What is branding?
Branding is a process through which a business tells its target audience what its company is all about. It is a creative and strategic process that explains what the company stands for and why it can make a positive difference in the lives of its customers. Branding helps convince the customers why they should buy from your business.
In brief, branding is all about reflecting what your business does and how it does so in a memorable fashion. Successful branding allows customers to recall your business every time they come in contact with any component of its prescience such as its logo. If you want professional help in devising a sound digital branding strategy then you may contact a top-notch digital branding agency.
Importance of digital branding strategy
A business needs to have a brand, or it would be similar to a human being with life but no personality. Without branding, a business or a company will exhibit a lifeless sight, which is something consumers will not find attractive. People only trust a brand and move ahead to build a relationship with it if the brand can build a positive image of your business.
According to research, more than 80% of consumers regard trust as the leading factor which helps determine their decision to buy a product. If a business successfully displays brand consistency across all its platforms, then one-third of the customers tend to stay loyal, while more than a quarter will be ready to advocate for the brand.
Businesses that successfully develop and implement a brand-building plan gain many competitive advantages. Some of these are:
- A remarkable increase in company value
- Boost in sales volume
- Enhanced sense of perceived brand quality among the target audience
- And decrease in employee turnover
The seven essential components of digital branding strategy
To create and implement a digital branding strategy that works for your business, this blog will discuss seven components of digital branding that you must focus upon.
Create a memorable Logo that engages with the target audience
A logo is a visual representation of your brand. It takes a mere glance at your logo and less than a second for customers to decide whether your brand is professional or not.
There is a strong need to focus on creating a logo that serves to reflect the personality and values that your business holds. While creating a logo, keep in mind the industry your business operates in and the target audience. The right logo design helps make your business memorable and people will be able to recall your business upon seeing the logo.
Design the logo keeping in mind all sizes of your brand materials as the logo must fit on letterheads and business cards. The logo must also fit well on email headers, cover photos, profile pictures, and app buttons.
So start by making a logo that is consistent across all formats. Remember to keep the logo simple and not end up making one with a complicated design. To impress your target audience, you need to attract the attention of the audience within a second through your logo. Hence, the first impression must be persuasive and attention-grabbing.
To create a stunning logo design that gives your business a professional and credible look, you may hire a logo designing agency to help you craft a logo that sells.
Make sure your Website runs flawlessly
The logo helps introduces your business to potential customers while your business website gives them all the information they need about your business. Convey all information about your business from its working hours to product listings and contact information to the customers through your website. Customers will not be seeking this information through a phonebook but will expect to find all the necessary information on your website.
So what do you do to ensure your website persuades the visitors to make a purchase decision? A first, you need to provide information through your website quickly and easily. The next important thing is to ensure your website is simple and easy to navigate.
You can also make an impression by streamlining design. Ensure consistency throughout your website by matching its color with that of your logo.
Another important step is to highlight your brand name and other essential details by using bold fonts. All pages including the landing pages must be simple and concise. The link to the different pages on your website must be easy to navigate so that the visitors and search engines can easily locate it. The content you publish must also be indexable by the Google algorithms.
By having a flawless website running, the chances of conversion and hence sales increase to a great extent. If your website malfunctions or if the information is in a disarray, the visitors will quickly leave your website, thereby increasing the bounce rate. It will negatively impact your search engine rankings. Why would visitors stay on a website that takes a long time to load when there are so many other options available at their disposal.
Send out a clear brand message
The brand message is different from the other messages that you send to your potential customers. The brand message must at all costs be reminiscent of what your company stands for and believes. It needs to speak to its potential customers and address their needs and desires.
To make it easier for your understanding, a brand message must cover three important aspects. First and foremost, it must reflect what your business does. Next, it must reflect what your business stands for in the market. Third, it needs to explain to potential customers why your business matters to them.
The brand message must adequately explain why your business is better than its competitors. The tone of voice you utilize must be in harmony with your business and the products or services it offers. Always sound professional by either being playful or fashionable or simply professional as per the products you sell. Don’t delve into unnecessary details and only focus on offering solutions to customers’ needs with a tone of positivity.
Another point worth implementing is that your message must be consistent across all platforms. It needs to give the same message everywhere. The text that you publish online must match with what your website displays and what your customer support staff talks about with potential customers.
Always design your website with SEO in mind
How do you ensure that your website is accessible to a wide audience? The answer is simple – Search Engine Optimization. SEO plays an important role in the success of a business as it paves the way for your brand to be easily found on the top results of search engines.
