Make Your Brand Matter

Combine brand and experience into a single, exciting whole to drive growth The Digital Transformation era has come and gone. Experiential concepts like personalization, transparency, transference, uniquity, and immediacy are now table stakes in an increasingly connected and responsive market. Companies that failed to ante up are already gone—or fading fast. In Make Your Brand Matter, serial entrepreneur and brand strategist Steve Soechtig delivers an eye-opening discussion of the post-Digital Transformation era in which we now live. The book walks you through the evolution of brand and experience, leveraging examples of historical and digitally native brands that have succeeded and failed to seize the digital moment. You’ll discover brands that enabled new customer acquisition, customer value optimization, and customer loyalty, all the while realizing that brand and experience are two sides of the same coin. The book also offers: Strategies, techniques, and activities for teams to capture digital opportunities Discussions of why brand and experience reinforce one another and how experiences must embrace, reflect, and enforce brand identity Tactics to accelerate the customer’s progression from evaluator to loyal advocate Make Your Brand Matter is an essential resource for marketing professionals. It also belongs on the bookshelves of company founders, owners, managers, executives, and other business leaders seeking to develop their organization’s ability to marry brand and experience into one coherent and exciting package.

Introduction xi Better Lucky Than Good xiii What to Expect from This Book xvii Chapter 1 A Far Too Brief History of Brand Strategy 1 The Emergence of Modern Brand Strategy 2 The Intersection of Brand and Experience 3 The Criticality of Experience 10 Chapter 2 The Dawn of Digital 15 The Birth of the Internet 17 Online Advertising Begins 18 Personalization of the Online Customer Experience 19 The E- Mail Explosion 23 Customer Expectations and Technological Innovation 25 Emerging from the Digital Transformation Era 29 Chapter 3 Focusing on the Modern Consumer 31 Millennial Expectations 32 Generation Z Expectations 35 The Customer Funnel 36 Awareness 37 Evaluation 40 Transactions 43 Engagement 44 Loyalty 45 Chapter 4 Believing in Your Brand and Redefining Your Strategy 47 Experience Defines the Brand 48 Building a Culture Through Data Analytics and Engagement 53 Location Through Data Analytics 55 Leveraging Technology to Drive Engagement and Growth 56 Turning Brand Promise into Reality 58 Chapter 5 Selling Experiences, Not Products 61 Commoditized Brands Become Invisible 62 Customers Control Branding 63 Replacing Products with Experiences 64 A Foundation of Innovation and Performance 65 Creating an Engaged Community 69 Pivoting to Gain Market Share 74 The Fusion of Digital and Physical Personalization 76 Customer Connection, Personalization, and Omnichannel Strategy 81 Chapter 6 Time Is the New Currency – Anticipating without Being Invasive 85 Collapsing Time 86 Time- Saving Conveniences 90 Data- Driven Innovations 93 Making Quick Service Quicker 97 Post- Digital Data and Loyalty 101 Four Time- Based Lessons 103 Chapter 7 Finding a Novel Approach to Solving a Market Need 107 Ambassadors of Innovation 109 Strategic Innovations in CRM 112 Novel Omnichannel Engagement 116 Building Innovation into Your Brand Strategy 118 Chapter 8 Humanizing the Experience 123 Understanding People’s Needs 124 Expanding an Exclusive Market to Everyone 128 Human- First Engagement 130 Risking Controversies for Growth 134 Humanizing Effectively 137 Chapter 9 Connecting Your Customer with Your Cause 141 Embracing Corporate Social Responsibility 142 Shifting from Brand Identity to Social Cause 145 Authentic and Proactive Leadership 148 Engaging and Inspiring the Community 149 Committing to the Cause 151 Chapter 10 Looking to the Future 155 Innovation with a Large I 156 Predictions Sometimes Miss the Mark 157 Emerging Experience Trends 160 AI- Enabled Conversational Interfaces 161 Augmented Reality 166 The Metaverse and NFTs 169 Chapter 11 Where You Should Begin 179 Three Approaches to Assessments 179 Three Prerequisites for Assessments 181 Three Areas of Assessments 182 Agile Experience Innovation 184 Notes 187 About the Author 197 Index 199