Editorial
The Gist
- Brand experience evolution. From simple CMS to dynamic ecosystems, brand experiences now integrate diverse channels.
- AI tools transformation. AI in marketing reshapes customer interaction, enabling personalized, dynamic experiences.
- Customer community focus. Building communities around brands fosters deeper, authentic customer engagement and loyalty.
Brand experience has come a long way in the last few decades.
In the 2000s, it was all about simple content management systems that delivered content to websites only. In the 2010s, brand experiences progressed to basic omnichannel like mobile and social media — which has today expanded to include even gas station pumps and digital kiosks. More potential channels come to life every year.
But we’re moving away from a heavy focus on any single type of channel and toward something more integrated and dynamic…
An ecosystem.
Content management systems, omnichannel strategies, personalized content, and now AI tools … they’re all part of a larger, symbiotic ecosystem that attracts, guides and converts new audiences into loyal customers via your brand experience.
But an “ecosystem for brand experience” is a mouthful and can be even more complicated if you’re a marketer or customer experience manager trying to understand and create the best one for your company.
Understanding starts by knowing your business goals first. Know where you want your ecosystem to take your brand and the kind of experience you want to provide. Then, you need two things to achieve it: tools and people.
Related Article: Does Your Brand Experience Align With Your Customer Experience?
Tools
This might be one of the more “obvious” parts of an ecosystem, but what’s not obvious are which tools to pick and how to determine if they’re valuable for you.
Together, your tools should accomplish these three goals for your ecosystem:
- Efficiency and Agility: Help customers find and navigate your offerings faster and satisfy their need for the latest trends.
- Personalization: Establish a deeper connection between a potential customer and your products or services. This could look like segmented product recommendations based on their social media behavior or sending a consumer a coupon for an item they abandoned in their cart.
- Omnichannel: Customers shouldn’t work to find you — you should meet them in the channels where they are. More than that, you should offer them dynamic customer journeys; which tools can help you do that?
There might be other goals you should choose tools from based on your offering and industry, so keep those in mind.
AI Tools
Of course, every conversation about tools must include AI these days. There are many AI tools out there — ChatGPT, Google Bard, Evolv AI, Jasper AI — and more being added every week. Figure out which ones will help you unlock the right experiences for your customers
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Apr
23
AI: The Essential Vitamin for a Healthy CX
Join us as we unravel the mysteries of AI adoption and discover the key to unlocking a thriving CX ecosystem.
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Webinar
Apr
23
Navigating Market Dynamics: Leveraging Reputation to Propel Business Growth
Join us to uncover the secrets of mastering reputation management in today's competitive environment.
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Webinar
Apr
24
The State of Outsourcing: At the Crossroads of AI, Quality, and Cost Savings
Learn how companies can maximize the results from their outsourcing investments.
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Webinar
Apr
30
Supercharge Contact Center Efficiency with Generative AI
Learn practical strategies to reduce post-call documentation time by over 8 minutes.
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Nike & Sephora & AI
Nike’s “By You” campaign uses AI so customers can design their own shoes online and in-store. Not only do customers get to enjoy exercising their creativity, but Nike collects data on preferences to use for future product releases. Similarly, makeup brand Sephora used AI to create an augmented reality app that allows customers to try different foundations, lipsticks, blushes and more without actually trying them on in-store.
Tool Integration
My last note on tools: by definition, an ecosystem is “a complex network or interconnected system” which means that your tools have to be capable of integrating. This doesn’t mean that IT has to come up with a far-reaching fix to force your tools to integrate — it means you need the right architecture to support the tools you’re choosing.
Related Article: AI Marketing Tools 2024: When Hype Meets Reality
Community
Your ecosystem should also enable your customers’ need for connection.
What Is a Customer Community?
Community could mean several things as long as you are fostering authentic customer connections. You could build discussion forums, set up an official customer-created wiki, or host a community-focused conference. The goal is to encourage customers to engage each other around your brand.
Lululemon Community
The Lululemon community is a great model of providing value that lives beyond a product. The core of the company is its products: sportswear, workout gear, shoes, and so on. But the most enthusiastic fans can join and participate in the larger “lifestyle” that Lululemon offers.
They can train and take classes together, become brand ambassadors and meet up at in-person events like the annual “Sweatlife Festival.” Moreover, they can manage this “Lululemon lifestyle” directly in the app.
Your Brand's Version
Consider what your brand’s version of this is. You might start by hosting regular webinar sessions open to the public about how to unlock certain product use cases, with the community chiming in on their tips and tricks. Or a customer conference where everyone collaborates on a manifesto about where the industry should be in 10 years and how to reach that change, together.
A Thriving Community
A community will thrive when you facilitate it rather than direct it, so don’t force it on your audiences. Provide opportunities for them to connect inside your dynamic, integrated ecosystem.
Related Article: Want to Build a Customer Community? Here's How to Get Started
Giving Your Customers a Reason to Choose You
Customers have more choices available to them today. Make sure that you give them compelling reasons to choose you. By creating an ecosystem that’s true to your brand identity with the right tools and authentic communities, customers have a reason to choose you every time.
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