Search engines such as Google are one of the most important avenues through which customers look for products and services. Hence, always design a website keeping SEO in mind.
For the best results, you may hire an SEO expert to help your website gain higher rankings on the search engine results page or simply opt for an agency. The right agency will carry out the necessary keyword research to identify the frequently searched words. It will create and implement a content marketing strategy with strategic placement of keywords in the content so that the content is optimized for all search engines.
An agency will also include an appropriate number of active links in your content, both on your website’s internal and external pages. This will allow your website to appear higher on the search engine results page.
Do not ignore the SEO aspect of your website as it will be competing with thousands of other websites.
Advertise your products or services through effective content marketing
You need to utilize different online channels to advertise the products or services you are offering in the market. Businesses that have a strong loyal customer base are always successful in making high volumes of sales. The key to building a loyal customer base is engagement. Engagement is crucial as it allows your brand to build trust and convince potential customers to do business with your company.
Engagement and a strong rapport can be easily built with effective content marketing. Content marketing helps a business engage with its target audience through blog posts, photos, and even videos. Content marketing if undertaken successfully helps stimulate the interest of the potential customers in your brand. It plays a vital role in persuading them to form a lasting and productive relationship with your business.
Content marketing has the power to engage and then keep the customers interested in your brand. This will eventually result in these customers becoming loyal customers who will keep coming back to your company for business again and again.
A logo designing agency will help you create posts and images that match with your business logo. You may then use these them in your content marketing strategy.
Become active on social media
Almost everyone from youngsters to old people is active on social media. Since your potential customers are most likely to be present on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, your brand should be present on these sites.
However, it is imperative that you design your approach towards your customers on different social media websites keeping in mind the platform. Here are a few tips on how to reach out to potential customers on different social media websites.
Snapchat – Post content that reflects the fun and lively feelings since most of the users belong to the younger generation.
Instagram – Use image-driven posts to win likes and comments.
Twitter – Post in real-time and as per the current events and news.
Facebook – This platform encompasses different spheres of life and people of all ages. Hence, it would be safe to suggest that it has little of everything. Create the content on the same footing as the platform to demonstrate how your brand works for the customers.
Think like an influencer when creating social media posts
Start by thinking like an influencer. Schedule your posts for specific dates and times. The posts should engage with commenters. It will do your brand a great deal of good if you respond to direct messages. There are many tools available online that streamline all your social media channels.
Through Google analytics, your business can gain insights into the customers’ actions. You can also use social media platforms to sell your products. For this purpose, tools such as Shopify will come in handy by linking your potential customers with your website’s shopping cart.
Make full use of Email marketing to drive sales and increase the exposure of your brand
We just discussed the benefits of reaching out to customers on social media. However, there would be some potential customers who stay away from social media. So how do you reach out to them?
Online mails are the perfect way to extend your outreach to users who shy away from social media. You need to make a start by compiling an email list of potential customers who are potential leads and will likely visit your website and become your subscribers.
Employ signups from an advertisement or collect a list directly from your website. Brands also find it helpful to include a popup accompanied by newsletter signup on the landing pages.
Once you have a group of subscribers, write to them in a lively and engaged tone that reflects your brand. Make use of photos, videos, and other information that customers would find helpful. The idea is to not only sell your products but also to engage your customers.
If you want a comprehensive plan to increase your subscribers from the related target audience and also implement email segmentation, then contact a top digital branding agency.
How to improve your digital brand strategy further?
Here are a few more tips you can follow to devise the perfect digital brand strategy that works.
- Before you even launch your business in the market, first decide what is your brand’s mission and vision
- Identify your target audience
- Recognize and gain more knowledge about your sales funnel
- Utilize all market opportunities and focus on competitive positioning
- Your brand needs to have a cohesive design to prosper
- Create and publish quality content on all platforms
- Perform brand audits regularly to ensure improvement
Bottom line
In the end, a digital branding strategy is not only about selling your products or services. It is meant to help businesses stay ahead of the competition by building a loyal customer base. A loyal customer base is most important for a brand as not only are they repeat customers, but these are also the people who trust your brand and would recommend your products or services to others.
Moving forward, implement all these components of digital branding strategy and keep them fresh and authentic. By following this strategy, your brand will prosper and gain a competitive edge which is necessary to survive in a highly competitive environment in the market.
