How to successfully implement digital branding?

A brand without a digital presence is like a pedal car. It won’t get anywhere fast. With “analog” branding being outdated, businesses today need a diverse range of digital branding tools to anchor their presence in the real world.

You can use our digital branding guide to kickstart your own strategy. We’ll explore everything from social media to SEO, influencers and email, so you can make sure your digital branding campaign ticks all the right boxes.

Everything you need to know about digital branding strategy

 

Digital branding is a creative and strategic process that involves explaining to potential customers what your business is about: who you are, what you care about, why they should work with you, and what they can expect from you. After creating a business or a first product, creating a brand identity should be your number one priority.

Brand identity distills everything about what you do and how you do it into a singular, memorable essence that people will remember and continually associate with your company. Think of the golden arches of McDonald’s or the multi-colored rings of the Olympic badges. Even a simple symbol or image can convey meaningful associations that resonate around the world.

So here are 3 levers: brand , brand image and brand identity . They are all related, but not quite the same.

• Your brand is how the outside world perceives your business.
• Your brand is the process of designing and building a unique and memorable brand.
• Your brand identity is the set of creative elements that fuel the branding process – like social media, and logo – and that convey your message, values, and purpose.

These three levers must work together. You don’t have a real brand without a brand identity, and you will never have a brand until you start building one.

Start defining your brand by asking yourself these questions:

• Who are you as a company?
• What makes you unique compared to other brands?
• What is your brand’s mission? What gives it its purpose?
• What are your values?
• Who is your ideal customer?
• Knowing and defining exactly who you are is the first step in creating a meaningful brand.

What is digital branding?

Digital branding strategy is how you design and build your brand online through websites, apps, social media, videos, and more. Digital branding is a combination of digital marketing and internet branding to build an online brand.

Why is digital brand presence important? Well, look at the phone you probably have on… We are all on our devices all the time. Most of us are connected to the world through the internet, making it essential for brands to reach target customers and convert casual users into long-term loyalists.

Digital branding allows a business to ensure its presence in as many places as possible, even in the palm of your hand that holds your phone. After all, if my mother has an Instagram account, why shouldn’t my favorite shoe brand?

Digital brand vs. digital marketing

What is the difference between digital branding and digital marketing? While digital branding aims to provide value, inspire loyalty and brand recognition, digital marketing levers aim to find new customers and generate sales.

You’re constantly being presented with ads online, even if you don’t notice it. That’s the power of digital marketing! Ads can be anything from an Instagram celebrating your favorite makeup to a pop-up coupon on a website.

Unlike what a traditional brand does with traditional advertising, a digital brand doesn’t look down on you, it seeks to engage with you. It’s more about establishing an online identity and positive feelings, rather than encouraging people to make a one-time purchase.

The benefits of digital branding

A strong digital presence makes customers feel personally involved with a company or product. Well-crafted branding fosters relationships with users and allows you to speak directly to consumers through everyday interactions on the platforms they already use.

For businesses, an industry email list is a priceless tool that allows for targeted outreach to new clients. Businesses may boost conversion rates, enhance industry email list  engagement, and simplify marketing campaigns by employing these carefully selected connections. This targeted strategy improves brand presence while also saving time. Purchasing a high-quality email list can greatly improve client connections and promote general business expansion.

Target your audience

It is through content that is present online that most potential customers will discover and interact with your brand. Digital branding allows you to focus on your audiences by targeting specific customer groups through the platforms they use, which are most often: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram but many others because social networks are not limited to these names alone.

Take a company like Outdoor Voices, a sportswear brand. In just a few years, it has developed its own social media hashtag, #DoingThings, which customers tag when they wear its clothing and embody its lifestyle. Currently, more than 155,000 posts are tagged with #DoingThings on Instagram alone.

 

Connecting with customers

A successful digital branding strategy makes customers feel like you’re talking directly to them, especially when you’re engaging on the same platforms they use to interact with friends and family. Being personal and bringing meaning to your community will turn casual customers into brand fans.

At its core, digital branding facilitates communication between a business and its customers. It’s the equivalent of making it easy for your customers to find information about your business on your website, or helping them get great service quickly. Ultimately, a brand that isn’t searchable online is virtually non-existent in the minds of today’s consumer.

Word of mouth at supersonic speed

Digital branding brings additional opportunities, such as the ability to “go viral” or reach a mass audience in a short time and at little or no cost (but be careful, this does not work every time and requires strategic thinking; some miracles due to chance circumstances are not always reproducible).

