Hold up. What’s a brand experience?
This is what someone (a would-be client or customer) experiences from first touch to off-boarding and beyond. It’s the marriage of messaging, communication and copywriting, marketing, website, emails and visual design.
It’s the full package that shares what you do, who you do it for, why that matters to them (and you) and everything you stand for and believe in as a business.
The brand experience is also how connection and relationships happen. And how people in your orbit become clients or customers.
And in order to have a delightful, compelling and share-worthy brand experience, you need clarity and confidence in a few key areas.
You need to get intimate with your vision, values, people, results and visual design to have a good brand experience. Because truly knowing and understanding these things about your business means you can communicate them effectively, be led by them when making business decisions and use them to set and measure your own success.
Vision is what you imagine for your business, yourself and your people. It’s the future you want to be a part of creating, the feelings and beliefs you want your clients or customers to have. It’s the set of goals you have along with an understanding of why they’re important to you.
Values are the things you believe in or stand for as a human and business. They’re not compromisable and a great (great!) way to determine who you want to work with. They’re usually linked to your experiences, why you started your business in the first place and the vision you have.
They’re the people who turn your hobby into something profitable. And while I don’t want to downplay your role in the success of your business (it’s fn enormous, I know), your people drive your business because they’re making financial investments in your services or products. Understanding who they are, beyond any vague demographics, will guide in what they value, what experiences they want more of and what results they’re looking for. It’ll also support you communicate and engage with them in a way that nurtures a genuine connection.
Results are what people get out of working with you and can be broken down into functional and emotional benefits. They’re what people expect to get (photos, branding, a website, copy, products) and perhaps what they didn’t. These are the results they experience that sit alongside those tangible or measurable benefits. Results that perhaps fall on the spectrum of what you do (photography/design/website development/copywriting/product developer) that are influenced by your unique lived experiences and values.
Visual design is everything from your logo and colour palette to client-facing documents, emails and social media content. It’s the visual interaction with your brand that should be guided by the careful consideration of all the other components of your brand experience. That’s the foundation for a design that captures the heart and essence of your brand.
When you marry these components, you’re left with a brand experience that has to be truly unique to you and your business, and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what we want as business owners.
If you want support in developing the most delightful brand experience for your business, let’s get started with a complimentary introduction call. You’ll walk away with strategy tips you can implement immediately and we can chat about meeting your vision with branding that’s meaningful and beautiful. So you can get yourself in front of the right people sooner and get more fab clients.
If you’re filled with ambition and purpose and looking for branding and business support that helps you achieve your vision, you’re in the right place.
I’m a brand and website designer with an approach centred on intimacy, so you’ll see that word a lot here.
I’m also a red wine enthusiast, amateur vegetable gardener, mom to an adventurous 5 year old, whippet lover with a thing for ginger cats and Cape Town local who loves the ocean.
