Brand experience that connects, converts, and scales in the age of AI

Successful brands are good at making you think about them, and what they can do for you. 

When you think of Docusign, you think of signing secure online contracts. When you think of Audible, you think of audiobooks. And when you think of Kraft Heinz, you think of ketchup.

That’s because these brands work hard to distinguish themselves from their competitors. They achieve that distinction by building relationships with customers; relationships shaped by the branded content experiences they provide, and strengthened by technical innovations, such as generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

Research supports the commercial value of brand experience. In fact, almost 90% of customers feel the experiences organizations provide are as important as their products and services, and that “trusting” a brand is as important as “price and quality.” Experience is the frame through which customers explore and understand their relationship with brands, and how brands make themselves seen and heard in crowded, competitive markets. 

In this post, we’re going to explore the meaning of “brand experience” in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). We’ll discuss how content teams shape brand experiences, the key challenges of that process, and how the right content platform can help brands manage all that at scale. 

What is brand experience?

Brand experience refers, specifically, to every interaction that customers have with a brand, across all channels and touchpoints, over the course of their customer journey. 

Nowadays, that means that it includes research in AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and so on, before customers land on an official brand site or store (or any other channel). 

Let’s explore the impact of AI a little further.  

Changing expectations

Forrester found that 95% of B2B buyers plan on using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in their buying process this year. With that in mind, large language model (LLM) answer engines have become gatekeepers of brand experience and brand perception, with users expecting direct answers and personalized recommendations when interacting with a brand. 

That expectation is shaping emerging disciplines at the center of brand experience: answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO).

Before, during, after

Given the AI-factor, and the way it shapes customer expectations, it’s important to point out that brand experience isn’t merely the act of purchasing a product or service. It’s also the thoughts and feelings about that brand that manifest for the customer before, during and after their purchase.

It’s seeing an ad for the shoe brand On, for example, which prompts you to search for “the best running shoe,” then discovering an On product in the results, and eventually landing on the On website to place an order. After ordering, the brand experience continues while you wait for your purchase via updates over various channels, like email and SMS. Finally, you receive and unbox the shoes from their beautifully branded packaging.  

That experience takes in a huge range of elements: content, design, usability, service, and more, all of which are connected and activated by the brand itself.

Omnichannel scope

Brand experience isn’t limited to the digital content assets that customers encounter on websites or in apps. 

Customers experience brands in an omnichannel context, which includes walking through brick-and-mortar stores or offices, opening packaging (the “unboxing” we mentioned earlier), having in-person conversations with sales staff, calling customer support over the phone, and so on.

Why does brand experience matter?

Brands like their customers to think about them, but, more specifically, think about them over other brands in the same marketplace. 

That means, the better optimized the brand experience, the more likely it is that customers will regard it more positively than its competitors, engage with it, and return in the future. 

In that sense, brand experience is as much an exercise in storytelling as it is engagement. 

That’s why the connection between “before, during, and after” is so important: Customers need to be able to connect moments of brand experience to each other across the customer journey. Those moments define the story the brand tells about itself, shaping its identity and voice, and distinguishing it from competitors in the same commercial space. 

They also contribute to the “answer-readiness” of the experience, which reflects the marketing team’s ability to deliver accurate, timely messaging aligned with customers’ needs at any point in the journey. The more answer-ready the brand experience, the more likely it is that customers will be engaged with content and convert. 

When brands don’t consider brand experience, and don’t work on optimizing it as part of the customer journey, they risk undermining engagement, which can quickly lead to:

• Loss of trust: When experiences don’t match the claims brands make about themselves, customers lose trust and may view competitors as more reliable or more credible.  

• Falling conversions: Inconsistent or poor brand experiences make it less likely that customers will convert and, ultimately, make purchases. 

• Poor discoverability: Brands that don’t offer customers answer-ready experiences cede ground to competitors that do, and become less visible to their target customers. 

• Lost business: Poor brand experiences give customers no reason to purchase products, no reason to return, and no reason to recommend the brand to others. 

User experiences vs. brand experience

Let’s make a quick distinction between brand experience and user experience (which is sometimes referred to as customer experience). 

While the terms are used in proximity, user or customer experience refers to the functional interactions that users have with content on a site or app (or other touchpoint). That covers, for example, how they move from landing page to product page, add items to their shopping basket, navigate the payment process, leave feedback, and so on. 

