pro-active steps to make their experience the best it can be.