1#What is Branding?
Branding is very crucial part of marketing. It is a subpart of the marketing functions. Branding means giving a name, logo, identity of the product or services or a group of product or service. When we have every thing digital then why not digital branding?
Brand is not the generic name of the product. It is mostly the name of the manufacturer. For example biscuit is the generic name for the product, but Parle-G is the brand name. It is like just like giving a personality to a product.
Branding can make or break your business. It is very important to give it an importance and work on it. Business make people aware about their brands. It also represents the company which can include the goals, purpose, objectives, etc. of the firm as a whole and not just one product. It also includes packaging, labelling, spreading brand awareness through digital branding etc.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness means making the target segment of the audience aware about your brand and making them know that the brand exists. An example to it is Amazon. Amazon has made it’s brand name so strong by just making people aware and informing them about their services and building trust for the same. It can be done through, Facebook awareness ads, Email marketing, Social media etc.
2#what is digital branding
Now, combining the two terms, Digital and branding. Both these terms are now very important for any business to scale. Digital branding means branding digitally and displaying your brand on the digital platforms to more than 5.04 million people. It can be done organically and in the paid forms.
Generally, the main objective of digital branding is to build trust online so that people can purchase from the business without hesitation. This can be done through following strong digital branding strategies.
It is not only concerned with displaying or promoting a brand but it is also concerned with providing value or quality products or services at the bottom level. When we come across a brand, we see its logo, website, taglines etc. But if we are not fulfilling the needs and wants of the customers or not creating value, then the customer will not come again.
Through organic forms:
Organic forms like SEO, website development, Social media marketing, etc. can be used to spread brand awareness by delivering quality content to the viewers related to the brand. It is not as quick as paid forms, but if done organically and consistency, it is a big asset to the firm.
3# Digital branding through paid forms:
Paid forms like Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads etc. where these platforms charge some amount of money for the end goal that a business wants and try to show the ads to the relevant audience. If done through professionals, it can be a game changer spreading awareness about your brand, maximizing reach and generating responses also.
Through professionals you can reach the audience who are genuinely interested in your business or the people who require the product or search for relevant products or services. It helps to understand who are your audience on the basis of demographics, interests or behaviour.
4# Difference between traditional and digital branding
Traditional and digital branding are very different and have their own pros and cons. Traditional branding can only be done on product and advertisement level. product level includes making the packaging of the product attractive, labelling all the required information including the information required by the government, and then advertising it through hodings, print media etc.
Talking about digital branding, it includes operations and design on product level and intense digital marketing levels. It includes all those strategies that traditional branding has on product level, but the advertisement or marketing level is very different. This is because by choosing the digital path, one can open many doors and reach millions of audience and maybe at a lower price as compared to traditional branding techniques.
The future of branding and marketing lies in the digital era and it cannot be replaced because now a days very person of every age group or gender is using internet media. Now a days people don’t even read newspapers. It is also replaced by the people reading news on Google and here come the concept of Google ads and other paid forms of ads. Not only Google, but there are millions of people present on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Likedin etc.
5# Pros of digital branding
Some of the advantages of making people aware about your product and services through digital means are:
Global Reach
One can reach a large amount of people by just sitting at one place making them aware about our brand on a regular basis so that it get stuck in the mind of the people making them remember your brand. We can reach a person sitting in any part of the world through digital branding techniques which is very beneficial for the business.
Trust and credibility:
Making people aware about the brand leads to building trust and credibility for the business. Branding also includes setting a quality standard for your product and services. One sale through online platform leads to more as we display it and show the achievements of the business on our online platforms.
Cost effective:
It is a very cost effective technique for spreading awareness if done through proper tools and strategies. Comparing the traditional methods and the cost per result in advertising of building a brand image costs very high as compared to digital branding, but it requires professional skilled and expreinced team and it has to be regularly checked with keeping a continuoues follow up.
6# Strategies For digital branding
Some of the strategies for building a strong brand awareness and digital presence, the business needs to follow some strategies:
Giving Identity to your brand:
First and foremost step towards digital branding is to give identity to your brand and building it’s personality. Building the personality means giving it a purpose to work and displaying the same in front of the target audience. It starts with identifying the objectives for what we are selling, developing a website and designing a brand logo.
Starting with identifying the objectives for what we are selling. We need to find the purpose for which we are making the product or service or simply just addressing the problem that our business is solving. By doing this step you have already solved the half problem.
Developing a digital home: Website Development in digital branding
After this you need to develop a website for your business. Website development is very important for any business be it small, medium or large. It makes the face of your brand. People will get attracted and see the effort put in your landing page of the website which will leave a good impression and the website will be marketed in the minds of the viewers.
After this, we need to design the logo, create a tagline and making a standard for your products. The logo should be eye catchy making it look like that the business has put a lot of effort for the logo. The tagline should be in such a way that the viewer should read or hear it and think that something good is being delivered.
Building the base of digital branding
The most important step is to build the brand at the bottom level. This level includes making a standard for the quality of product and services with the customer assistance and treating the customers like family. Providing quality services or products and setting a standard.
Branding does not only mean building a logo or a tag line. It is for promotional purposes. But the main reason for branding is telling the customers why should they choose your business and displaying the achievements done by your brand or the customer reviews to build trust for digital branding.
It all comes down to providing value to the people and not just advertising. A logo, website and social media pages give the identity to the brand and help it to reach a many target customers as possible.
7# Case studies: Digital Branding
Tata:
The Tata group is one of the oldest and largest companies in India. They have been focusing on digital marketing for about 4 to 5 years now. It build digital branding strategies which focus on showing that their brand is known for trust innovation and corporate social responsibility. Through social media story telling social media ads and search engine optimization they build a digital brand. They grabbed the most out of social media through story telling to increase its brand credibility. The impact was simple that the story telling had in hand their brand reputation and made the target audience believe that it is reliable and dependable which lead to loyalty and increase in engagement
Flipkart
Flipkart is one of the top E-Commerce sites in India which is competing with other E-Commerce brands. They increased their customer bae through digital branding itself. Flipkart festival campaigns run on Facebook and Google lead to increase in the orders and held it to become a trusted brand. The festival campaign for the big billion days was iconic because they collaborated with celebrities and carried out influencer marketing. They also have a strong presence on social media.
Zomato
Zomato the big online food delivery portal has built its brand digital through social media and paid ads. They carried out various digital branding strategies. Their social media is very responsive and they often include jokes that engage with the Indian audience with their dynamic landing pages making it very attractive. Their social media presence and paid ads lead to an increase in app downloads and is one of the most followed social media accounts.
8# Conclusion:
Branding is one of the most important concept and a part of marketing. When all the marketing functions are turning digital then why not branding? Digital branding leads to brand awareness and we can make a million people aware about our brand and tell the audience about us and what we are offering as a brand. It can be done through organic means like SEO and social media marketing and paid means like google ads and Facebook ads both.
Traditional branding is the old type of marketing and it cannot replace digital branding. As we know that branding is all about making people aware and offering them with the products and services. Through digital means we can reach as many as the number of people possible on the internet.
We can make people aware about a brand globally and reach global markets as well. It also increases trust and credibility in the mind of the audience and is also cost effective.
Digital branding strategies start from giving an identity to the brand and making it authentic. Designing a logo giving it on catchy name, description, packaging, etcetera is included in digital branding.