Let’s take the American brand of the famous Popeye’s chicken sandwich as an example. Just a few days after its release, the product received the equivalent of about $23 million in advertising, for free and simply because many people – journalists, presenters, Twitter users – shared, published and liked it. Today, the sandwich is unavailable in many restaurants, which gives even more weight and publicity to the product. This is the kind of exposure that money can’t buy .

The 9 ingredients of a successful digital branding strategy

1. The logo

A good logo communicates at a glance what a company does and the values ​​it holds dear. Think of Disney and you see mouse ears and you think of a wonderful world. Think of Apple and you instantly think of a perfectly designed apple, smartphones and laptops.

Logos should match the personality and values ​​of your company, your industry, and your target audience. Without being too flashy, your logo should be colombia whatsapp phone number library memorable enough to leave an impression and not so complicated that people won’t remember it due to the sheer number of images they consume every day.

For example, you can define your positioning:

• Are you modern and minimalist?
• Retro and vintage?
• Fun and quirky?

Look at logos in your industry to see what your competitors are doing. Don’t forget to consult color theory if applicable: The right logo color can make you stand out and set the mood. The color scheme should be standard across all your branding materials.

Your logo should look great at all sizes on all your branding materials: letterheads, business cards, billboards. But remember: digital platforms require specific sizes and images. You need to design a logo that works well on profile pictures, cover photos, email headers, app buttons, and more.

A logo is therefore the first step on the path to a successful digital brand.

2. The website

If your logo is your company’s logo, your website is your digital storefront. When a customer wants to know your address, opening hours, product listings or contact information, they’re not looking in the phone book.
They’ll be looking on your website, so they expect to find the right information quickly and easily.

Effective websites are simple and easy to navigate. Streamline the design and maintain brand consistency with a limited color palette that adb directory matches or complements your logo. Make your brand name and key details stand out with bold, readable fonts. Keep pages concise and to the point, and don’t bog users down with too much information. The quickest way to turn a potential customer off is to bury essential information.

Your website should also have a crawlable link structure, meaning that both humans and search engines can easily navigate to all of the information presented on the site. Likewise, this content should be easily indexable by search engines (more on this later) so that your content doesn’t get lost in the web.

Finally, make sure your website works. Check every link, every button, every image… Mistakes make it look amateurish.

 

3. The brand message

Brand messaging is what your company says and how it says it. The message should reflect what your company does, believes, and should speak to the immediate needs and wants of your customers.

A successful brand message should answer these questions:

• What are you doing ?
• What do you represent?
• Why are you important?

In this example, the brand message should convey that you make cappuccinos better than anyone else, that you are synonymous with delicious breakfasts, and that you are important because there is no nicer, friendlier place in town!

Your tone of voice should also align with your business and the services it offers. Are you selling cosmetics? Make your content fun and on-trend. Are you selling medical equipment? Be discreet and professional. Always do your best to focus on the positives and solutions rather than the pain points.

Your message should be consistent everywhere

The text that appears in a Google search for your business should match the branding of your website. Likewise, your customer service representatives should speak the way you do on Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter.

Make sure your brand message speaks to an online audience. Bottom line: If your brand is online, it should behave like it’s online. The internet has its own modes of communication (e.g. memes, GIFs, slang) that your business should use on social media when appropriate.

FedEx posted a photo of mail carriers posing with puppies, a playful way to engage with their online audience while also playing off the classic mail carrier-dog contrast. Bonus point: They even used an emoji.
on Twitter pledging to donate to the rebuilding cause.

This is a perfect example of engagement with intention and meaning.

4. SEO

Search engine optimization ( SEO) ensures that your brand and its offerings are easily found on search engines, one of the main ways customers search for your services.
In Switzerland, 46% of respondents say they use search engines first for brand discovery . Start by designing your website with search engine optimization in mind. You can start by reviewing Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, which explain how Google indexes and ranks sites.

Here are their top tips:

• Make sure that each web page is accessible by a link from another findable page.
• Limit the number of links on a page to a maximum of one thousand.
• Design pages primarily for users, not search engines.
• Think about what makes your website useful and attractive.
• Make your site stand out from the rest by providing value-added information.
• Constantly monitor your site for broken links and hacking.

Use a keyword research tool like to find commonly searched words that you can use in your copy and to make sure that your schema (website code that identifies your page’s data) and meta tags (snippets of text that describe a page’s content) are optimized for search engines.

Be sure to include plenty of active links in your content – ​​both to your own internal pages and to external pages – so that your website appears stronger and higher in search results. Search engines like Google take all of this into account, and a poor quality website is a sure way to get lost in the vastness of the Internet.

