Building strong brand in the era of digital transformation
What is the brand?
A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a product. A brand is not a promise. A brand is not the sum of all the impressions it makes on an audience.
A brand is a result–it's a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company. It's in their heads and in their hearts. A brand is your reputation.
The core of what makes a brand is the same - people perceive some premium value in the product or service that they ascribe to the brand, and that brand comes to encompass that value.
What has changed is that brands are now built online by consumers. Brands are what people say about you when you're not in the room, and that room has gotten extremely big and extremely digital.
The result is you can't assume that if you engage in the same strategy and tactics in a post-digital world that you will build your brand in a competitive way.
I used to do this thing when I was presenting to marketers where I'd go up live on the internet and Google a brand. You instantly see how conversational they've become.
Content that goes up on Twitter and Facebook does the same thing - real time has changed everything now. What digital has done is given control to consumers.
Branding is no longer just about exposure
Building a strong brand is not longer just about increasing your brand exposure to your customer. It's more about how they interact and experience with your brand in every touch points such as talking with your employee, search your brands, how do they engage with your social channels, etc. All of those touch points should be careful consideration as your coherent marketing strategy.
In the other words, that's no longer what brand tell about themself but instead it's what customers experience that counts. Marketing serves to reinforce the experiences clients encounter when they engage with your company rather than dictating what those experiences should be.
Building strong brand in the era of digital transformation
Branding in the digital age requires a mix of tried and true ideologies from the past and new approaches needed in today's environment.
Following are ten fundamentals for branding in the digital age:
- Differentiate and stand out from your competition. Consumers need a clear understanding of what makes your brand unique.
- Be authentic and make sure your brand promise is something you can live up to.
- Connect emotionally like when BMW said, “We realized a long time ago that what you make people feel, is just as important as what you make.”
- Be consistent across every touch point and every communication. People should experience the same feeling whether they are in your locale, searching your website, or engaging on your social media sites.
- Understand your audienceintimately—their wants, needs, interests, pain points, etc. and address them in your marketing strategy.
- Think digital (and mobile first) whether blogs, social media, news sites, websites or email. Purchasing behavior has changed dramatically, with online research becoming a significant part of the buying cycle for both B2C and B2B—traditional approaches now support digital.
- Personalize the experience; marketing can no longer be to the masses. People want to feel that their interactions and experiences are personalized and directly relevant to them.
- Pull them in because branding is no longer a push strategy. Consumers want value not volume, so approach marketing with a client-centric content mindset.
- Listen and respond. Branding is now a two-way conversation, so listen to your audience, deliver timely responses to their comments, and incorporate their feedback.
- Keep them coming back by creating both a remarkable product/service and remarkable marketing that will lead to passionate brand advocates that do the selling for you.
