More than a feeling: Why your brand experience is the core of your business
Let me start by doing a little exercise with you.
I want you to imagine that you are sat right next to your biggest competitor in your industry. (If you’re fortunately on friendly enough terms that you don’t see your fellow suppliers as ‘competitors’, then just pretend you do and stay with me on this…)
On paper you’re pretty much twins:
You serve the same ideal customer.
You operate in the same location/s.
You provide the same service/s. Even if the names are different, the core of what you’re offering is completely similar.
You have barely any variance in price between you.
Your availability/working hours are also, yep, you guessed it, identical!
So when this is the case, how can potential new customer differentiate you and decide who they want to work with?
The answer is, your brand experience.
What’s branding?
The best way to start here is to give the difference between branding and marketing because it often gets confused. In short:
Marketing = your direct efforts to promote your business
Branding = everything around your identity, positioning and experience you give to your customers
Your marketing may attract customers, but your brand is what makes them STAY.
I’m not just talking about your visuals ie. your socials don’t match your website. Things like your logo are visual and surface level - brand identity goes so much deeper than that, down to your core values, your WHY and everything you stand for.
What’s brand experience?
The reason they stay is your brand experience, which is the experience you give to them.
Every touchpoint you have with your customers from when they first see or hear of you through to offboarding and post-service reviews provides an opportunity to influence how they see and what they think, feel and say about your brand when you’re not in the room.
Why brand experience matters
Even the little touches that take two seconds (and you probably don’t even think about), you never know how much they matter and impact someone’s day.
Things like personalisation, gestures of good will, taking the time to have a conversation, or just your overall proactivity and efficiency that makes your customers’ lives easier. It all adds up and increases what’s known as social currency. [1]
There’s a reason why people read your reviews and testimonials, or come to you because Susie from the coffee shop told them all about your services.
They don’t necessarily care about you (sorry), but themselves and how to solve their problems. They’re not just looking for proof of the transformation that they want, but evidence that they’ll have the best experience with you over someone else as they achieve it.
Emotion comes into it, backed by science
All the small touches in the previous section are so impactful because humans are emotionally-driven creatures (even if we like to say we’re not), especially in business.
I’ve said throughout my life that if you can understand people then you understand business. It’s also one of the reasons why I like to have discovery calls - I want to figure out who I’m working with and if I can genuinely help them rather than them immediately investing time and money.
Research from Adobe shows that customers are driven to action with brands by their emotions:
71% would recommend a brand that they LOVE (bring on the referrals!) [3]
81% believe brands that co-create experiences feel more trustworthy [2], with 71% actively avoiding brands that feel misleading [4]
The main insight here is that emotion truly matters. It builds trust and connection above all else.
What you can do to build or improve your existing brand experience
We’re at the beginning of the year where you may already be reflecting on 2025 and planning out exactly what you can do for your business this year. We’re at the perfect time.
My recommendations for building out your brand experience are:
1 Refine your brand identity
If you have done this work already, well done and skip straight to #2.
If you haven’t, this is taking a look inward and building all of your core foundations for your brand. Look at yourself, your business, your story and from this your brand identity starts to build.
Ask yourself key questions such as: Why does your brand exist? What do you want to be known for? Who for? What do you for them? Why should they work with you? What’s the impact if they don’t? What do you want them to think, feel and say about your brand?
Once you have the answer to these and know how we want to make our customers feel, then we move to #2.
2 Take a look at your customer journey
This may be uncomfortable as it requires you to take an honest look at the service you’re currently providing. Not just revealing what you do well, but truths about where you may not have been hitting the mark.
Map out your end to end customer journey from initial discovery of you through to finishing a journey with you (pen and paper is fine). I want you to be really honest about what’s going well and what could genuinely be improved.
Unable to identify this? Ask your customers for feedback, read reviews etc.
If you feel like gaining extra insight, you can also do a walkthrough of your competitor’s journeys (as much as you can do) and note opportunities from there.
3 Craft your experience
Now that you should have your list of ideas, here’s the fun part - implementation!
This can mean:
Creating new assets with your new or updated visual brand identity
Tweaking your messaging in all of your copy
Ordering new merchandise (because who doesn’t love a bit of merch!?)
Putting on some new events to bring your community together
Anything you want!
Hopefully these tips help you to move forward with intentionally creating consistent high-quality experiences that evoke emotion for your potential and existing customers.
Summary
I hope you’ve found this useful in learning about brand experience and the upfront and lasting impact it has for your customers.
The internet is more full of noise than ever, making it important for businesses to make great first impressions quicker. Are you confident that your customer journey reflects you and the experience you want to give?
If you would like to have a chat about how I can help you build or transform an obsession-worthy brand so you can start a year in 2026 where leads are chasing you, click below to arrange a FREE 30 minute discovery call with me.