A great guide to brand development for digital marketers

A great guide to brand development for digital marketers

If you want your firm to develop, 77% of marketers believe that branding should be a crucial component of your strategy. And, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos put it, “your brand is what other people say about you while you’re not in the room.”

A great brand-building process is critical for your company since it is the visual identity of your organization and, when done effectively, provides your business a voice and boosts customer awareness about your firm.

First, let’s define the successful brand building, and then we’ll go over tactics for improving your brand’s identification.

What Exactly Is Brand Building?

Brand building is the practice of raising awareness and promoting a company’s offerings through direct advertising campaigns or sponsorship. Brand-building tactics connect customers closer to the company and deliver value to them, allowing them to know, feel, and experience the brand’s personality.

Digital marketers bear a large burden – the marketing of a business – and must take every step to transform that business into a brand so that leads will follow. They collaborate closely with the departments of design, content marketing, and social media marketing. The business will be successful if they collaborate and work together to promote the brand image.

As a digital marketer, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Are higher rankings worth anything if no one recognizes your brand?
• Do people regard your company as having a fantastic brand in comparison to your key competitors?
• Are you emphasizing keywords in the domain name or emphasizing the brand story (like great businesses like Nike and Starbucks do)?
• Is the brand being searched for on Google?
• You’ve probably figured out why I’m asking you these questions. You can’t achieve your digital marketing objectives unless you turn a company into a brand.

Let’s figure out how to accomplish it!

How to Create a Brand, Not a Company

Google admires firms like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s because they keep their promises to their customers. Ideally, a brand provides great customer service, high-quality products, a fast-loading website, a clear purpose statement, and minimal instances of consumer unhappiness.

1) Master the Fundamentals

Whether you are a tiny business/startup or a major corporation, brand growth begins with a solid foundation, so the first step is to strengthen your brand roots. As a digital marketer, you must use the criteria below to determine whether your company is on the correct course.

What is the promise that the company makes to the customer?

A promise is the customer’s expectation of the firm, therefore, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and try to analyze the brand promise from that perspective before you begin marketing your product or service.

The brand promise should be real and superior to what your competitors are providing.

Is the brand’s logo distinct and memorable?

Because color boosts brand identification by up to 80%, your brand must have a vibrant, dynamic, and memorable logo. Your logo’s color palette and font should be distinct from those of your competitors.

Is the website responsive and fast?

Brands have lightning-fast websites, which sets them apart from smaller business websites. Website speed is frequently the first impression in the minds of site visitors/prospects, and it must be quick, especially for e-commerce firms. People appreciate sites that load quickly, or they will abandon them.

• 47% of consumers anticipate a web page to load in less than two seconds.
• When a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors quit it.
• A 1-second delay in page response can reduce conversions by 7%.

Have you gained a better knowledge of brand equity?

Examine your competition and their current marketing materials. This will assist you in aligning your objectives and value offer.

2) Gain Your Customers’ Trust

Without trust, there can be no brand/consumer relationship. People don’t trust businesses as easily these days, so strategies like PR, in which the company brags about its own accomplishments don’t work as effectively as they used to. Millennials instead trust their peers (social proof), and you must develop innovative tactics to acquire the trust of your target market.

It should come as no surprise that brands that were able to garner the most trust made the most revenue. As a digital marketer, you should develop brand marketing methods that aid in gaining consumer trust, such as:

• False advertisements should not be used to mislead people. Always be true to the brand’s mission.
• Make yourself available to customers whenever they need you. Adopting micro-moment marketing tactics is a solid strategy. Mobile devices now outnumber desktop PCs in terms of search volume.
• Look for ways to add value to your target audience. Create infographics, short movies, or other pieces of material to educate people about your new product or service. Customers will remember you if you are consistently providing value.
• Consider doing rather than telling. Show the customer why you are the best, not just tell them. Make your consumers feel you genuinely care about them, and make your prospects wish they were your customer.
• Sending mass emails to individuals you don’t know is not a good idea. That is something that good brands never do. Instead, use tools like Voila Norbert to obtain email addresses and supplement your email lists with useful information like the person’s current work title and location.
• Keep in mind the three components of consumer trust: promise, competence, and integrity.
• Customer service is key to brand success. Make sure that customer service is constantly available, whether by phone, email, or live chat.

