In an age when consumers have more options than ever to choose where they take their business, having an amazing quality product or service is often not enough.
From when a potential customer lands on your home page, all the way through to checkout, to stand out from your competition, creating a positive brand experience for your consumers is a must.
How can you ensure that every experience with your brand is a positive one? Let’s take a look in this brief guide.
Reverse Engineer A Positive Brand Experience
The foundation of a good customer experience begins with the design and overall experience of your website.
Is it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for? Is your online home overly clustered or disorganized? Can potential customers easily reach out for additional support?
While the purpose of your website is to sell more products and services, it’s crucial to begin with the experience you’re trying to create for your audience in mind.
Over-optimizing your site with annoying popups and creating a fake sense of urgency may lead to improved sales, but at what cost? Every interaction on your website should be designed with creating a more positive user experience.
What kind of experience do you want your customers to have? Do you want to be known as a brand that offers world-class service? Do you want to be known for providing a pleasant buying experience?
According to an article about customers experiences by Aprimo, the key to providing a great brand experience starts with focusing on your customers and their preferences. The more you can anticipate their needs throughout the buying process, the more success you’ll likely have in generating a sale. Instead of having a sales at all cost mentality, work to show you understand and are listening to community feedback.
If you’ve been receiving an influx of customer support tickets relating to an unclear shipping policy, you can use that information to update the shipping policy. The update will enhance the user the experience.
Understand Your Audience
To fully understand your audience and their pain points and desires, it’s important to have a basic comprehension of key digital marketing principles and terms.
Tracking the right data and experimenting with current marketing best practices gives you an edge in creating an experience for your consumers that will be positively remembered.
In Clique Studios’ digital marketing skills guide, content strategist Brent Trotter writes, “Your website either supports your business or is the cornerstone of it. The data you gather can help you increase conversions, tell your story, and grow your business.”
Implementing digital marketing best practices won’t just work to improve your sales; it also helps in delivering a more positive brand experience.
A Positive Brand Experience in A Digital World
Let’s take a look at some concrete examples of how you can deliver a great experience for your customers.
A Holistic Brand Experience
One of the easiest ways you can deliver a great brand experience is by making it simple for customers to find and purchase what they need with as little effort as possible wherever they may be shopping from.
You may have recently relaunched your website, but is it mobile and tablet friendly?
With more and more consumers using their phone and tablet to purchase products and services, it’s important to ensure the experience is great across all platforms and devices.
Responsive on Social Media
Another area of opportunity for your brand to deliver an exceptional experience is by being responsive on social media. Many consumers today turn to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to get answers to questions before they buy.
Not only that, users of social media love engaging with their favorite brands on social.
Having a social media engagement plan in place to both offer customer support and talk with your community helps differentiate yourself from other brands.
Demonstrating that your brand makes an effort to communicate on social goes a long way in building trust with your audience.
Own Your Mistakes
How your brand handles mistakes will play a large role in how your customers and community ultimately perceive you. Maybe you’ve dropped the ball on an error in pricing. Or perhaps you’ve run out of stock of your most popular item for longer than usual.
When your brand makes a mistake, do your best to communicate the error with your community and share concrete actions steps on how you are working to make things right.
Though a negative experience is never ideal, you can absolutely use a mistake to create a positive brand experience at the end of the day.
If you’re looking to create a more positive brand experience for your customers and community, give these tips and actionable strategies a try.
