Digital Branding
We think a brand ought to work for a company. It goes beyond a logo. It goes beyond a slogan. It goes beyond simple marketing or rules found in a book that is kept on a shelf. It’s fundamental to your identity as a company. Your soul.
A brand needs to be based on emotion, simplicity, and truth in order to be considered a Performance Brand.
- Truth - A brand's positioning and strategy must be grounded in reality to avoid setting off the "bullshit detector" both internally and externally.
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Simplicity - We do not mean to imply simplistic simplicity. Clarity should coexist with dimension and depth. If it's obvious, customers will understand the organization's values on an instinctive level, internal staff will know exactly how to capitalize on it, and messaging and visual identity will come to
life in incredible ways.
- Emotion - By incorporating emotion into your brand, brands are able to forge transformative connections.
The Importance of Digital Branding
It’s safe to say that, in our increasingly interconnected world, digital branding is more crucial than ever. But what is its significance?
This crucial query is clarified by two recent Hinge Research Institute studies. They look into the ways in which buyers of professional services have evolved and the tactics that are propelling the remarkable expansion of today’s pro services companies. When taken as a whole, these studies show how important a company’s digital brand is during the purchasing process.
Examining business-related topics. The purchasing process for professional services begins long before a buyer gives particular providers any thought. First, there is a business issue. Every business issue and concern that comes up needs to be assessed and given a priority. Is this a problem that warrants attention? What are my rivals doing in this regard? What are some potential fixes?
How does a time-pressed executive look into these subjects? Usually, a quick Google search is the first step. However, you are invisible to a large portion of your market if you aren’t writing about the subjects that your potential customers are searching for and making your content appear in their search results. Furthermore, you’re not establishing yourself as an authority online in your field of expertise.
Upon examining every method used by buyers of professional services, we discovered that there is a 70% chance that modern buyers will utilize a digital source when conducting preliminary research on business challenges. See Figure 1.
Finding the Providers of Services. These fact-finding executives become buyers of professional services when they determine that their problem is worthwhile to solve and that they are unable to do it alone. They start compiling a list of possible vendors and search for suppliers who are capable of handling their problems.
Now, your company will appear on that list if your content assisted these executives in understanding and diagnosing their problem during the Google research phase. You will be seen as an authority on the exact issue they are facing and will have gained credibility.
However, if your company was not found during that search, you will need to find another way to be taken into consideration. This is typically the point at which buyers approach a friend or coworker to request recommendations.
However, in the last five years, there has been a 15% decline in referral requests. During the same period, there has been a 65% increase in the use of online search to find potential providers.
Making that list of potential providers is clearly and increasingly difficult for businesses with a weak digital brand. The next challenge for the fortunate companies that made the list is getting through the assessment process.
Assessing Service Suppliers. What part does your online presence have in the ultimate decision-making process? It turns out to be rather significant.
To begin with, 87% of purchasers have eliminated a company before ever speaking with them. Hurt! Thus, you might be in for a major disappointment if you are depending on your charisma and persuasive abilities to win the day.
The majority of buyers visit your website first. However, that is just the start. Buyers are more likely to judge you 72% of the time based on their interactions with your digital brand across all channels than they are to judge you 28% of the time based on more conventional means.
Developing Your Digital Branding Strategy
Your offline (or traditional) brand and your digital brand are one and the same. Instead, they are, or ought to be, parts of a single, cohesive whole. These are just two distinct approaches to sharing your story and establishing your reputation.
This implies that both components can be branded using the same procedure. However, it’s not quite that easy. Numerous businesses have underfunded or ignored their digital branding campaigns. They are now forced to expedite the development of their digital brand and harmonize their digital strategy with their offline branding.
Here’s how to update your digital brand strategy to meet modern requirements.
- Start with your Business Goals.
Digital branding is something that shouldn’t be done alone. You should think about your overall plan: what are the objectives of your business? Are you attempting to draw in new customers? Reposition your business in a market that is competitive? Draw in elite talent?
Establishing clear objectives for your business will aid in prioritizing tasks and optimizing the utilization of your restricted assets. You can choose which metrics to monitor so you have the information necessary to make course corrections along the way once you have your ultimate goals in mind.
- Research your Target Audiences.
One of the simplest ways to make a mistake in your strategy is to skip this step. Why does it matter so much? As was previously mentioned, consumer behavior is changing quickly. Many businesses have an antiquated conception of digital branding and are unaware of the online behaviors of their clients and sources of referrals. - Build a Consistent Brand Identity.
Does your brand have a unified look? Is the use of logos consistent between digital and non-digital domains? Is your online presence consistent with your in-person presence at your office?
Achieving and sustaining a consistent brand identity is not easy. The natural pattern is to devolve into mismatched chaos. Don’t let that be your fate. One practical tool is to create brand usage guidelines. They should cover not only the visual elements of your brand, such as logo usage and colors, but describe your brand’s tone and style, as well.
- Synchronize Brand Positioning and Differentiators.
A strong brand is primarily based on its differentiators and market positioning. At this point, you want to make sure that your traditional and digital brands are aligned. Though their alignment may seem obvious, at many firms they have drifted apart, sometimes to a concerning degree.
How is this possible? Businesses occasionally neglect important facets of their digital brand, like their social media presence or website. On occasion, a person deviates from the brand’s overall direction by focusing only on one aspect of it. Are you jovial or serious? How will working with you really be like? Confusing messages are bound to cause confusion.
- Synchronize your content strategy.
Most businesses are aware of how crucial it is to maintain consistency in their visual brand. However, delivering a consistent content strategy is more difficult to achieve. What topics will you write or discuss? Which attitude and tone will you adopt? These are the kinds of questions you have to respond to right away.
Declaring that you are an expert in a particular area for your website copy or marketing materials is one thing. It’s another matter entirely to exhibit that proficiency on social media or in your blog. Being consistent is the aim. It is important to maintain a consistent approach and level of competency regardless of the platform a prospect uses to engage with your brand.
- Develop your Brand-Building Plan.
This is where your digital brand really shines. Digital brand building is incredibly scalable and efficient, as demonstrated by our research on the professional services firms with the fastest rate of growth. Therefore, increasing your digital brand’s visibility is actually less expensive and easier than developing it the old-fashioned way.It also makes intuitive sense in a lot of ways. Think about using social media for networking instead of going to in-person events. Or think about the cost difference between an in-person seminar and a webinar. Cost and ease are important factors. Assuming you conducted thorough research in Step 2, you should be able to determine which digital channels are most appropriate for reaching your target audiences.
- Monitor and adjust Implementation.
On this front, there’s more good news as well. Comparatively speaking to their traditional counterparts, digital branding is also simpler to monitor. Tracking analytics are integrated into a lot of digital tools. Wish to monitor website traffic? Not an issue. What about participation on social media? Obviously much simpler than monitoring participation at an in-person networking event.
Monitoring and making adjustments will increase the efficacy and efficiency of your marketing, just like with any other marketing endeavor. Compared to traditional brand building activities, digital branding is arguably easier to track and control, which makes it easier to improve. Undoubtedly, this has been my own experience.
Conclusion
A modern professional services firm’s success is largely dependent on its digital brand. It affects the entire buyer’s journey and can play a significant role in attracting top talent and gaining new business. Making the correct decision can have a profound impact.