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 messaging.
The rise of the digital era has shrunk the printing industry that dominated companies for centuries.
Today, companies are shifting to online marketing to maximize resources while increasing the revenue margin and still standing out to reach potential or existing customers.
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, have managed to attain great online visibility, but for the new entrants gaining online visibility is still a nightmare.
So, how do businesses stand out amid the online noise? How do companies get noticed by the rest of their competitors? This is a question that a lot of Digital Marketers and community managers struggle with every single day.
This article will answer four critical questions which explore how branding plays a more significant role in achieving online visibility.
- What is online branding?
- How can you achieve online branding?
- How does branding affect your overall business objectives?
- What are the tools and relevant skills required for branding?
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, big brands that you can quickly notice their online activities have one thing in common, aside from good customer interaction this company make good usage of their Logo, color, Image and Graphics because they understand this is their brand identifier.
Thus, in achieving online branding, we will look at how you can use your Logo, color, graphics and customer interaction to achieve an everlasting online brand.
Logo Usage as a 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 Logo play a significant role in branding?
Because your brand logo is your identity, all your company marketing activities should be strategically branded with vital elements from your Logo.
This means your Logo has to appear in all your marketing materials, both offline and online.
Image A is Safaricom’s logo; Safaricom is a leading telecommunication company in Kenya; image B is a screenshot of how most of Safaricom’s Facebook posts appear; looking at the usage of their brand colour and logo below, what can you learn? let us know your thoughts from the comment section below.
Color Usageas a brand identifier
Now that we understand the importance of Logo as a brand identifier, it is also essential to know how the colour represented in your Logo plays a bigger role in your business online branding.
Colour speaks directly to consumers’ psychology and sometimes affects their purchasing behavior
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 behaviors of consumers matter!
To achieve brand consistency, itÂis advised that the colour represented in your logo should be your brand colour.ÂThis should appear in all materials for consistency and memorability.
Graphics Usageas a brand identifier
Consistency in graphical representation will help people memorize a particular product or service associated with that specific business.
For a company to gain high visibility, the use of Attractive visuals and powerful images not only helps the company to communicate its message effectively but also helps in increasing visibility while affecting overall customer loyalty.
For positive online branding, relying on a graphic designer who will help you maintain consistency in all your online and offline material is advisable.
Customer relation and engagement in Branding:
How do you connect with your customer? 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 need to be listened to. Brand loyalty begins when a brand has consistently built up trust in its customers.
How do you engage with your online customers or followers? Do you respond on time or ignore their request? Do you follow up if they are satisfied with your services?
Good customer engagement will help you scale faster while building an everlasting relationship.Â
Looking at image B above, a simple engagement with your customer will help solve a simple yet complex process that sometimes would have taken centuries for consumers to understand.
Thus, customer engagement will affect overall brand identity because people will feel listened to and appreciated, triggering customer satisfaction, as demonstrated in image A.
Q3: HOW DOES BRANDING AFFECT YOUR OVERALL BUSINESS OBJECTIVES?
Suppose your overall business objective is to make more sales.
This means that 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.
Your company objective should align well with your brand visibility strategy because brand visibility is critical in optimizing a business’s presence, reach, leads, and sales.
Q4: WHAT ARE THE TOOLS AND RELEVANT SKILLS REQUIRED FOR BRANDING?
Now that you understand what branding is, how it can be achieved and how it affects your overall business objective, it’s time to look at some relevant skills and the tools required to achieve and maintain online branding.
Back in the day, people used to associate graphic designers with Photoshop. But, over the years, more tools have been developed to assist marketers and brand ambassadors in achieving the same task of producing suitable materials or layouts without necessarily having the hard skills and know-how of a graphic designers.
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 colors and shapes + images.
Try it out. It’s simple!
Aside from Canva, we have many other tools to help you achieve your brand visibility, just Google!
Always remember that with a good branding strategy, customers will align with your business positively; you will be able to increase your niche audience, which will, in most cases, be translated to potential buyers.
Good luck!
