Gone are the days when companies would spend a significant share of their revenue on traditional forms of marketing using channels like television, radio, magazines, events, and direct email.
The rise of the digital era has shrunk the printing industry that dominated companies for centuries. Today, companies are shifting to online marketing with the same intentions of reaching potential customers and increasing visibility.
With over 21.75 internet users in Kenya, every business needs help to get noticed in the crowded digital space. Some top brands in Kenya, like Safaricom and Equity, have managed to attain positive online visibility, but this is still a nightmare for hundreds of startups.
So, how do businesses stand out amid the never-ending online noise? How do companies get noticed by the rest? This is a question that a lot of Digital Marketers and community managers struggle with every single day.
In this article, we will show what Branding looks like and how it plays a more significant role in achieving online visibility for companies.
Did you know that? With a good branding strategy, customers will align with your business positively; you will be able to grow your audience, which will, in most cases, be translated to potential buyers. To start with?
Q1: What is online Branding?
Branding is how you want people to interact with your company. It’s how you communicate to your people and how you want them to feel about the message you are trying to convey.
Branding is your company’s “Identity”, which in most cases is tied to the tangible look of the brand based on the foundation of your brand from Logo, color, Fonts, and graphics.
Q2: How can you achieve online Branding?
If you are trying to start a business but wondering how to achieve online Branding well, from desk research, we have found out that successful brands that one can quickly notice their online activities have one thing in common: aside from good customer interaction, these companies are consistently making good usage of their colour, Logo, Image, and Graphics because they understand this is their brand identifier.
Below is an example from Safaricom, a top telecommunication company in Kenya. For years, Safaricom has managed to gain good online visibility, gaining over 1 million Facebook followers.
Here is what we can learn from  Safaricom online brand identity.
Image A is the Safaricom logo. Image B is a screenshot of most of Safaricom’s Facebook posts; looking at the usage of their brand colour on the Facebook post, you can learn that they consistently maintain their brand look.
Now, let’s explore how critical is Logo, colour, graphics, and customer interaction in achieving online Branding.
Logo:
In Branding, it is essential to understand that Logo is your brand identifier; in a small graphic, a logo should convey the brand’s beliefs, emotions, and values.
Consumers will immediately associate your business with your Logo. So, how does a logo play a significant role in Branding?
Because your brand logo is your crucial identifier, this means that in all the company marketing activities, every element that comes from your Logo should be used strategically in all your marketing or communication activities. This means your Logo must appear in all your materials offline or online, just like we have seen in image 1A.
Colour:
Now that we understand the importance of a logo, it is also essential to know how the colour represented in your Logo is your brand identifier.
Colour speaks directly to consumers’ psychology and sometimes affects their purchasing behaviour..In a 2006 study, researchers found that the relationship between brands and colour hinges on the perceived appropriateness of the colour used for the particular brand, meaning, Does the colour fit what’s being sold?
So picking the “right” colour, in most scenarios, predicts consumer reaction to your brand, and when it comes to Branding, remember that the perceptions and behaviours of consumers matter!
Graphic and Image:
Consistency in using graphics and images will help people memorize a particular product or service associated with that specific business.
For a business to gain high visibility, using attractive visuals and powerful images helps it communicate its message effectively and increase visibility while affecting overall customer loyalty.
Customer interaction:
How do you connect with your customers? How do you attract new customers? Customer relations have been proven to affect company brand identity and, to some extent, help to maintain customer loyalty.
People yern to be listened to. When a brand has built trust in its customers through a suitable listenership mechanism, brand loyalty toward its consumers starts to develop.
This is what online customer engagement looks like.
Looking at image 2Aquestion and response, a simple question from a customer will help solve a simple yet complex process that sometimes would have taken centuries for consumers to be aware of or understand.
Thus, customer engagement will affect overall brand identity because people will feel listened to and appreciated, triggering customer satisfaction, as demonstrated in image 2A.
Q3: How does Branding affect your overall business objectives?Â
Suppose your overall business objective is to make more sales.Â
Building a consistent image around your selling points is extremely important; thus, understanding what a customer is looking for and highlighting this throughout your marketing activities will help influence the results in sales one way or the other.Â
Your company’s overall objective should align well with your brand visibility strategy.
Remember, brand visibility is a critical player in optimizing a business’s presence, reach, leads, and sales. Lastly, to achieve online Branding, you need an essential background in graphics and design. If you have a challenge using Photoshop, then we have good platforms such as Canva that will enable you to come up with both static and animated layouts for online usage while at the same time helping you to maintain your brand identity by giving you options to manipulate colours and shapes + images.
If you still feel this is too much work, why don’t you hire a graphic designer to save time and increase brand value?
