Many people believe a brand is simply a name, a logo, and a tagline, however, this is only part of what a brand entails. It is also a conversation with your audience that creates and reinforces the purpose and personality of your business. With so many companies trying to stand out in an increasingly competitive digital marketplace, building a strong brand on- and off-screen has become critical to anyone looking to find success.
When it comes to digital-focused businesses, smart branding is even more important, as it helps provide a much-needed, tangible face to your company. It helps make your online presence stronger, appealing to your visitors, building consumer trust, and encouraging them to spend more time interacting with you. Building a brand that connects with customers requires consistent messaging at every point of interaction.
Let’s take a look at the steps you can take to use your brand identity to create a distinctive online presence that helps differentiate your business from the competition.
Create Your Story
The first part of creating a strong online presence is to focus on the message you want your brand to convey.
You may have an assortment of messages that you would like to communicate to your online audience, such as your selection of quality products, your great customer support, or your well-known customers.
However, you want to be aware that the attention span of your website visitors is limited. If you try to highlight too many different elements you may end up not communicating any of them effectively.
This is why you want to select certain parts of your message to use as a foundation to transform into a story. Begin by considering two to three values that best represent the core of your business. Create attractive visuals and simple wording to present your concept and begin developing the recognizable persona of your brand. Bold and simple tends to resonate better than a hodge-podge of platitudes.
Expand on this by giving authenticity to your communication and create stories where your core values are the heroes. For example, you can use testimonials from your customers or facts regarding the history of your company.
In your story, focus on the characters and their emotions and how your business satisfies a particular need. Build a minimal plot and develop actions to engage and captivate your visitors. The more you develop your storyline, the more you can use it across your marketing campaigns to craft a cohesive brand identity.
Make Your Website the Center of Your Brand’s Messaging
Once you have selected the core values to build your online presence around, you’ll have to communicate them in the best way possible.
Your website is the most important online marketing asset that you have and it is the perfect choice for displaying your brand in a complete and structured manner.
As you own your website, you are in complete control of the flow of information and have the advantage of choosing every piece of content that is published to better guide visitors according to your objectives.
You want to have a seamless and consistent connection between your communication across other online channels and your website. This means your messaging, colors, typeface, and theme should all be consistent.
If you are able to convey a connected message at every touchpoint, your brand will stand out to your target audience as a cohesive image and they will be far more likely to remember you..
Expand Your Online Presence to Other Platforms
While your website is the central hub of your online presence, it’s important not to neglect other channels, including social media platforms, paid advertisements, banners on other sites or content published through partners.
Each has its own benefits and brings a unique opportunity to deepen the connection with your target audience. You’ll want to create multiple perspectives of your story to fit the variety of different platforms, all while maintaining a consistent brand messaging. Your content may look a little different on each channel but the core values and central theme of your message should be the same.
Monitor Your Brand to Maintain Your Brand Identity
Similar to other aspects of marketing, it is difficult to know what is working without tracking key performance metrics. You want to consistently measure the impact of your marketing campaigns and the image of your brand to see if your strategies are having the desired effects. This will allow you to see if elements of your story need adjusting or if you should change the messaging for different online channels.
To measure the performance of your brand, you’ll have to determine the key performance indicators linked to your marketing goals. For example, if you are trying to present a brand image that connects with young people, you’ll want to evaluate demographics like age to see if a significant amount of your web visitors are of that age range and utilize marketing tools and platforms best catered to that demo.
Professional Branding Services From Total Design Works
Creating a distinctive online presence requires consistent use of design elements as well as a connected message. When customers can instantly recognize your business based on your branding elements, you have created a unique identity that will stand apart from the competition.
TDW Digital Solutions offers professional brand design services tailored for startups and small businesses. Our expert team has what it takes to craft a brand identity that gets your business noticed and wins loyal customers.
Contact us today to learn more about our branding and web design services.
