Have you ever woken up in a hotel room in a strange city and couldn't figure out where you were? That feeling of disorientation is common to those of us who received classic training in the art of marketing. Here we were, going along with our messaging matrices, marketing mixes, communication strategies and media plans when--Pow!--Web 2.0 and social media came along and changed the landscape, practically overnight.

Suddenly, traditional approaches to branding and marketing aren't as effective. People aren't looking for products anymore; they are seeking experiences, ways to engage and be engaged with, to be heard. This changes the marketing game from a one-way dissemination of information to a multi-directional dialogue that seeks to build relationships--where sales may be one outcome, but certainly not the only one.

In this confusing world, your brand is more important than ever. That's because the best brands already know they deliver a unique customer experience, which is what customers are looking for. The good news is that there are many more ways to engage with customers and prospects (and their social networks) online. The not-so-good news is that you have to manage your brand even more carefully as a result. It's now about building an online experience that supports your offline brand efforts while creating an environment for ongoing listening, conversation and engagement with your audiences.

The place to start is with your website. Make it the online hub for your brand because, after all, it's now your front door. Everything you do online--advertising, e-mail marketing, social networking, social media engagement--should include the call to action to go to your website so you can control the experience and move visitors up the engagement scale. Once the visitors arrive, you need to pay off the promise. To do this, you must stop looking at your website as an online brochure and start looking at it as an experience you want people to have with you, your products, your people--your brand. What do you want them to do when they are there? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to say to their friends about it?

Developing an online experience that engages and builds relationships starts with a well-informed strategy. First, you need to understand your users and the value you bring to them. One part is knowing who they are, what their goals are, what motivates them, what needs they have and how they behave online. The other part is really understanding why they would choose you--what do they truly value about you? When you understand these things implicitly, you can map out what kind of experience they want to have with you online and then design toward it.

We call this "experience mapping." It looks at each of your unique user groups and maps out where they are online (what sites, what search engines, what social networks, etc.), what paths they would take to get to your site, what they would do there and the choices they would make as they navigate through the site. This is a key step in developing your strategy because it points to all of the important components of online experience design: your social media presence, your online marketing presence, your keyword buys and your website. Someone who has done this step many times will be able to create an experience map quickly; but you can do it yourself if you understand your audiences well.

Your online strategy helps to inform the navigation style you choose, your content strategy, the language you use on your site, the design aesthetic you employ, the interactive features and more. When you design with your users and their needs and values in mind, your online brand becomes a destination and a useful tool in their lives--just where you want to be to build strong relationships with them, the kind that drive sales over the long term.

Experiences are what make brands. That doesn't change whether you are providing that experience on the phone, in your store, on your website or via Facebook. The more seamless you make that experience, the stronger your relationships will be.