Principles that should guide a successful digital branding strategy

Amid accelerating digitization, brands are concentrating on building a robust brand presence. According to an estimate, about 50% of customers follow at least one brand on social media. Digital branding is a vital component of marketing strategy. It refers to the strategy of leveraging various digital channels with the objective to build a strong brand presence and recall. Investment in digital branding confers several benefits for your brand, including building trust and credibility among stakeholders and encouraging customer retention.

A digital brand strategy consists of several components such as website user experience, content marketing, social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, etc. At the outset, digital branding calls for an in-depth understanding of your brand vision and the target audience. Here are some principles that should guide the digital branding strategy for your business.

Brand purpose: Determine your brand vision and mission. Why are you doing what you do? What problem are you trying to address? Identify core values and principles that will guide your brand strategy. Formulate the brand message, tagline, and brand statement accordingly.

Target audience: Identify your target audience. Determine their demography, geography, purchase behavior, and motives and interests. Segment your audience into key groups and customize a strategy for these groups. Remember, a customer is at the centerpiece of any marketing strategy. Unless you understand your customer, your branding efforts won’t be fruitful.

Competition Analysis: The market is overcrowded, with several brands vying for attention. Identify and study your key competitors and analyze how your products and services are different from them. Choose a key value proposition that you want to highlight in the brand messaging. It is equally critical to benchmark top-performing brands and devises a roadmap to achieve your business goals.

Unique Value Proposition and Key Benefits: You may not be the only business providing products and services. How are they different from your competitors? Determine what makes your business unique. For instance, your process, team, or benefits offered by your products or services may be distinct from other brands.

Brand Voice: Once you identify your unique value propositions, chalk out the plan on how you will communicate it to your audience. The brand voice is the key to how the audience will perceive your brand. Brand voice cannot be funny on one platform while formal on the other. It is imperative to have consistent brand messaging in a cohesive voice across platforms to strengthen your brand recall. Identify the right channel mix and allocate the budget among them.

Brand Recognition: The customer is at the heart of the marketing strategy. Hence, customer engagement is a key to customer retention and building brand advocates. The engagement strategy should aim to build a rapport with existing customers through emotional storytelling. The content should be both meaningful and memorable. Customer feedback and active participation should be encouraged to make them feel valued by the brand. A robust engagement strategy builds trust and fosters brand recognition.

Digital branding is an ongoing process that must be revisited periodically to finetune it in line with the demands of the ongoing scenario. A successful digital branding strategy ultimately boils down to maximizing the customer experience. Maintaining core values while scaling up the brand and thinking out of the box for every marketing campaign accelerates the process of achieving your business goals while maximizing return on investment for your brand.

About the author :

Khushboo Sharma, Founder, Zero Gravity Communications