Every business wants a digital brand they can be proud of, something that exemplifies their story, maximizes their image and promotes the quality of their organization across all channels.
In order to achieve this, business owners must invest time into creating a brand that will build a loyal customer base on the web.
But how do you go about doing that?
One of the greatest influencers of a brand is the design of the website itself.
First impressions are everything in the digital world, so having an appealing design for your brand is crucial.
Your image design should be consistently portrayed across your site, social media, and your physical properties such as vehicle wraps, brochures and buinsess cards .
Use a similar color palette throughout your brand elements and website to more clearly differentiate who you are vs. you competition.
If marketers strategically integrate the brand design into your product or service, the design will begin to evoke consumer's emotions and perceptions when interacting with your product or service.
Personifying a brand can help consumers connect to it. It is important to define your brand’s personality early on, and maintain that persona throughout the lifetime of your business.
Business owners often mimic their own voice and personality when speaking for their brand because consumers prefer to feel connected with other individuals.
Humanizing your brand is beneficial, but be sure you can differentiate between your voice and the personality of your brand.
Some business owners find that the easiest way to start this process is by listing the personality traits the brand will have.
For example, if it was a person, what sort of qualities would it possess?
This may seem silly, but it is important to answer these questions from the beginning.
That way, when someone is engaging with your brand via social media, email, or any other platform, you will be relaying a particular message in a consistent tone.
No matter how many various conversations you have with past, present and potential customers, it is important to always convey the same ideas, values and concepts throughout your different conversations.
Overall, maintaining a consistent dialogue and attitude that your customers can come to expect and appreciate will help place your company firmly in their minds. When they know what to expect they know why they need you.
It is crucial to know who you are selling to because if you are targeting too broad of an audience you will most likely end up selling nothing.
Many businesses make this mistake, so we want to help you not be one of them.
A target market can usually be defined by age, gender, geography, and socio-economic status. Figure out who you are targeting and devote your time to creating a branding strategy that exclusively appeals to them.
Selecting a target market is only half the battle, you also have to know what your customers truly want and provide that product or service for them.
Companies spend months preparing a product for launch only to find out that their customers have no desire for the product, or their customers use the product in another way than was originally intended.
Therefore, once you have found a target market, focus on understanding their needs.
Acknowledge how the customers are interacting with your brand and what you are selling.
From this point, you can proceed to build a larger customer base and grow increasingly successful.
When it comes to a successful marketing tactic, it is much more important to listen, than to talk.
That is why traditional marketing is dying, and content based inbound marketing is what works.
Some customers will find your business and actively engage with it online.
Customers creating a dialogue on a public profile can be great advertising and endorsement for your brand, if the content is positive.
However, negative content can also be salvaged and turned into a positive for your brand, if handled correctly.
If someone posts something negative about your business, or a bad review of your product or service, publicly acknowledge their complaint and offer a satisfactory solution.
If your brand shows that it is not afraid to acknowledge its mistakes, and promises to always make it right, this can actually build more trust with your customers.
Digital branding has a lot to do with content creation.
I understand, that constantly creating new and relevant content can be a challenge, but thankfully, if you listen to customers and monitor social media sites, you may get some help coming up with content.
Answer these in blog form, or create website pages focusing on these content areas.
You can also "share" content that was created by others on social media to produce new content for engagement.
The key is making the most of your time and constantly producing new content, even if you aren't always the one creating it.
Sharing content from around the web is an easy way to get your customers and potential customers engaged, but it is always better for on page SEO to create and distribute completely original content.
No one social media platform, website, or blog is the end all be all for your brand.
Putting all of your eggs in one basket probably isn't the best strategy, but researching using demographics and personality profiling can help you find the platforms that your potential customers are on.
One of the most common questions business owners have is, what is the very best site for building their brand. Unfortunately, there is not one single answer.
This all depends on the demographics and overall type of customer you are trying to target, which ultimately depends on what you are trying to sell.
So a good rule of thumb is to go where your customers are. If they are on Facebook, then focus on Facebook.
Wherever your customer is, you should be there too.
Learn more successful strategies to grow your brand and increase customer retention by talking with one of our digital marketing superstars.
Don't worry, the call is Free and so is our dorky humor:) !