Brand Experience

Studies show brands that continually invest in improving the experience customers have when interacting with them reap many benefits. For starters, these include higher sales and margins, as well as more customers turned into brand advocates, a critical advantage in today’s social world.

All this means you need to pay attention to every touch point a buyer has with your brand. This includes the experiences offered by your products, your on-line tools, dealing with your sales and customer service people. Even things like your product packaging matter (think about what it’s like opening a shiny new iPhone).

So with all this as generally accepted wisdom, why doesn’t “brand experience” (beyond logos, fonts and colors) find its way more often into tradeshows and events?

You want to stand out. You want to differentiate yourself from your competitors. So this is a pitch to spend as much time planning the experiences you offer your visitors and attendees as you do everything else. How well are you doing this now? A good indication comes from how well you can answer these four questions:

1. What do you want attendees to feel like when in your booth – should they feel confident, excited, relaxed, awestruck?

2. Do you know exactly what you want attendees to think about your brand – for instance do you want to be seen as a tech-savvy, as a caring teacher or mentor, as responsive, cool, a leader?

3. What do you want them to know by the time they leave – for instance a specific product benefit, the name of a sales rep, what to do next if they want to buy?

4. What are the things each attendee should do as part of their experience – touch this, watch that, meet someone from your company they like and respect?

If you can answer these questions, you’re off to a good start.  If not, consider creating what some people call a “brand experience playbook” that describes what you want your attendees to feel, think, know and do, and exactly how you plan to make this happen. More on brand experiences soon.