If you want to grow your brand, the experience is the x-factor

Each year, the FutureBrand Index studies the top 100 companies in the world by market capitalisation to understand the correlation between brand perceptions and financial performance. 

The total market capitalisation of the top 100 is a staggering $30,869bn, comprising big businesses ranging from Alibaba to Walt Disney and employing millions of people. That might feel a world apart from the 99,000 small businesses in Australia that count their employees in the tens rather than the tens of thousands, but there’s actually a lot to be learned if you know where to look.

This year’s FutureBrand Index once again proves the point that when you strengthen the connection between your brand’s purpose and the everyday experience, your brand gives your business a competitive advantage.

In other words, you do what you say you’re going to do.

It sounds simple, but all too often brands fall into the ‘Purpose Void’, a place where an ever more informed and enquiring public relegates organisations which fail to practise what they preach. When you look into the void, you’ll find brands aplenty, big and small.

So, how to avoid the void?

1. Let your customers experience your brand

If you’re a small business, you can start by recognising that your brand is not some abstract, intangible, almost ethereal concept. On the contrary, it is very tangible and real: you can buy it, sell it, eat it, work for it, even walk inside of it and experience it, each and every day.

Once you make that realisation, you can take a practical approach to managing your brand. To get started, you don’t need a huge brand team or marketing department, you simply need to focus squarely on what it is that gives purpose to your brand, and to let that focus inform and inspire everything you do so that your customers experience your brand for real.

If your brand is here to offer your customers something simpler, then look for ways to simplify the service experience, for example by offering a call-back option. Or, if your brand is all about a smarter technology, then you could identify opportunities to add value to the purchase process, for example by offering complementary training.

After all – no matter how big or small your business might be – your brand is what your brand does. 

2. Even big brands start small

Signature moments have a pivotal role to play in turning your brand’s strategy into your customers’ reality, but this year’s FutureBrand Index reveals it is equally important simply to get the basics right and do the little things well.

In fact, I’d go one step further and say that it’s often the little things that make the biggest difference. Especially when you focus on them relentlessly and deliver them consistently, and at a time when trust and truth in our society seem to be at an all-time low.

Just as Amazon provides a reliable service to customers and a broad range of products at affordable prices – nothing more, nothing less – it’s their relentless pursuit of delivering this experience that makes them tick.

If you want to strengthen the connection between your brand’s purpose and the everyday experience, the insider tip for small businesses is the word ‘everyday’. You don’t need to think big, think small, start today, and do it every day.

3. Give your brand to your people

In this year’s FutureBrand Index, the Five Big Brand Priorities in 2023 include what is termed ‘Internal Comprehension’.

It’s easy to overlook but it could well be the single most important insight and a game-changer for any business of any size or scale. Because if your own people don’t believe in your brand, what makes you think your customers will?

If you have a marketing team of two in a business of two hundred, you can expand your reach and impact one hundredfold simply by giving your brand to all your people and equipping them with the right tools or training. That might be key messages for sales calls, for example, or product demos delivered with a flavour of the brand’s personality.

If you want to grow your brand, the experience is the exponential factor.

Your brand is real. It lives and breathes in everyday things done well, every day. And, it thrives when you put it in the hands of every one of your people.