In today’s era, people use digital ways of ordering products and avail services to save both time and energy, hence companies also have to be on their toes to stay up to date with the latest trends and what mediums their targeted audiences use.
If you want to create brand awareness and attract a certain set of audience, but have zich idea of how to go about it, then “A Guide on Getting Started with Online Branding, Digital Marketing, and Design’’ has been written to rescue you.
Relax! We will teach you concepts of online branding, digital marketing, and website design step-by-step.
Let’s begin the journey with online branding and online branding solutions.
In order to create and promote brand identity, social media channels, and the internet are heavily used and this usage is termed online branding, internet branding, or e- branding (electronic branding).
Now how is the branding done? It is usually executed through the use of a website, blog, or social media profile and is frequently done through the use of search engine optimization (SEO) and online advertising.
Internet branding is necessary because it allows businesses to show their online existence and reach a larger audience. The essential uses for online branding include identifying a customer base, telling a brand’s story, and driving traffic and sales to a company’s website.
Brand identity means the overall look and feel of a brand which includes the colors, fonts, logo, and other visuals that are associated with a brand. It includes the tone and voice that a brand uses when conveying its message to its audience as well as brand vocabulary.
We are sure you must be asking what brand vocabulary is. The explanation is that when a certain word or phrase makes a company or organization cross your mind. This happens a lot when that brand has drilled its products/ services with so many advertisements that it clicks your mind that fast.
A well-developed brand identity becomes a winning factor as a business can easily stand out from its rivals and establish trust with its customers. Within a single brand identity, multiple brand personas may also exist that can be thought of as particular characters which a brand creates to connect with different types of customers. The average company may have between five and six brand personas in its stock.
Different ways are there to create an online appearance, but the only rule that the company has to follow for success is to remain consistent on whatever social media channels it has opted for to promote the brand’s identity as this will assist to create a close-knit and recognizable brand identity.
Online branding has many benefits and is actually a powerful tool that aids businesses to increase sales, reaching new markets, and improving a brand’s image if it is utilized correctly.
Not forgetting to discuss the key components of online branding.
There are many key components of online branding
- Customers
If a brand is not convincing the consumer to buy it, then what’s the use of the company selling it? Therefore a company should focus on putting such a brand to the table so that people don’t even waste a second in purchasing it.
- Brand Identity and Physical Components
The brand’s name, colors, logo, fonts, and other visuals that are associated with it come under this point. It is important for companies to maintain consistency with the way they present their brand across all of their online channels.
- Branding Location
A company’s website should be optimized fully for search engines so that it appears at the top of the results when potential customers search for keywords related to their business. Additionally, a company’s social media profiles should be updated regularly and should include links to its website for people to be redirected easily.
- Online Messaging
Another core element of online branding is messaging. A company’s message should be clear and concise focusing on the company’s target customers and should be designed to sell the company’s products or services.
- Product
The final key component of online branding worth discussing is the product which should be high-quality and competitively priced in a way to appeal to the company’s target customers.
Some uses of online branding are:
- Brand Awareness
The primary use is creating a strong online presence that helps in increasing brand awareness. This can be done through various marketing channels such as social media, email marketing, and search engine optimization.
Even you being a consumer searches for the company online only to see what it is about and what are they selling hence is no rocket science here!
- Sales
Sales are increased and this can be done by creating informative blog posts or articles that include links to a company’s website. Plus, search engine optimization can be used to make a company’s website more visible in search results.
- Customer Loyalty
The stronger your brand’s online presence the better your customer loyalty. You are selling something and would want to attract millions of customers; hence you have to put in efforts via social media, email marketing, and providing high-quality products or services to see customers asking about your products everywhere.
- Reputation
The magic of online presence helps you in building a good reputation and customers can be enchanted by creating informative blog posts or articles that include links to a company’s website. Additionally, social media can be used to build relationships with consumers and form a positive image of the company.
- Reduction of Marketing Costs
Reduce the company’s marketing costs through a strong online media presence through social media, email marketing, and of course search engine optimization.
How about we tell you about a few online branding strategies?
- About Us
The About page is your chance to introduce customers to your brand and show them what you stand for. Yes, not everyone who visits your site will check the About page, but those who do will at least gain a better sense of what drives and defines your brand. The act of developing content for your About page will further help you and your team come up with the language that perfectly describes your business, which you’ll continue to use in both offline and online branding strategies.
If you have not given much attention to the company’s about page then now is the time hit the nail on the head!
- Understanding Your Audience
Before you can get rolling with your website branding strategies, you need to understand who your target audience is as customers get annoyed when they find irrelevant content.
You might have an idea that your product will interest which age category, but still you do not have the buyer’s data so you can start with broad personas and add details as you learn more about your audience. A company that sells beard grooming products might identify two main audiences: Men with beards or women buying gifts for their bearded partners.