3) Create a Voice for Your Business

A leader is identified not just by their actions but also by the tone of their words. If you want to lead your industry, choose your brand’s tone.

So, how can you establish an authoritative brand voice? Here are some viable options:

• Define the personality of the brand voice you want. If your product or service is aimed at young hipsters, for example, your tone should reflect that.
• Analyze your competitors’ voices to learn what makes them unique and how to distinguish your tone from theirs.
• Listen to your clients’ tone and strive to emulate it in your brand language. If your audience prefers casual discussion and you are too formal, you might reconsider your tone.
• People must be inspired to take action by your brand’s voice.
• Allow the brand voice to develop gradually. You can’t have a great brand voice right away! Allow time for your brand voice to develop naturally.

Your brand voice might take several forms:

• Textual content
• Images
• Podcasts
• Video content

4) Collaborate with Other Brands

Co-branding is an important aspect of strategic marketing, and partnering with companies that can generate awareness and leads is one of the simplest methods to gain brand recognition.

Every digital marketer must form three forms of co-branding agreements for their clients’ brands:

Influencers or Partners in Awareness

An influencer is a brand unto themselves. With the assistance of influencer marketing tools, you may collaborate with micro-influencers to gain much-needed brand exposure and attention. You can also try partnering with other brands, which may not produce direct leads but may increase brand awareness.

Partners in Charge

These are the most difficult to obtain, but they can assist create direct leads and income. Pottery Barn and Sherwin-Williams are the best examples of this type of collaboration. Pottery Barn featured a banner on their website that allowed buyers to easily select Sherwin Williams paint colors that matched their furniture types.

Functional Collaboration

To defeat your competition, you may require the assistance of another partner at times. A functional partnership does this. It improves the product’s quality, resulting in a product that immediately captures the attention of the audience. The Apple-Hermes alliance is a prime example of this type of collaboration, which has allowed Apple to “out-creative” its competition.

5) Create and Improve Brand Signals

The most ignored aspect of every marketing effort is brand optimization. Without a doubt, Google loves to rank businesses in search results because they offer a better user experience.

Here are several signals that Google examines when considering whether or not to classify your company as a brand:

Develop a devoted social media following.

Big brands are present on all social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. Most brands have a large number of loyal followers on every social media. Therefore a thorough brand profile and effective engagement are critical for maximum brand visibility. Having an active social media presence and a loyal social following helps convey Google indirect signals that your company has evolved into a brand.

Make certain that your website gives an excellent customer experience.

There should be no 404 errors or mobile issues. Your website should not give a spammy, ineffective, or irritating experience. Get rid of annoying pop-ups, use HTTPS, and improve your site’s security to avoid infection. If your users encounter a message like the one below while exploring your website, your entire brand experience suffers.

Prepare your website for Answer Box.

Make your content available in Google Answer Boxes (read up on the difference between a featured snippet and an answer box). People trust the businesses that appear in the response boxes, so this is an excellent approach to raise much-needed brand exposure.

Create citations and links.

Brands frequently have a large number of links pointing to them from high-authority sites, something that non-branded sites do not have. Furthermore, employing branded anchor text and eliminating terms in the anchor text is an additional technique to increase brand value.

Final Thoughts on Brand Development

Finally, now that you’ve studied why brand creation is important for business growth and the tactics in this book to improve your brand’s identity, you should consider how to measure your brand.

“Brand measurement is the act of selecting brand KPIs, developing a methodology and cadence for measuring them, and then altering your marketing approach based on the insights gathered over time.” Check out this advice on how to measure your brand because, as the adage goes, what you don’t measure, you can’t improve.

It is critical to track brand strategy as it evolves. You need objectives, appropriate KPIs, and the right tools and methods to measure your efforts with any measurement plan.

Remember that your duty as a digital marketer is to increase the brand value of the company you’re advertising for and to generate a steady flow of leads and goodwill. A brand is appreciated by both search engines and people, so employ the tactics listed above and go through the process of transforming a firm into a brand.