Digital Branding Services To Establish Your Online Presence

October 14, 2020

The internet continues to play an outsized role in our daily lives. Companies have to take charge of their online image and presence to help customers know who they are and what they can do for them.

To carve out their place online, there are some steps a company needs to take to establish themselves and their brand. 

First things first—What Is Digital Branding?

Digital branding is a form of branding and brand management. It takes the traditional concept of branding and translates it into the digital world. It uses the power of the internet, along with digital marketing strategies, to elevate the profile of a brand online. 

The objective is to create a connection between the brand and the products it markets by using the internet to make the brand recognizable. While producing sales is a welcome byproduct, that isn’t the primary goal of digital branding.

Digital branding services seek to increase awareness of the brand, tell the story of the company, and cultivate & drive customer loyalty.

Branding is how you put your message into the world; your brand is what people think of when they hear the name of your business. 

Everything needs to be reviewed—your logo, typeface, color schemes, website, social media channels, messaging & tone, etc. Every piece of your brand message has to complement each other and work together to meet your objectives. 

As a reminder—branding is not marketing.

Marketing is what you do when you are trying to increase exposure to your brand or drive sales for your business. Branding is developing the voice for your company’s story and the elements you will use to tell that story.

They can be easy to confuse but serve starkly different purposes.

Throughout this article, successful examples of digital branding services will be highlighted so you can see what it takes to establish your company online.

1. Identify Who Your Target Customer Is By Creating Customer Personas

Before you start trying to brand, market, or sell anything, you have to know who your ideal customer is.

If you have not already done so, create your buyer personas and map out the customer journey. Without this information, everything else you do will be for nothing. If you don’t know your target, your branding and marketing efforts may not even work. You will gain valuable information about your target group during these two activities.

You can learn:

• Their purchasing habits
• Preferred method of purchase
• What items they like to purchase
• What time of day/week/month/year they make a purchase
• What the needs are of your target groups

Once you gather this information, you can sketch out your persona. You should know their gender, age, demographic information, income bracket, education levels, and many more details. Consider also how you will target customers at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

This information then helps you develop your digital branding strategy.

An example of a business who utilized digital branding services and understood their target customer is Lush Cosmetics. As a company, Lush is big on the environment and eco-friendly causes. Minimalism is evident in their stores with a focus on reusable packaging and sustainability. Their target customer is a person who supports many of the same ideals. Lush and their customers embrace and support each other in terms of their values.

2. Developing your brand image and message

Now that you know who your target customer is, you have to develop your brand messaging and creative. At this stage, you can start creating your brand collateral, website, and developing your social media channels.

These are the elements you need to address while creating your brand image and message.

• Logo– logos are what make brands memorable and iconic. Think of Nike or McDonalds. Think of a logo that will encompass what you stand for and leave a lasting impression as well. When it comes to digital branding services, the creation of your logo is one of the most important.
• Brand colors and typeface– the color you use in your logo will end up reflected across many pieces of collateral. For example, if you are a retail store, these colors will end up on your shopping bags and even signage used throughout your store. The typeface you use is the same way. Both need to continue the message of your brand. If your company sells beard oil to highly masculine men, bright colors and flowery typeface is not a good idea for your collateral. 
• Website– a responsive website is a must in today’s business world. Your website is a one-stop-shop for everything pertaining to your business. Potential customers should be able to come here and learn about your company, how and why to purchase your products (if applicable), what the advantage is to doing business with you, how to find you on social media, how to sign up for emails, etc. Since 50% of searches come from mobile devices, everything must be equipped for mobile traffic. In a nutshell, a website should reinforce your digital branding and help customers communicate with you. 
• Social media channels– there are dozens of social media networks to choose from to share your messages with customers. The trick is to only use the ones you need. If your core customer is men from 45-55, there isn’t a point in having a Snapchat or Pinterest account. Use channels where your customers are and provide them with quality content on those platforms. Also, use your social channels as a chance to have a conversation with your followers. This is a chance to get their feedback and help them with any service issues. 
• Messaging & tone– it is important to decide the specifics of how you want to communicate with your customers. It needs to match your products and your brand. If your messaging and tone don’t match your products, you won’t be viewed as trustworthy by your customers. 