When the setup starts off the beard care company can start collecting demographic information from sources like Google Analytics, customer surveys, and interviews.
Once you polish yourselves more in learning about your target buyers’ interests, weaknesses, and buying process, you’ll be better prepared to connect with them through your brand messaging.
- Create A Brand Style Guide
Your brand voice and visual style need to be consistent as that consistency helps your audience quickly recognize and identify with your brand, while inconsistency can confuse your audience leading them to lose interest and see your business as unprofessional. Your business should take time to come up with a style guide that includes
Your brand’s mission/goals
Your brand story (the reason you exist)
Adjectives to describe the brand, as well as adjectives to describe what the brand is about
A description of your audience (your buyer personas)
Notes about language to avoid
Your brand color palette
Your brand typography (the fonts you’ll use)
Approved versions of your logo and descriptions of when to use each one
Best practices for visual content
Having a brand style guide that you can share with your employees and freelancers will keep everyone structured with your brand voice.
- Loyalty Award Plan
You must have come across advertisements of Customer Loyalty Award Plans of different brands, that these many points will help you save money in the future, so even that it is a tactic to keep the bond intact between clients and the company. Adopting a reward plan impresses a customer that the company truly cares about them.
Like fast food chains donate a fair sum of money after a few sales to charity organizations.
- Encourage and Share User-Generated Content
One of the main goals of branding is to interact with potential customers so that they choose to buy from your business. And in online branding, you can directly connect with your audience on the digital platforms where they’re already spending their time.
Once you start building an audience online, encourage your followers to share brand content on your website and social media. User-generated content, which can be anything from product reviews to unboxing videos, builds your brand’s authenticity and provides social proof. When potential customers see real people using and enjoying your product, their confidence in your brand increases.
- Build an Influencer Network
Influencer marketing involves working with someone who has a dedicated base of online followers so that their followers can get to know your brand.
This includes writing a branded guest post on an influencer’s blog and having an influencer share a photo of your product on Instagram.
The next step is digital marketing.
Major online branding solution is through digital marketing, where digital channels are used to drive marketing strategy, including customer acquisition and brand awareness. The channels used are varied, including paid advertising, content marketing, influencer marketing, social media, email marketing, and many others.
It is often used with other marketing strategies such as sales and PR.
Each channel follows its own set of best practices, marketing metric goals, and campaign application strategies.
A wide range of activities, tools, and strategies fall under this technique of marketing using online channels to market your brand, increase engagement, and drive sales. It can include activities such as social media marketing (the use of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to market products, and services, engage with existing customers, and reach new ones) paid search marketing (the strategy which allows companies to pay search engines to place their ads higher on relevant search pages with the motive of driving traffic to their site. Pay-per-click or PPC advertising is the most common form of paid search. In a PPC campaign, companies don’t pay anything until someone clicks on their ad making it an easier and pocket-friendly way to advertise and ensuring your ads reach users who are actively and willingly searching for your company’s services or products), content marketing (the development and distribution of relevant, useful content like blogs, newsletters, white papers, social media posts, emails, videos, to current and potential customers which when is done right, conveys expertise and makes it clear that a company values the people to whom it sells.), email marketing(the form of marketing that makes the customers aware of new offers, promotions, and other services. It is seen as a lighter way to educate your audience on the value of your brand or keep them engaged between purchases), and mobile app marketing (the interaction with your customers from when they first hear about your app to when they become regular and loyal users. For this, you have to figure out your kind of audience, where to find those people, and what to say to them.)
Many organizations implement a digital marketing strategy as an online branding solution across a variety of channels, including social media, email, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, mobile app marketing, and content marketing to stay up-to-date and attract existing and new audiences.
After Digital marketing, enters Website design.
When you are working hard day and night in marketing your brand or product, then put in the same efforts in designing an enchanting website in the most eye-catching manner which compels people to visit your page multiple times.
This can be done via attractive images, colors, and fonts, but also by keeping in mind what is your website about.
You can create a website through these few ideas, we have told below
- Adobe Muse:
Adobe Muse is a web design tool that makes it easy to create beautiful, responsive websites. You’ll find a wide range of website templates and designs to get you started, along with easy-to-use drag-and-drop features.
- Squarespace:
A fully-featured website builder that lets you create a variety of website designs. You can choose from a variety of templates, or start from a blank slate and use their simple web editor to build your site.
- WordPress:
WordPress is a fully-featured blogging and CMS (content management system) website builder which is the majority of companies’ favorite website development tool that lets you create a wide range of website designs. Choose from a variety of designs and templates, or start from scratch using their simple web editor.
With this, we have reached the end of the guide and hope your concepts must have been clearer in comparison to when you landed on this blog. Now you are good to go and enter the market with the online branding solutions given above.
Good luck!