Building a brand is not always about creating a company logo, it involves a variety of things that builds trust between a brand and the consumer. Similarly, when it comes to online brand strategy, there needs to be a connection with your audience, in real-time. Your customers and clients are involved with you because they like your product or service.
In the digital world, trust is a very important factor. A Nielsen survey showed that 59% of consumers would prefer to buy new products from brands they are already familiar with.
So how does a brand build an online presence that stands out? Below are 5 tips on strengthening your brand image:
Creating Value
Building a brand online is not a one-day effort. It needs a targeted approach with a clear strategy. It does not matter if you are an existing brand or starting from scratch. You need to add value to your digital presence. For instance, if you have just created a website or a social media account, chances are that your site or account won’t make the same impact as it does otherwise. You need to constantly post regular and original content and play on your USP.
There is no silver bullet on how your brand can establish itself in the digital agora. Therefore, in order to grow your business online, you need to first grow your brand with campaigns, reputation management, and media plan. Find out what your competitors are doing and if it’s working for them or not. Research your audience (more on this below). Imitation may be the best form of flattery but your brand needs to play on its uniqueness.
Know Your Audience
Before you embark on building content and campaigns for your brand presence online, figure out the type of audience you wish to target or the type of demography who are already following you. To develop your online brand presence is to know who you wish to sell your product or service to.
You can start by a general description of your audience but as you go along you might want to invest in tools that give can targeted insights about your audience. The best brand building is ones that know their customers and create a campaign and strategy that speaks to them. On social media, people are looking to connect with brands at a personal level. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can show insights about a post you made and the demography that saw it.
Diversify Your Social Platform
Digital marketing is a science, so there is no such thing as a failure but a series of experimentation. This is time-consuming and therefore patience is key. Building a brand online is not an easy task.
One of the most common mistakes a brand can make is choosing to be on every social media platform. If your target market is in China and you are on Facebook, chances are you are wasting your digital spend, as Facebook is not recognized in that country. Knowing where your audience is and creating an account on specific social media platforms will save a hassle.
Be Consistent
The digital space is very noisy and every brand is trying to grab attention for a potential sale. Your presence is no different but you can position yourself better from the crowd – by being consistent.
Having a viral content is something every brand wants but in the long-term people will forget it. All those marketing pushes, PR-strategy, digital spend goes to waste for a short-term gain. Put yourself in your audience’s shoe and figure out if you will follow a profile that posts content every now and then or with one that does it on a daily basis and remains informative, funny or engaging? Chances are you will follow the latter and keep an eye out for more content from them. This is because the ones who have remained consistent on the long run are more likely to succeed.
Give Voice, Build Reputation
Once you have figured out your audience, your product/service and have a clear marketing strategy, you need to add voice and build a reputation. This is important to communicate your ideas. Brand voice can be anything from being formal to casual, funny or informative. Or a combination of them all. It depends on the type of business you run and the audiences you are catering to. Being consistent, it builds up your brand’s reputation as an informative and engaging account and has a higher chance of converting a sale.
