WHAT EXACTLY IS DIGITAL BRANDING?

Digital branding is about establishing your brand’s story and presence in the digital space. Digital branding is the key to establishing a meaningful connection with your target audience. It’s generally referred to as a strong, sustainable and high-level Online Marketing Strategy, used to build, grow and influence a brand and also create a perception of your business or products and services.

Growing brand awareness is a measure of how well-known and popular is your brand among your target-audience in the marketplace. In the Digital era, it becomes easier to sustain it over a longer period provided the right Digital Branding strategy is adopted and followed.

Through greater engagement and distribution of Digital Content via Digital Platforms of different kinds, better and healthier brand awareness can be generated and sustained to build a permanent connect between your brand / product and your target audience.

Digital Marketing vs. Digital Branding  

The two terms digital marketing and digital branding are used interchangeably, but are quite different from one another. Digital marketing is more about pushing a certain product or service based on how good it is, whereas digital branding is a little subtler than that. Instead of focusing on one particular product, digital branding highlights more the underlying values of the company.  

Branding will remain in place long after any product has been replaced or discontinued. It’s what sticks in a customer’s mind once they’ve made their purchase and it is the first thing they think of when they need your service again. While digital marketing is fantastic at getting one-time buyers, branding is better at building lifelong relationships between businesses and customers.

Brand Strategy

Your brand is more than your logo, name or slogan. It is  the entire experience your prospects and customers have with your company, product or service. 

Your brand strategy defines what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey. And while it includes your logo, color palette and slogan, those are only creative elements that convey your brand. Instead, your brand lives in every day-to-day interaction you have with your market:

• The images you convey
• The messages you deliver on your website, proposals and campaigns
• The way your employees interact with customers
• A customer’s opinion of you versus your competition

You can impact your audience’s perception of your business by creating a winning brand strategy. A brand strategy is a long-term plan to achieve specific goals for developing a brand.

Communicating Your Brand

All avenues of communication should remain consistent with your brand’s identity and have specific goals. The following strategies can help with changing the way people perceive and interact with your brand.https://www.learnafrica.co.ke/management-consultants-kenya/#1529481997949-9a23dd1e-4688

1. 1. Appeal to Your Customers Emotionally:

This strategy reflects people’s need to feel closely connected to others. Brands can achieve this by finding a way to make their customers feel like they’re part of a family. Emotional triggers help strengthen this type of relationship.

2. Perform Research on How Your Brand Is Being Received:

Helps you determine what your audience thinks about your brand, and it can help you see how your audience is responding to your media and messaging. Getting an early gauge on how customers feel about the tangibles and intangibles for your brand is essential. It can be extremely difficult to overturn these impressions when your brand is more established.

3. Create Buyer Personas:

Buyers help to understand and create messaging for your core customer groups. They are also valuable for launching targeted marketing efforts that differ based on particular segments of your audience.

4. Develop Creative Brand Assets:

Distinctive brand assets help your audience relate to and identify your brand. Keep all images and messaging across all communication platforms consistent to your brand’s identity. This will help audience form an opinion of your brand’s personality, values and purpose.

Benefits of Digital Branding

Digital Branding can bring new life into your business, but needs to be supplemented by a focused strategy, creative vision and a lot of mature thought. If all of these fall into place, then the benefits can be immense.

• The Identity Stay Intact

It keeps your business relevant to today’s times, successful and effective that is in tune with modern advances. A constant successful brand can be just the right tonic for the products and services of your business to stay relevant and to the attention of the modern customer.

• Differentiate from Competitors

Good Digital Branding can work wonders by offering great focus and help to distinguish your business from competitors, with more clarity. Consumer’s impression is what counts and Digital Branding can assist your business by bringing together all of its strengths and successes to light, ahead of your competitors.

• Visual Interactivity

 With Digital Branding, brands have begun to embrace a more engaging approach to attract customers, resulting in greater interactivity and greater engagements. Further, there is also the benefit of making the right choice of the right Digital Channel to induce better connectivity with the audience. For instance, hosting of a Live-Video on Facebook or You Tube and responding to comments.

• Virality:

That is going viral, but what often happens is that ‘Going Viral’ has resulted in more misuse and more damage. Digital Branding can assist by ensuring that the engagement push is facilitated by choices of speed through Shares, Clicks, Feedback, and so on. This allows customers to make quicker decisions.

• Cohesive  Multi channels

It allows businesses to converge on different online platforms from Social Media to Online Advertisements, Chat Applications, and more, with different display mediums. The ultimate benefit to your business from this is that a single message can be sent across but customized to every customer.

• Greater Connect

Digital branding facilitates greater connect with target-audiences, old and new alike. This implies that the brand values, and preferences will still remain fully relevant and in line with older as well as younger population.

Other Benefits

1. BRAND PRIDE: A creatively designed Logo projects the right identity and creates the right brand image
2. BRAND VISIBILITY: The greater the brand visibility, the more successful your business image will become. Better brand visibility however comes with better ‘Look and Feel’ of your brand identity, which eventually plays a critical role in customer’s decision making.
3. BRAND CREDIBILITY: Digital Technology ensures that your brand can send across a strong visual message in a professional style, facilitating greater digital communication and interaction.
4. BRAND RETENTION: Generally, most people tend to remember a brand that has a consistent visual identity. Digital branding ensures that your brand retains its appeal well-beyond a time-frame while leaving behind a lasting impression in the minds of existing and potential clients.
5. BRAND STABILITY: Digital Branding ensures greater and longer stability, providing immense value for your investment.