Building Your Brand Online
Building your brand is a never ending job. There are always more ways to build your company’s identity, present it to your customers, and increase your brand equity, strength, and household recognition. Branding extends from a logo, to customer service, to phone etiquette and email signatures. Now in 2020, your business’ digital branding has become more important than ever.
In this post, we’ll talk about some strategies and benefits to beefing up your digital branding, as well as how it combines with video marketing and web design.
What is branding and why does it matter?
The word brand has become synonymous with business, so much so that we start losing track of what it actually means. Summarized, your brand is the culmination of everything that makes your product or service unique from all of your competitors. It is the identity you use to establish a trusting relationship between your business and your customer.
For your brand to be consistent with your audiences expectations, it needs to extend through every part of your business, but it all starts with your marketing. The identity you project through your advertisements, emails, commercials, and business cards is the first one new customers will see, so it’s important to make a strong first impression.
Digital Branding
When a customer searches for your company or product online, what is the first thing they see? Will they see a well designed, inviting and informational website? Will they see the smiling face of a company representative helping customers in a video? Or will they see a cluttered and distracting webpage? Even worse, will they see nothing at all?
Digital branding encompasses your brand’s online presence and identity, from the design of your website to the content of your videos and blogs, to your social media communities and customer reviews. Through knowing your audience and picking the right series of words, pictures, and videos, you can build a trusted reputation before your customers even get in touch. This passive, ever-present digital marketing framework is absolutely vital in creating a trusted and distinctive brand in today’s market.
1. Assess what you have.
When building your brand online, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Take stock of what assets you have already established in your business. Do you already have a great logo? Have you already cultivated a specific reputation or niche? Focus on your preexisting strengths and incorporate those into your new growth areas rather than starting from scratch.
2. Identify what your audience needs.
The effectiveness of marketing and branding is largely dependent on your audience. Are you looking to serve lower or middle class families who need someone inexpensive and trust-worthy? Do you serve singles and students who are looking to take part in something new and exciting? By knowing your audience, and what experience and value they are looking for, you can put your best foot forward and communicate exactly who you are and what you do.
3. Address the gaps in your brand.
When building your brand, this is the primary action piece of your marketing strategy. Where can you grow? How can you build rapport and trust with your audience? Now, make it happen. We’ve put together some of the most pertinent elements of a sound digital branding strategy.
i. Website design
What does your website look like? Is it clear what your value offer is? Is it easy to use and understand? The website is like the internet version of your storefront. Everything should serve the customers experience in getting them to know and like your offer enough to commit to it. Cluttered designs and confusing text blocks should be replaced with an easy to navigate platform that answers any questions the customer might have.
ii. Social media presence
Creating social media pages and accounts for your business ensures that you are visible on whatever platform your customer uses. Having an established and continued presence makes your brand seem more tangible and consistent: two important factors for building trust. As your business and consumer base grows further, you can start to develop communities by interacting with customers through your branded social media. This is where your brand can take on a “personality” (ie. Wendy’s on Twitter).
iii. Content
This is the bulk of what drives your digital brand. Content includes the text copy, blog posts, pictures, and videos produced and published by your business. It is what your audience will spend the most amount of time interacting with until they decide to buy. Your content is also going to be the driving factor in how much your brand is shared through digital “word-of-mouth”.
Video is an incredibly useful form of digital content because of how easy it is to consume and share. If you’re just starting with video marketing, we recommend an introductory brand commercial that orients the viewer to your company and gets them thinking about your value proposition. It covers a lot of bases at once and is a great resource to have for website landing pages, pinned social media posts, and paid commercial campaigns.
The possibilities are endless.
iv. Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, helps your digital presence rise in the ranks of search engines like Google or Bing when people search for it. This is an important service once you’ve established online platforms that are usable. Ensuring you’re in the front page when someone searches your product and service increases visibility and gives you a competitive edge.
4. Measure the results.
This is a crucial step in the business process that often gets forgotten about in smaller companies. In order to determine the effectiveness of your newly implemented changes, you need a couple of measurable factors to look at. Potential data could be as broad as new leads within a certain time span before and after changes, or as specific as click rates on an A/B test of different email subject lines. However, branding success is often difficult to measure because the results you’re hoping to achieve are often only perceived on the customer’s end.
One potential solution would be using customer feedback surveys to gather qualitative and quantitative data from your audience about their attitudes toward your company.
Establishing and promoting your brand is one of the biggest and hardest goals for businesses to achieve, and the journey is never really over. But don’t be overwhelmed! With persistence, passion, and the right support, your brand will be growing before you know it. If you ever need help getting started, we’d love to start developing a strategy that works for you. Contact us at edgeofcinema@gmail.com to schedule a free consultation.
Establishing and promoting your brand is one of the biggest and hardest goals for businesses to achieve, and the journey is never really over. But don’t be overwhelmed! With persistence, passion, and the right support, your brand will be growing before you know it.
If you ever need help getting started, we’d love to start developing a strategy that works for you. Contact us at team@edgeofcinema.com to schedule a free consultation.
