When you start to get your business off the ground, marketing may be your top priority. Because you need to create awareness, drive customers for your business. However, if you focus to build your online branding strategies right from the beginning you would have better results in everything you do online.
Along with digital marketing if you put in place a good branding strategy for your business it would give your audience a strong sense of what your company is all about and why they should choose your brand over a competitor.
A well-developed online brand strategy and execution of the brand communications, imagery, persona well will stick with consumers.
Even if they’re not ready to be your customer right now, your brand would remain on top of their minds when they need your products or services.
Best & Simple Online Branding Strategy
Let’s take a look at some of the best online branding strategies you can start implementing now for your business to turn it into a great brand.
I personally think that branding should begin in the first place and I always suggest my clients start their branding as soon as they can.
Tell Your Story through About Us Page
People who want to become your customers would like to know about you. The best way is to tell your story on your about us page.
It shouldn’t be an ordinary page with the founder’s name and your business location.
Rather it should tell your story which is genuine and it is your chance to introduce customers to your brand and show them what you stand for. This page needs to answer the questions:
Why does this business exist?
What does this business do better than anybody else?
The promise of your brand.
What is the vision of the company which would help its customers?
Though it is not necessary that everyone who visits your website would read your’s about us page.
But, those who read it would get a better sense of what defines your brand and what your brand promises.
Once you have done it right, you would have clarity on what should be your branding, communication, the tone of your communication, imagery, positioning, brand ethics, brand persona, etc., which you want to portray both offline and online.
Define Buyer Personas
A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal customer that you frame based on real data and predictive data, sometimes you also use educated speculation of what they look like.
This data usually comprises information like demographics, goals, motivations, and behaviors of your buyers.
Before you begin to make your online branding strategies you should build your buyer persona and once you have done that, it would help you to write your communication correctly for your audience.
You would develop your brand keeping in mind your buyer’s persona.
If you’re a new business, you may not have customer data to build your personas on.
That’s okay, you can begin with broad personas and add details to refine them later as you learn more about your audience. For example, a company that sells kids garments might identify two primary audiences:
- Young mother’s (21-40)
- Male in the age group of 25-44 years
As their business takes off, the kid’s garment company can begin collecting demographic information from sources like Google Analytics, customer surveys, and interviews with their customers.
More you refine your data, more you would be able to reach out to the right audience. You would be able to connect with them with the correct brand messaging which would appeal to them.
Create a Brand Style Guide
One of the most important things to consider in branding is to have a consistent brand voice, tone, and visual style. Be it the colors, ads, themes, fonts, icons, logo, or anything which represents your brand should be consistent.
Consistency helps your audience quickly recognize and identify with your brand, while inconsistency can confuse and cause them to see your business as unprofessional.
The need for a Brand Manual
Hence, every business should try to create a brand style guide, which we call the brand manual for themselves.
A brand manual is like the bible of marketing and branding for the brand. Typically a brand manual or brand style guide includes:
- Your brand’s mission, vision, and goals.
- Your brand story (i.e., the reason for your existence).
- Adjectives to describe the brand, as well as adjectives to describe what the brand is not (For example, Apple was earlier called Apple Computers Inc., but when they entered into manufacturing of iPhones, iPods, etc., they renamed their brand as Apple Inc. which clearly indicated that Apple is not only about computers).
- A description of your target audience (i.e., your buyer personas).
- Notes about language to avoid (i.e., the tone of your brand communication).
- Your brand color palette (i.e., the colors your brand will use in its marketing material, website, etc.)
- Your brand typography (i.e., the fonts you’ll use for your logo, print material, website, etc.)
- Approved versions of your logo and descriptions of when to use each one, and how to use them in different scenarios and different places.
- Best practices for visual content.
That’s a lot of detail, we understand. But, it’s worth it. Having a brand style guide or a brand manual that you can share with your employees, partners, vendors, and freelancers working for you will keep everyone aligned with your brand voice and brand style.
This type of consistency pays off: you’re three to four times more likely to enjoy brand visibility when your brand’s presence is consistent, leading to an average revenue increase of 23-27 percent.
Build Brand Loyalty
Online or digital Branding of your business isn’t just about attracting new customers—it’s about building brand loyalty.
Loyal customers are those who stick to your brand for a long time, sometimes even they become the advocates for your brand. Hence, it is important to retain your best and loyal customers.
One great way to improve your customer retention is to reward customers for every purchase. It is not necessary that you only give them discounts, or freebies all the time.
There are a lot of different ways to incentivize their purchases and make your place in their hearts and minds. For example, you could:
- Send them a personalized thank-you note whenever you ship an online order.
- Send customers a discount code after they buy something or subscribe to your newsletter.
- Offer them special premium services for half the price, like you can bear the shipping charges for their orders.
Have Your Reward Plan Ready
Having a well-crafted reward plan will help you present yourself as a brand that truly cares about its customers.
If your brand offers a type of reward plan that none of your competitors have, you can use it as a unique selling proposition of your brand and it would be a great marketing and branding tool for your brand.
For instance, Nihar Shanti Amla Oil donates 2% of all sales proceeds for girl child education every time a customer makes a purchase of their hair oil.
Encourage Customer’s Involvement
One of the objectives of the brand building is to engage with potential customers so that they’ll choose to buy from your brand instead of a customer.
The beauty of the online branding is that you can directly connect with your audience on the digital and social media platforms where they’re already spending their time.
Hence you should encourage your customers to share their reviews and feedback on your website and social media.
This user-generated content builds your brand’s authenticity and provides social proof for other customers and prospective customers.
When potential customers see real people using and enjoying your brand’s product, their confidence in your brand increases and they also make purchases from your brand to have a similar experience.
You can incentivize them for writing reviews and feedbacks and sharing their experiences. Incentives are a great motivator for people to act.
Build an Influencer Network
Online branding strategies wouldn’t be complete without having influencer marketing in it.
Influencer marketing involves involving someone who has a huge fan following when they talk about your brand and products their followers get to know your brand.
This might include having an influencer share a photo of your product on social media, or teaming up with an influencer to host a webinar, or the influencer talking about your products and brands on a podcast or youtube videos.
These are just to name a few examples, though there are a lot more examples you can use for influencer marketing.
The first step you need to take is to identify online influencers who closely align with your brand and your customers’ interests.
You can do this manually by performing Google searches for blogs, having a look at the youtube and Instagram that are relevant to your industry.
There are a few tools as well which can be used to search from the huge databases of the influencers, but I won’t recommend them. Because sometimes you don’t get the exact results you want.
The best way is to find them through your searches or connections you have. Influencers are much more open to working with your brand if you’ve done your research and give them value for their time and efforts for promoting your products and brand.
Summary
Brand building is the most viable SEO strategy. Search engines give preference to the brands and branded content over the non-branded content.
Hence, it is necessary for companies to have their online branding strategies in place to attract more customers and build a loyal customer base.
If you need help implementing any of the online branding strategies above, you can bank on us.
Digitoly team specializes in building brands through digital channels, and we’d love to hear from you. Use the contact form below to learn more about what we can do for your brand.
