The power of a brand got more prominence after the covid-accelerated digital transformation. The global pandemic made consumers more brand loyal than ever. People were trying to the best of their abilities to help their favourite and local brands through the scrambling economy. So if a person is planning a digital transformation of his/her business, then building a brand should definitely be an integral part of that plan.

 

 

A lot effort is needed in creating a powerful brand and it also takes a lot of time, but there need to be a start somewhere. So below are the ways in which a consistent brand image can be created to lay a foundation on the existing brand building efforts.

 

Find a meaningful brand name that sticks

It is never easy to find a cool brand name, instead a rather intimidating task because the brand in most cases is forced to stick to the name for the rest of its existence. Plus a lot of factors have to be kept in mind while thinking of a name, like “Will it be easy to remember and type in the search box / address bar?”, “Will it cause too many misspellings?”, “Will it create the right associations with what I do?”.

It’s a huge decision to make and so must be taken carefully and with enough thought put into it.

 

Create kit that identifies with the brand

Visual branding is an important element of setting up a solid foundation for marketing strategy. Colors and images stick in the minds of the people and create important associations.

Using colors and branding consistently across all the channels will help the followers remember the brand and the message and recognize the required site in search results (which are getting increasingly visual as well).

 

Write up business communication policy

Brand is going to communicate with the outside world on multiple occasions:

• Representatives are going to be sent to conferences and industry events.
• Social media team is going to interact with the social media followers on a daily basis.
• Customer support team is going to talk to current and future customers every day.
• Sales team will be performing cold calls and outreach.

Throughout all of that, there will be many individuals – both new and established employees and often freelancers – talking about the brand on the brand’s behalf. So it’s important to start creating a clear, yet detailed business communication policy for the employees to know what they can and cannot do or say when representing the brand and speaking on its behalf.

 

 

Communication guidelines should also include communicating with and employing your brand’s ambassadors, affiliates and guest contributers.

 

Set up an ever-growing knowledge base

As the brand starts growing, there will be more and more context added online around all kinds of experiences the customers are going to have with the product and employees. Not all of that context is going to be positive. No matter how good the product or the website, there will always be users who will find the web assets hard to navigate, customers who will misunderstand the product or people who will dislike talking to the customer support team.

All of that context should be constantly monitored and addressed. That’s the only way to ensure that possible reputation crises are avoided and the customers remain loyal.

In order to keep the brand’s social media sentiment under control, set up three important monitoring routines to:

• Keep an eye on your branded search results (i.e. what people see when they search for something that includes your brand name)
• Listen to, analyze and participate in social media updates that mention your brand name
• Listen to and analyze social media updates that mention your competitors, especially those updates that come from unhappy customers.

While monitoring your growing online sentiment:

• Identify emerging branded search terms people seem to use when researching your brand online
• Catch questions your customers are asking involving your brand or your product
• Identify what your customers seem to be usually unhappy with when discussing your brand and your competitor on social networks.

 

Issues must be addressed in the on-site knowledge base

The purpose of a detailed knowledge base is twofold:

• In order to rank the site #1 for all branded search queries so for the customers end up going back to the site instead of bouncing to a third-party review or the competitor.
• You want to create a single database for the old and new employees that contains to know where to find all the information to help the struggling customers.

 

Creating a powerful brand is no easy task but it is well worth the effort. Strong brands survive any Google’s update, enjoy higher conversions and are less dependent on any single source of traffic and conversions. Building a brand is an on-going effort but if a solid foundation is laid, the task will be more doable.