5. Social networks

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.: almost everyone, maybe even your 85-year-old grandmother, is present in some way on social media. If your customers are there, your brand should be too.

Tailor each post to the platform it appears on. Content on Snapchat or Tiktok will tend to be fun, lively, and targeted at a younger audience. Instagram posts are image-driven and designed to generate likes and comments. Twitter operates in real time and reacts to current events and news. Facebook is a bit of everything and focuses on the behind-the-scenes of how your brand operates. LinkedIn allows you to engage with a B2B audience, but not only.

When using social media, think like an influencer would: Schedule posts at specific times and dates, respond to comments and direct messages. And don’t forget to track and analyze your traffic. A tool like Hootsuite can help you streamline all your platforms and track engagement, while Google Analytics will show you which pages are driving customer action and which ones aren’t performing. If you want to sell directly on a social media platform, a tool like Shopify can connect leads directly to your website’s shopping cart, or you can connect your entire digital ecosystem with a proper CRM, e.g. Hubspot.

6. Email marketing

Newsletters are an easy way to reach customers, especially those who don’t use social media.

Start by building strong targeted email lists full of leads that can convert into visitors and subscribers. You can get these signatures from ads or collect them directly on your website by including a newsletter signup popup on your site pages.

Before you send a mass email, clearly identify what you hope to get out of it: Increased engagement? Nurture existing relationships? Announce a new product? Your goal should guide everything from the subject line to the choice of image.

Target your emails to specific customer segments and write them in a lively, engaging tone that matches your brand. Include photos, videos, and helpful information that not only aims to sell your products, but also actively engage customers in your brand’s lifestyle.

Plan mass mailings carefully. Sending too many emails in a row often results in a first-class ticket to the junk mail pile.

7. Online Advertising

Online advertising uses the power of the web to market your products. It’s not as simple as a banner on a web page anymore. Today, there are dozens of ways to advertise digitally.

Here are some of the most common possibilities:

• Search Engine Ads (SEA) : These ads push your website to the top of Google’s search results page (SERP) so that people see your product or brand first.
• Display Ads : These ads are clickable banners that you find on web pages across the internet.
• Social Media Advertising (SMA) : Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram all offer a variety of ways to “sponsor” content. You can pay to play, which means your post will automatically appear in potential customers’ feeds, or you can hire an influencer to post about your product on your behalf.
• Mobile and desktop feed ads : These ads often appear as “suggested content” in users’ mobile and desktop feeds. They look more natural because they’re embedded directly in a feed and blend in with non-paid content.
• Remarketing : Have you ever searched for something only to see an ad for that same thing ten minutes later? Then you know firsthand the power of retargeted ads. They reach customers who have already shown interest in your business or services, whether by Googling it, visiting your website, or liking your Facebook page.

Need help developing or refining your? Count on our expertise!

 

8. Content marketing

These days, it’s not enough to just advertise your product. To build a loyal and repeat customer base, engagement is key. That’s where content marketing (brand content) comes in. Think of it as the human side of your brand. Where digital marketing focuses on sales, content marketing focuses on engagement through photos, videos, Spotify playlists, and blog posts (like the one you’re reading right now).

Successful content marketing should generate interest in your brand and get customers excited about your products and message. It helps build trust between the brand and the user, and seeks to establish long-lasting and fruitful relationships. While digital marketing introduces a customer to your brand, successful content marketing helps maintain their interest, turning casual users into die-hard fans.

9. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that uses people with large social media followings to post information about your brand. Rather than marketing directly to a group of consumers, you put your brand message in the hands of a social media star who will spread the message for you.

The process is pretty simple: You partner with an influencer and pay them a flat fee or commission to talk to their followers about your brand. After building a following and trustworthiness over time, most influencers are trusted by their networks and can lend a brand a level of reliability. It’s not rocket science. Marketing feels more organic when it’s in the hands of a real person (even if that person is being paid to talk about the product). Influencers also typically create their own content, so sponsored posts align with the pre-existing look and feel of their pages—plus, it’s less work for your marketing team.

There are a few pitfalls to avoid. The influencers you select should align with the lifestyle your brand advocates. You should avoid hiring a fitness influencer to sell a high-sugar, high-fat candy bar. Because influencers are human, they may share views that don’t align with your brand’s ethos, which could tarnish the reputation of both parties. So choose carefully, and clearly define acceptable ways to talk about your product.

In conclusion

Digital branding is not just about selling your products, but also about developing a passionate and loyal customer base that not only buys your products, but believes in them. Bottom line: Opt for fresh, authentic, and real content. The possibilities for digital branding for your online business are as vast and expansive as the internet itself.