4 Things to Consider When Building Your Digital Brand

The online world is fiercely competitive. You’re not just fighting against the store down the street; you’re battling with the entire world for your audience’s attention. From small startups to Fortune 500 companies, everyone wants your customers’ attention.

To win in this environment, you need a strong digital brand. You can spend money on expensive campaigns every day, but unless it is backed by a strong brand, your customers will quickly forget you.

So how do you win the digital branding game? I’ll share four tips in this post.

1. Create a Consistent Customer Experience

According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, one of the six pillars of persuasion is consistency.

“Consistency is the glue that binds together all marketing. Customers trust you more when you can deliver the same experience across every touchpoint”, says growth hacker and musician, Ryan Harrell of MIDINation. “Make sure that your brand stays consistent across your entire digital presence”, he adds.

In practical terms, this means using the same digital assets, ensuring the same tone of voice, design standards, and content optimization across every digital channel. A customer who lands on your Instagram page should get the same experience as someone who visits your website or blog.

2. Align Your Brand with Your Target Audience

Have you ever landed on a website or walked into a store that just felt…off?

This usually happens when there is a clear brand misalignment between the brand and its customers’ values. Think of it as Nordstrom featuring the same dim lights and frat-boy aesthetic as Abercrombie & Fitch. It just doesn’t match up.

Essentially, brand alignment means taking stock of your customers values and beliefs. Do a deep dive into understanding what your customers want, what they think, and what they stand for.

Once you fully understand your customers, align your entire brand experience – from the logo and website design to even the employees – with their values. For instance, if your customers are young families, choose a brand experience that is fun, family-friendly, and promotes the feeling of safety and wellness.

3.Make Your Brand Experience Easy to Digest

Often, businesses spend tons of resources thinking about their brand. But when they have to explain it to their audience, they can only come up with complicated jargon and 500-word documents.

A brand statement has to be catchy, easy to digest, and easy to spread. It should say exactly what your brand stands for in as few words as possible. Think of iconic brand statements such as Nike’s “Just Do It” and Apple’s “Think Different” campaign. These simple slogans tell customers exactly what the brand stands for in as few as two words.

So think long and deep about your brand statement and mission values. Ask yourself: can I make this into a slogan? An acronym? A single image? The more you can condense your values into an easy to understand format, the more powerful your brand.

4.Focus on Repetition and Visibility

Creativity and consistency is a big part of branding. But building a digital brand is also about visibility.

Essentially, the more people see your brand, the more they trust and remember it. Think of how ubiquitous big brands like Coca-Cola and Nike are. While their branding aesthetics and core principles are powerful, their repeatability is equally important.

“Repeating a brand signal over and over has the potential to turn a brand into a symbol. This is why brands like Apple and Coca-Cola are so powerful. You see the Apple logo and you instantly know everything the brand stands for”, says Ryan Harrell.

So pair up your digital branding campaigns with a marketing campaign focused on top-of-the-funnel awareness. Get display ads to complement your targeted PPC campaigns. The more people see your brand, the more they’ll believe in its power.

Over to you

Building a digital brand in 2018 isn’t easy. Your competition continues to grow and reaching out to a large audience is becoming harder and harder. These four tips that I shared above should be the cornerstone of your digital branding campaign.

For questions and thoughts, leave a message below!