Any successful digital campaign is built on a mastery of the details. From the moment your customer arrives, you need to provide a memorable, curated experience that makes a lasting impression.

Does that button behave correctly when it’s clicked? What about the visuals, are they consistent with your brand, what you’re selling, or what it promises to deliver? Is your campaign showing so much detail that it may spoil surprises for your customer? Or, are you not sharing enough to build anticipation for what you have to offer?

When everything comes together, your concept, trailer, and landing page combine to generate excitement and create a new fan. Then, your customer goes to Walmart, where your curated user experience is presented like a pallet of athletic socks.

As long as they still make a purchase, who cares? But allowing a disconnect between the customer experience of your site and retail needlessly places your sales at risk. To see the results your brand needs, you can’t ignore any aspect of your customer's experience.

Your customer’s retail experience should align with your brand’s story

The digital and retail sides of your business likely occupy different worlds with separate teams and goals. Your digital team wants a high-touch, curated website experience that’s consistent with your brand’s story. At the same time, your retail team wants as many sales as possible generated at the lowest cost.

Retail and digital may have different goals, but in the minds of your customer, these teams are all the same thing. To create a cohesive experience, you need to bring both teams into alignment for a more effective campaign.

For entertainment brands, physical stores like Costco and Best Buy offer limited options as compared with other industries. End rows and bulkheads provide options to create a bespoke display, which are useful to counteract the otherwise stark interiors of these stores.

How entertainment brands can control the last stage of the customer journey

With the dominance of platform-specific app stores like those tied with Sony and Google, entertainment brands claim few areas under their control. But just as studios have started creating independent streaming platforms, brands are also exploring new options.

In 2020, a leading gaming company set up branded kiosks at select airports to promote its new console. Rather than relying on a store to provide a product demo, the brand brought the console to customers. Better still, the brand’s “retailtainment” presentation encouraged customers who may not have otherwise played to give the console a try.

As brands take greater control over retail experiences, you can expect more experiential, offline promotions to appear. Aligning every aspect of the customer experience creates a more consistent experience with your brand and the story it hopes to tell.

Curated digital experiences leave retail feeling stale

As digital experiences advance, the cracks in conventional retail experiences grow more obvious to customers. Your new product’s site has the capacity to reveal a vast database of knowledge leading up to a purchase. However, once customers reach a comparatively bare-bones retail environment, they lose connection to your brand’s message.

Digital offers a personal touch that’s not only consistent with your brand, it’s consistent with your customer’s interests. Personalization allows your customer to quickly find the information they need based on user habits or their online profile.

Once customers leave your site to make a purchase, they’re effectively starting all over again. No wonder retail customers still consult the web on their phones to address lingering questions rather than relying on the store.

Retail doesn’t have to be perfectly aligned with digital, but it should recall the experience that brought your customer to the store. Whether you arrange for a custom display to reflect your website’s visuals or ensure the store can replicate the site’s educational components, you need to connect the digital and retail presentations.

Retaining consistency in retail environments is costly and complicated

Securing an endcap or physical display in stores is one way to bridge the gap between your brand’s digital and retail experiences. But websites are by nature dynamic and easier to update. Retail signage and branded elements are expensive to both create and replace. As a result, the experience often feels out-of-date in big box stores outside of your brand’s control as compared with your digital presentation.

Automakers face similar hurdles to yours when trying to align their digital presentation with the in-person, retail experience. A website is capable of showcasing their vehicles in wild environments where they climb boulders and splash through streams on their way to magnificent vistas. But once consumers try and make a purchase, they encounter the same showrooms that have defined the experience for decades.

By contrast, Tesla has created an experience consistent with the brand’s future-focused identity. Rather than spending hours on paperwork and haggling to finally make a purchase, customers are notified when the car chosen on the site is ready at the dealership.

Upon arrival, buyers are presented with paperwork in their new car, the license plates are attached, and they drive away. From start to finish, Tesla provides a cohesive brand experience that’s consistent with their identity.

Retail creates a personal connection beyond the reach of digital

As customers return to in-person shopping, their expectations are greater after browsing the web and interacting with your brand’s campaign. More and more, people are paying for the experience of making a purchase as much as the product itself.

Brands such as Tesla and Apple form strong bonds with customers that are informed in part by providing high-touch, holistic experiences. Your digital team may be able to control your brand’s story through every step of your marketing funnel. However, the ability to deliver a personalized touch even at the point of sale drives brand loyalty.

Building brick-and-mortar storefronts in every city to reflect the ideals of your brand may not be feasible. However, it’s worth asking how your brand can offer an experience that’s more personal and aligned with your digital presentation.

To stand out in the marketplace, you need to break down the silos separating your retail, app, and digital teams so everyone is working to create a cohesive experience. Your brand could also look toward creating a new, cross-functional role to oversee a unified customer journey, such as a Chief Experience Officer.

In addition, your brand should ensure it’s working with an agency that thinks about creating a unified multichannel experience. When you’re trying to connect with customers, connecting the dots between all the extensions of your brand delivers an experience that’s built to last.