Digital Brand Strategy Series: Part 1, Intro to Digital Brand Strategy
Digital Brand Strategy (DBS) is very important for today’s businesses. The organizations that recognize that more and more decision-making will be done in digital settings and who position themselves well in these spaces are likely to have more sustainable success than those who don’t. We’ve developed this 5-part Digital Brand Strategy series with this in mind. This portion, Part 1, provides a high-level overview of Digital Branding and Digital Brand Strategy.
The global COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has prompted businesses and organizations of all sizes and industries to give renewed, serious thought to all aspects of their brands. The pandemic has and will continue to have immediate and far-reaching consequences on the way we market and consume products and services. Business and organizations are being forced to change their models and offerings, oftentimes on the fly. Change is happening rapidly and often in unpredictable ways.
With the advent of technology to gain, keep and grow clients or customers, it is imperative for organizations that want to grow to spend considerable time and effort resolving how their brands are positioned in digital spaces. Consider that just 10 years ago, a mobile-responsive website may have been thought of as something that was nice to have; it is now essential. The same things can be said of a social media or SEO strategy for your organization. Digital transformation has made these things from nice-to-have to need-to-have. This is certainly true for an overarching digital marketing/brand strategy.
What is digital brand strategy?
Your digital brand and traditional brand are different, but not divergent. You should think of them as two sides of the same, working together to achieve a common purpose. Your digital brand strategy is essentially your plan for how you carry forth your brand identity, message and value in a digital setting. This alludes to how you align and deploy this positioning in digital media and the tools you use to do it.
As customer habits change, sometimes by way of external factors, like the pandemic, and as technology continues to advance, digital brand strategy’s importance will only continue to increase. More and more, the first meaningful contact with your business or brand is occurring in a digital environment. According to a report by Forrester, 68% of B2B customers prefer to research independently online. This means that more and more customers are touching key aspects of your business and your brand to learn about your organization’s values, offerings and opportunities prior to inquiry or purchase.
A strong Digital Brand Strategy seeks to ensure, among other things, that your business can reliably and readily be found by these people that are seeking you out in digital settings, that you are providing the right messaging and types of content that answers their questions or solves their problems, and that you can deliver the products, services or information they need efficiently, effectively and in a way that reinforces your brand and its value in the market.
Clearly, there’s lots to consider, and over the next four installments of this series, we will be examining several aspects of digital brand strategy and providing a number of insights to help your business develop and deploy a robust digital brand strategy that helps you keep in step with the rapidly changing business landscape.
Below are just a few components of Digital Brand Strategy that you should consider and implement. This list is not all-inclusive, nor do you need to feel like you have to do all of these (more on that later.) We’ve divided them by type.
| Data | Discourse | Deliverable |
| Analytics
SEO |
Website
Video Blog Webinars Podcast Social Media Email Marketing |
Reports/White Papers
Ebooks Slide Deck Infographic |
Why is digital brand strategy important?
There could be a number of reasons why your organization has not yet put adequate time and resources into your digital brand/strategy. Some of these reasons include lack of technical expertise, emphasis on other priorities, and lack of resources. In some cases, if an organization has an over-arching brand strategy for their business at all, the digital side is in many cases under-developed and lagging behind the offline branding strategy. Recent events have shown us the problem with this approach.
You may be thinking, “this seems so daunting, where do I begin as I think about how to develop and execute a digital brand strategy?”- especially in highly-competitive marketplace and when resources may be limited or allocated toward other priorities. I understand that sentiment. Over the next several weeks, we will be highlighting four keys to help your organization to develop a cohesive, coherent and compelling digital brand strategy.
Enthuse Creative, LLC is a Northern Virginia (Tysons)-based brand consulting and design firm that specializes in developing brand-focused strategy and creative work for businesses and organizations, from startups to nonprofits. A major focus of its business is providing training and tools to help businesses improve their digital brand strategy and presence.
If your business needs assistance with digital branding, please contact Enthuse Creative for a free consultation.
