Building a brand is about building trust. People buy products they trust will meet their needs. But the most successful brands not only retain the trust of their customers but keep them coming back for more.
Even when we aren’t buying things, we interact with brands on various levels. From spending hours on company websites to borrowing slogans in our daily speech, some brands can create connections with our lives in ways extending beyond the use of their products.
Ever heard the phrase “Netfilx and chill”? What about the busy people with laptops open at Starbucks? Customer experience is about the entirety of the interaction between a business and its customers, and the associations this creates. Offering chic furniture and WiFi makes Starbucks the perfect work spot for modern freelancers – the coffee needed to meet project deadlines just happens to be sold there.
How your customers feel when interacting with your business is crucial to whether they’ll be back. Given that people now spend their free time either buying things or being told to buy things, the relationship between your business’s infrastructure and the people it caters for is crucial in building brand loyalty.
Beyond money, is your brand engaging enough to make people spend their free time and mental energy on you? Engagement starts with awareness. Loyalty is the continuation of a customer being engaged with a brand even after the immediate interaction with its product.
Branded packaging doesn’t only let the customer know that it’s your product, but it also lets other people know that your customer has your product. We see the dudes proudly walking around the mall with the Carvela shopping bag in tow.
When part of a product can be repurposed for some other use, or it has a feature that does so, it can be hard to escape the brand. Plenty of people cool water in plastic cooldrink bottles, which is a win for CocaCola. Likewise, more people look at their phones for the time, just before taking a photo. The fact that I have a watch and a camera in my telephone makes me interact with Apple long after my trip to the iStore.
But another thing that keeps us hooked on a brand is when it diversifies its product range. One has multiple uses for their iPhone, but when they go to the iStore, they might find the Apple Watch or MacBook appealing, further engulfing their experience within the Apple ecosystem.
How your store is curated determines how potential users will feel about your brand and if they can forge a relationship with it. Can one gain any utility from being at your venue other than their immediate need for your product? Of course, when one hits the McDonald’s drive-thru, it’s part of the customer experience to receive the Big Mac without even having to jump out of the car, saving time.
Building engagement with users by being a part of their daily lives builds loyalty in those people, resulting in the long-term benefits of a customer base that not only receives your message, but shares it