As an example of a company that hits this point home, I would refer you to the computer company Apple. They do many things right in terms of branding and marketing, but this is one area they knock out of the park. Every brand detail is used and reinforced throughout the company. Even the silver in the Apple logo is the color silver used on many of their products. 

3. Create digital marketing campaigns to increase your visibility

Now that you have determined who you are targeting and how you want to speak with them, you are ready to start marketing to your customers. 

Print media and advertisements still have a place in some marketing campaigns. Depending upon what type of campaign it is, that may even be the best method to use.

But digital advertising channels reign supreme for most purposes and demographics. 

Digital advertising is the quickest way to reach your customers. You can also see your results virtually in real time and get an idea of your ROI. Digital campaigns can produce very large ROIs for a company. 

While it can get harder to track a precise number like that for other digital marketing types, as a whole, digital marketing produces a 118% ROI for a company. 

In essence, that means if you spend $100 on a campaign you will generate $218 from your efforts, netting you $118 in profit. Traditional media just does not deliver those kinds of results. 

To run a digital marketing campaign, these are digital branding services you will want to consider:

• Email marketing– as already mentioned, email marketing offers an eye-popping ROI. In addition to ROI, email marketing campaigns have a 15-25% open rate. This is far above the click rate of digital ads. Create marketing campaigns with a CRM so you can use even more targeted emails. 
• Social media marketing– the sky’s the limit when it comes to social media marketing and what a business can do. You can conduct polls, cross-promote with other channels, share content, create branded hashtags, and so much more. These platforms are free or at a nominal cost, so you can expand your reach at a cost-effective price. 
• Paid online advertising– the digital world provides businesses with tons of free exposure through social media posts. But you can’t count on that alone. Luckily, online advertising is budget-friendly and has a very large reach. You can pick flat rate options or pay per click models for your ad buys. Digital ads can also be targeted to your ideal customer. These are a great way to expand your customer base. Google and Facebook have millions of daily users. You want to devise a plan that will get your ads in front of that many potential customers.
• Influencer marketing– one of the newest trends in the digital world is influencer marketing. If your target market could be swayed by celebrity influencers, it is worth looking into as another avenue of lead generation. 
• Content marketing strategy– content is still king, even in the digital world. Where people get confused is thinking that content is only words. Content covers everything, including pictures and videos. To make sure you aren’t just haphazardly posting content, develop a content marketing strategy. If you draw people to your channels, you have to provide them with quality content once they are there.
• SEO optimization– SEO, aka search engine optimization may seem like just another buzzy acronym, but this term holds a lot more weight than some may think. And it plays a big role in any digital strategy. There is more content on the web than a person could ever view. To get your content in front of the most people, you need to rank high with search engines like Google and Bing. Any content you produce needs to be optimized to help you rank as high as possible. Prepare a keyword strategy so those words can be used naturally throughout your content. Don’t forget to optimize your website as well!

It is tough to pick a company that does well for this point because so many companies do well with digital outreach. However, Dove does a terrific job with developing hashtag and buzzworthy digital campaigns so we opted to showcase them. Here is an example of one of their recent campaigns. 

4. Make sure that you test and make adjustments as needed.

This is the biggest thing in the digital world that can be overlooked. 

A person can create a winning email campaign or a viral video and think they can recreate that same magic using the same techniques time again. In the digital world, that isn’t the case. Digital marketing moves at lightning speed and what works one month might not get the same results by next month. You have to be willing to make adjustments and change your strategy in the moment. When possible, you should test your material so you can make adjustments to have more impactful campaign elements. 

You can apply this testing to multiple elements. Here are some tips about how to test your material for effectiveness:

• Testing email subject lines
• Testing call to actions for a sense of urgency
• Only test one variable at a time
• Get feedback on everything, including layout, colors, placement of buttons and text blocks, etc.

To give you a better idea of what this testing looks like, here are three examples that showcase what to do to get the best results. 

Getting Started with Digital Branding Services

If you use the tips shared in this article and study the examples, you will be on your way to success for providing strong digital branding services. Mediaboom is a full service agency that can help you with every step of your digital services review and execution of your digital strategy.

By: Frank DePino

Frank DePino is Principal and Founder of Mediaboom. Since 2002, Frank has led Mediaboom’s award-winning staff of creative and technical professionals building the most effective marketing and advertising solutions for its clients.