What is the relationship between Digital Marketing and Branding?

It is crucial to have great brand value in today’s saturated marketplace. How to make the brand sell itself without trying too hard?

The most effective way is to first build brand awareness synonymous with all the marketing communications and physical touch points. For example, your service staff, marketing materials and social media pages have to communicate the same message. This can be summarised into the term “brand voice” where the brand is wholly consistent with the image the marketer intends to portray.

Now, building a powerful brand goes beyond big budgets.

In 2020, digital marketing is about what the brand stands for and how it should be presented. Trust in word-of-mouth, micro-influencers credibility and engagement emphasizes the importance of interests and relevance to target audiences.

Target audiences pursue value with a brand story told to deliver worth to them first than the business. Such brands enable customers through solving their problems in an effective manner. This results in empowerment, security and confidence in consumers’ perspectives towards the brand.

As the market gets increasingly saturated, it would be more efficient to target audiences based on their common interests. For example, in-market shoppers interested in catering services or parents looking for childcare services. Having a broad audience group may result in ineffective message targeting as you are not as relevant in your interactions.

Hence, brands should be focusing on:

Build a strong community presence

Two-way communication is made possible with technological advancements and social media developments. An efficient way to start is through developing a social media profile or group to attract members of the same interests. In essence, you wish to attract people who are brand advocates or are frequent users of your products and/or services. As word of mouth recommendations are regarded as one of the most credible sources, you can do this to attract new customers and gain brand recognition.

Maintain consistency in digital brand voice

As mentioned above, consistency is key. This allows you to respond and meet consumers’ expectations with the same approach. With a lower barrier of entry and higher scalability, digital marketing has provided a more comprehensive approach for brands to reach customers efficiently.

Set budget and track results

Digital marketing is made competitive with the function to track your advertising results. Now, you can manage your costs, clicks and return on investment (ROI) for the ad sets you create. On top of that, you can customise the advertisement period over a selected date range. With different digital platforms, you can cater content customised for different audiences and locations to improve results performance. This was much more difficult historically.

Define your target audience clearly

We also mentioned that customer’s relevancy and interests are highly important for digital marketing. With the intense amount of consumer data collected, big data analytics now make ads targeting much easier.

With social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, you can customise highly defined audience group for your digital marketing campaigns. For example, you can narrow your target to female’s shoppers looking for high heels!

Develop your original content

As digital marketing is a better option to reach your target audience in an efficient manner, online competition is high with many competitors targeting the same consumers. You have to be unique to get above the noise and attract people to notice you. Understanding your consumers’ interests and behaviours allow you to develop original content that is more relevant for them. Your content instinctively becomes more relevant and attractive, attracting more clicks.

Building trusts

Trusts in brands is accumulated and built with time along with the experience and value it provides to their consumers. With customers empowerment and two-way interactions, brands are expected to be present at various stages in their lives. Thus, the essence of trusts is derived from value beyond your product or service. These experiences stem from customer interactions at every touch point, before and after the sales. With great emphasis, the value you generate needs to be consistent throughout the organisation.

Relevant and valued experiences at the right place and time

When you offer real value to your target customers, you are building a long-term relationship with your customers. You cannot be everything for everyone, thus consider making a difference by being unique and competitive.

For more interesting reads like this, check out our other articles on Marketing Ethics and we are proud to share our win at the recent Enterprise Awards Singapore!

Alternatively, do you need help with consumer engagement, or just looking for a digital marketing agency to help with your business? Call us today at +65 6343 0068 to speak to us for a free, customized consultation!