Brand experiences refer to customers’ responses to those interactions and how they affect the ongoing relationship with the brand. While the functionality of a site or app is still relevant here, brand experience might also include the tone of voice the brand uses in its copy, the color scheme it uses across its design elements, or the kind of personalized product recommendations that the user gets every time they visit its website or app. 

That being the case, all user experiences are (typically) also brand experiences, but not all brand experiences are (necessarily) user experiences. 

Brand experience challenges

Brand experience isn’t always easy to define and integrate as part of the content offering. Some of the key challenges to brand experience optimization include:

Legacy content management systems 

Most legacy content management systems (CMSes) tightly couple backend code with frontend presentation, which not only makes it difficult for content teams to create content experiences autonomously, but also makes it less likely that LLMs will feature them in their outputs.  

Manual workflows

Content workflows that require manual intervention from team members often slow progress and increase time-to-market. Most brands need to work fast to address emerging challenges or to capitalize on market opportunities, which means manual slowdown can quickly translate to poor user experience. 

Global footprint

Organizations that own multiple brands may encounter brand experience friction because they have to deliver content to audiences in multiple regions, often in different languages. In these contexts, it becomes more difficult to empower local content teams to work autonomously and in alignment with the expectations of their audiences, while maintaining overall consistency of voice and messaging.  

Scaling experiences

Growing organizations add new capabilities and channels to their digital ecosystem constantly, and brand experiences need to scale to keep pace with that growth. But adapting to the challenges of growth isn’t always easy, or smooth, or cheap, especially for brands that are working with inflexible legacy content platforms that don’t prioritize the frontend independence of content teams. 

Optimizing brand experiences with Contentful 

Creating unique, engaging brand experiences and maintaining their quality over time requires brands to put a strong creative team together, backed by skilled developers and engineers, and supported by the right tech. 

Maybe you’re planning on launching a mobile app and need it to embody your brand’s existing voice and message. Maybe you’re expanding into a new territory and need to start translating your carefully cultivated content experiences into multiple languages. Maybe you’re launching a new product line and need to make sure it’s aligned with brand values. 

Whatever the nature of that challenge, the good news is that Contentful makes brand experience easier. 

Let’s find out how. 

Structured content

By breaking content down into its smallest structural components, such as header, image, text, and so on, Contentful builds flexibility into every single piece of content. That modular approach to content makes it possible for brands to build and shape experiences down to the smallest detail, and adjust and scale those experiences with precision. It tremendously helps with AEO, GEO, and traditional SEO readiness.  

AI automations

Contentful frees creative team members from the limitations of manual content management by building AI automation into their workflows. AI Actions offers automated efficiency for every stage of the content workflow, from instant tagging to text rewrites, helping marketers reduce time-to-market, control their brand voice with greater precision, and focus on making experiences answer-ready for the age of AI. 

Omnichannel scope

Powered by a network of application programming interfaces (APIs) Contentful makes omnichannel brand experiences possible, with centralized content storage that updates across all touchpoints whenever you make a change. That means that a customer could start their journey on desktop, switch to mobile to make their purchase, and then track their order across multiple devices without missing a beat. 

Workflow agility

Contentful facilitates agile workflows, which means developers can adjust the capabilities of the platform quickly and easily without disruption to wider services or system downtime. That agility and flexibility also means that non-technical teams can connect and collaborate on new content and campaigns without the need for constant developer support.

Personalization and localization

Brand experience is often contingent on delivering personalized content. We’ve supercharged that process with Contentful Personalization, which harnesses customer data seamlessly to streamline the personalization process at scale, with the simple click of a button. Features include automated audience segmentation, no code A/B testing, translation and localization, and content suggestions.  

Wrapping up

Creating a distinctive brand experience can seem daunting because there’s no faking it. 

Your content teams need to build authentic relationships with your customers through genuinely engaging content, over the course of weeks, months, and years. 

But you can stay ahead of the curve by choosing the right digital experience platform to power your brand experiences. Contentful provides the freedom and flexibility you need for that task, putting powerful content management tools at the fingertips of your marketers and editors, including game-changing AI automation, and empowering those team members to change, shape, and scale your brand experiences whenever and however you need to. 

You can take a tour of the Contentful Platform today to find out how it elevates your brand experience in the age of AI: Browse our full range of AI Actions, explore our latest features and releases, or check in with the sales team to arrange a demo. 

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