A brand experience doesn't just communicate, it connects and leaves you with a feeling. A great brand experience leaves you wanting more. Brand and branding are two different things. Branding is the look and feel of a brand. A brand encompasses a company's core values, mission, vision and the people behind the brand that bring it to life in an inspirational and human way.

To leverage the brand experience and create lasting relationships, marketers must ensure 360 execution, activating across every consumer touchpoint. Not only must it be consistent, everything needs to work together seamlessly so that the guest craves the unique brand experience again and again.

The top five channels for digital marketing are email, social, display + retargeting, mobile and search. There’s a reason why they're the best: they work. I know, I've seen each of them move the needle for the brands I've worked with, whether it was segmenting a database of 5 million to send targeted emails, engaging users through retargeting ads on social, or creating content strategies based on search queries, trends and thought leadership in order to rank in search results.

Individually, these channels create pathways for users to reach and connect with brands. Successful digital marketers will ensure all channels work together to create an ecosystem of benefits to increase brand awareness, improve engagement and generate revenue.

Like all marketing initiatives, I recommend taking a strategic approach with social media. There are now more than 3 billion people around the world using social media. Oversaturation paired with shorter attention spans means branded content needs to stand out now more than ever in order to cut through the clutter. Rising advertising costs and the current pay to play landscape is forcing marketers to be smarter with how they spend their time and budget on social platforms.

To ensure organizations reach and meaningfully connect with users, there must be sharp focus on audience, social content and customer service — the success of which relies on timeliness, quality and being memorable. All paid media must be targeted and expertly managed in order to be effective. And, as with everything digital, measuring the impact of social efforts and optimizing is crucial to achieving objectives.

I choose to work in travel and tourism because I have a deep love for exploring new lands, meeting and connecting with people of different cultures and sharing those adventures with those around me. I spent nearly eight years working in hospitality before stepping into my marketing career. I'm passionate about designing unique experiences for others to enjoy — that is my approach to marketing in travel and tourism. My goal is to create an exclusive brand ecosystem that can be experienced both online and in real life. My objective for those interactions is to connect the brand and consumer and form a lasting relationship.