3.8 million Google searches are conducted each minute and a major part of them are carried out to learn about the local businesses. Herewith, in 2021, it’s crucial for businesses to build a digital brand to stay competitive, communicate with users and customers, set themselves apart from the competitors, and so on. Have no idea how to do that? Here we are with our guide on how to develop a brand online.
Digital branding: What Is It?
It’s a combination of digital marketing and internet branding. Digital branding is how a business designs and builds a brand online through its official website, mobile application, social media accounts, videos, and any other digital channel. Developing a strong digital presence, the business can:
- Enhance its audience;
- Reach target users more effectively;
- Increase brand recognition;
- Boost user engagement;
- Convert one-time users into long-term loyalists.
Don’t mix up branding with marketing. It’s because the goal of online marketing is increasing key metrics, generating sales as well as finding new customers when digital branding seeks to engage with the consumers and enhance their loyalty. So that it’s more about establishing an online brand identity and positive customer experience.
8 Step to Build a Strong Digital Brand
Knowing what digital branding means, let’s come to the point. Below you’ll find 8 simple steps to develop a strong digital brand whatever a type of business.
1. Devise your positioning and brand messaging
The competition is tough, and it’s critical to understand why the customer should choose you, not your competitor, and why they should buy your product, not his. Answer these questions to devise your position so that the business can stand out. Find and bold your strongest features to demonstrate them to your users.
Another important thing to do is to define your brand messaging — what your company says and how your company says it. The message must:
- Reflect what your brand does and believes;
- Speak succinctly to your target audience’s immediate needs and desires.
2. Select a brand tone and voice
Your company is unique and the way you speak to your customers is to reflects that. Mind that the tone of voice must align with the brand, the company’s core ideas, and main services. Think about how you want the customers to perceive your brand, use the tone to convey honesty, reliability, knowledgeability, and other core values you wish to emphasize. Also, it’s crucial for the voice/tone to be consistent through all the platforms to make your brand feel more credible and reliable to users.
3. Craft a timeless style
The very first things, which a visitor notices, are the visual elements. Color scheme, fonts, and other design elements are to be consistent and feel fresh. Deciding on a color palette and free fonts, create a style guide to make typefaces work across multiple channels:
- Website;
- Social media;
- Video;
- Email, and so on.
4. Design an eye-catching logo
The logo of the brand is a calling card of your company both online and offline. It’s highly important to make it unique, eye-catching, memorable, and easily recognized. Also, design different versions of the logo for use in various formats (vertical/horizontal), different colors, live in many different ways across various platforms/apps/devices. Create a logo with a transparent background to ease the process of editing it for different formats. You can use background remover online that also offers a wide range of tools to create and edit logos and other visuals for your brand. Bear in mind that a logo is your very first stop on the way to a strong digital brand.
5. Launch website
According to the statistics, 85% of customers conduct research online before purchasing, and in 74% of cases, users use the official website to learn about the brand, when only 38% of consumers use social media for the purpose. So, it’s crucial for the business to have an official website with comprehensive information about the company provided, including:
- Your brick-and-mortar locations;
- Hours of operation;
- Contacts and support;
- Product listings;
- Guarantees provided;
So, if your aim is business growth and success, then launch the website. Streamline design and maintain brand consistency throughout the site. Also, make sure that it’s good-looking, simple, and easy to navigate, it loads fast without delays and lags, supports all the possible browsers and devices, and so on.
6. SEO
Launching a website is not enough. It must be visible to your users. It’s search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that your customers can learn about your brand online. Starting by designing the brand website with SEO in mind is a great idea. Learn Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to meet the demands of the search engines and be on top of search results.
7. Online marketing
As it was mentioned above digital branding includes digital marketing too. So, you’re to build an online marketing strategy. Usually, digital marketing consists of the 3 directions:
- Social media;
- Content marketing;
- Email marketing.
Use all the channels not only to reach your customers but widen your audience. Besides, it is a way to increase customer awareness, build credibility, demonstrate your expertise, tell more about the products/services, and just stand out from the competitors.
8. Online Advertising
SEO is a great way to make your site visible for your audience, however, it works better in a combination with online advertising. Here are the main ways to advertise digitally:
- Search engine ads;
- Display ads;
- Social media ads;
- Mobile feed and desktop feed ads;
- Retargeted ads.
Learn more about each way and use them in combination for promoting your products more effectively, increasing brand recognition, and just boosting the traffic.
Takeaways
So, you should accept the fact that your customers are online. It’s a new state of things. The Internet is a valuable tool for businesses for broadening their reach and communicating with users on a global scale. Thus, a substantial digital presence can not only improve customers’ awareness but strengthen the brand by building up credibility. If the customers fail to find information about your company on the Internet, they just go to your competitors. Following the instructions described above, the business can widen the audience, improve customer loyalty, and as a result to boost the profit.
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