First and foremost, what is the brand experience? According to a study done by Brakus, et al, the brand experience is all of the feelings, cognitions and behavioral responses a customer has when interacting with an aspect of your brand, such as the packaging, communications or environments. From the moment your target audience first comes into contact with your brand, they are developing and modifying their feelings toward your product or service. The way you manage this brand experience may be the single most important factor when it comes to building customer loyalty and eventually brand advocates.

The concept of the brand experience encourages marketers and key decision-makers in an organization to consider the full extent of how a brand occurs to your audience. To fully understand the brand experience that's being created, you must consider each stage of the customer journey, each channel where your audience may come into contact with your brand and the impact each department has that is involved in building this experience.

It's easy to confuse this concept with good marketing and branding, or even experiential marketing. Those are part of the big picture, but the total brand experience goes far beyond these elements to include the subjective impression your audience takes away from every stage. Your brand experience includes the ease or difficulty of the checkout and payment process, the support they receive following a purchase, the interaction on social media and even delivery time.

Understanding and creating an optimal brand experience is what builds loyalty from customers who learn to trust your brand for the consistency in your message, the level of quality in the product or service you provide, and more.

This is an excerpt from an article originally feature d on Brand United .