There are literally millions of brands in the world. How do you make your brand invaluable and indispensable?

One thing that every business owner wants their customers to have is brand loyalty, where enthusiastic, recurring customers share an undeniable, irresistible connection to the brand and feel like they cannot live without its products or services.

The reality is that most brands are not regarded this way. In fact, the research firm Havas Group just released their Meaningful Brands Study, a global study of brand value, which surveyed over 395,000 people around the world. Among other insights, the study revealed a deepening cynicism, a growing expectation gap in consumers’ relationships with brands and businesses, and it also uncovered this shocking stat: 75% of brands could disappear and be easily replaced.

Most brands lack the feeling of loyalty and devotion from their customers. Many people think that most brands simply don’t have much lasting value for them and are forgettable. You may not yet have a globally-known or marketed brand, but there are ways you can move your business brand out of the 75% from forgettable to indispensable.

Brand building at a deep level is about making meaning and relationship building. Branding helps create significance and shared value through connection for both business and consumer. These are bonds which can be deepened and strengthened over time, and this is something all businesses strive for. So, how can businesses create these types of meaningful, powerful, and personal connections with their customers?

We’ve found that the answer boils down to two things: Expression & Experience.

The Relationship Between Brand Expression and Brand Experience

What is a brand you are innately drawn to? Your expression is the way your brand shows up in the world. This includes all the identifiable elements of your brand system (logo, messaging, point-of-sale, advertising, etc.) – all the ways your brand connects to people in the world they live in. People first come to know, understand and connect to your brand because of its expression. Your brand is, in many ways, an expression of your customer’s desired identity. There is the external appearance of your brand, which is an outgrowth of the internal elements (mission/vision, values, value proposition, differentiation strategy, etc.). This combination of tangible and intangible elements forms the first layer of awareness most people have with your brand.

What is a brand that you are loyal to? Think about a brand that you consume without really thinking too much about it. Experience is all about influencing and convincing the consumer that their life-their participation in the world around them-is indelibly enhanced as a result of engagement with your product or service. In this case, brand offering creates for them an experience that they lack and need in order to have a more fulfilled life in some way. Experience is about creating and nurturing shared value. This is where the brand communicates that you need your customer and your customer needs you, and, YOU ARE BOTH BETTER TOGETHER. Their relationship with your brand is valuable, beyond the bottom line and as a business, you are always thinking about how to make their experience better.

Apple is an Example of Great Brand Expression & Experience

Apple is a company that has excelled in its use of Brand Experience and Brand Expression to grow and sustain its business. From the very beginning, with its tagline “Think Different”, Apple has sought to resonate with those who were creative, curious and not into doing what everyone else is doing. Flash forward to today and Apple is now one of the largest, most well-known companies out there. Their positioning has shifted as a result, but in their messaging and visual styling, they still seek to appeal to a type of customer: cool, creative, forward-thinking. This expression of their brand is intentional and consistent.

We all probably know some  “Apple People”– brand devotees so engaged with the Apple ecosystem that they cannot imagine life without the integrated suite of Apple products. They invest time and lots of money to fully immerse themselves in the ecosystem Apple has created. They closely identify with the products and the culture and community of those who are devoted fans of the products. When I was younger, people only got excited about Apple’s computer products. Now that they make all kinds of devices, their brand fandom expands across Apple’s product line, from phones to computers to diet/fitness solutions, which encompasses a large part of a person’s experience if you think about it.

Because Apple has carefully curated and created their ecosystem, they have built an experience that people can’t live without. This is why “Apple People” line up before sunrise to get the latest releases and go all in on new products and services even before they have been proven to be really successful. They are not just fans of the brand as it is expressed, they are fans of the brand as it is experienced. Everything about the experience, from the way you order or service new products has been designed to enhance and accentuate the way customers experience the brand, and in turn, experience the world.

The job of brands is to capture attention through brand expression and court affection through brand experience. Since branding is fundamentally about relationships, at the core, what we are talking about is the relationship between brand and customer. Consumers love (and often grow to trust) those brands that make us feel a certain way through their expression and build value to us through the experience we share with them.

While it’s true big businesses have a ton of money to invest in developing and communicating their brand expression and brand experience, it is also true that small businesses can benefit from this approach. Your brand expression must encourage and lead to great brand experience. This will attract and retain customers (and employees) that love what you do and participate personally with your brand as a valuable part of their lives. Winning brands excel and seek to improve both expression and experience. This is the key to creating and sustaining a brand that is invaluable and indispensable.

Enthuse Creative is a strategic branding and design firm based in Tysons, VA that provides valuable brand strategy, design, experience and leadership for growing businesses and organizations. We are experts in helping our clients connect with their customers through expression of their brand that contributes to great brand experience. Please Contact us for a free consultation to learn more about how Enthuse Creative can help your business.