Brand digital presence: how to expand yours

Try to remember the last time you were looking for something online – maybe headphones, something for your home, or clothes. You’ve probably started examining what is out there among brands. You found several of them and compared each one by looking at the reviews, quality, and other important features of the product. You may or may not notice that some brands were higher, and the number of mentions about them was bigger. This is not a coincidence but a consequence of an effectively built online presence.

Nowadays digital presence is even more vital, influential and highly required for brands. After the world went on lockdown, there were a few ways for the businesses to survive. Many of them lost in this battle with time, but those who managed to survive also managed to thrive. How? They built vet effective online presence. The Internet is the only place where people look for products and various goods.

To be precise, 97% of customers would spend time online learning about brands and their products before making a purchase. This must tell a lot to the brands about building marketing strategies. You might have a fantastic product and creative team, but to complete the picture, you have to work on your brand presence online. Some companies win customer’s attention and loyalty because they know how to build effective fuels and make the user journey map that helps to overcome most of the doubts customers might face in the way of purchasing a product or service.

Customer’s purchasing decisions basically depend on what can make them sure that this is the right thing to buy. The basic definition of online presence is the following: how easy it will be for the customer to find brand pages when looking for the product.

It includes all of them: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or even Amazon. In some cases, it might be Medium. The digital presence is a kind of vehicle that carries your product along with other people. Experienced customers understand that establishing a visibility brand has to work hard. Despite significant advances in making products, some brands that aren’t working on their online presence get less attention. If the brand is present online – on many platforms and in many ways – a customer wouldn’t doubt the quality of the product.

What are the benefits of online visibility?

A specific function that online presence is carrying in a marketing strategy is conveying a brand message and statement – “the brand is worthy of trust”.

First of all, you will have a strong brand identity that can be manifested through many marketing artefacts such as the user journey map, mind maps or any other things related to your brand’s sphere.

You will find new customers easily. The more attracts even more – this is a rule that never fails to be proven in every marketing industry. If you were able to get some loyal customers, you would have more of them due to the nature of sharing opinions on the internet. The more people see you, the more reasons they have to trust you. Such brands are highlighting stability, and it is something one always trusts.

Reputation is fueled by digital presence. What do people say when they respect some company? They feel like those who share values. This isn’t a secret that if you are on top of some marketing niche, you will affect customers’ choices. Online presence is a part of the aim.

How to build a brand presence?

Work for your target audience

You won’t deny that no brand could even think of suiting everyone’s needs. Even in one industry, many audiences are slightly different. And one brand can’t fit all of them. Learn who your audience is – what the average customer needs, what is the average age, country or geo. But here comes more: once you learn these facts about your target audience and define it, immediately start communicating with them to prove your brainstorms, expectations and data you have now. How? Customer development session.

Create a group or even a landing page, ask people to join, offer them some samples of your product, discounts or even presents. This is how you can get their attention and get extremely valuable data. Once you know your audience, you can move further.

Social media

Don’t underestimate the power of every popular social media and especially animated video content. Generate different content for all of them and be there regularly. Social media presence creates the very basis of an online presence. When a potential customer is looking for a product, they probably start with social media pages. 

Example of animated video for social networks

However, don’t forget that you need much more than this: a sense of your own community. Grow the community around your brand, communicate with them in your brand’s tone of voice, and let them be part of the brand’s life.

How does this affect your visibility? Well, the more people around you the more will come. If some guy scrolls around the web and stumbles upon your brand’s page with unique content and a big community, he can spend on this page ages, moving closer to express not only interest but loyalty.

SEO

Search engine optimization is literally an engine of hidden promotion. Algorithms are changing very fast, offering a more personalized experience to every user. The best way to appear online is by applying working SEO strategies.

Excellent SEO can deliver visibility to your content or can make google place you on top of the search. But.. SEO is good, but it is not enough. Lead generation, outreach and traffic are other ways to find your audience and establish your brand as.

Provide free content

Before you can make a profit out of your brand, consider giving out something valuable for free. What is the best thing you can offer for free? It is definitely high-quality content. If you can provide people with what they really need or, at least, could find a use of it, you’ll get attention. Besides, even when you are selling your product well enough, don’t forget to share valuable and engaging content. For example, Netflix shares interesting tech insights in this blog.

Netflix TechBlog

Influencing

This is a huge niche that has so many advantages and possibilities! A great way to make people interested in your brand is to collaborate with influencers.

You can ask for a video about you, for a post, story or even a series of animated videos. The only thing you should know is that your shared content has to be really, really good. Exceptional quality is required.

Create a narrative of the company

We always hear about the importance of stories today. No, it’s not a fashion, it’s not even something temporary. People literally think of the stories as a tool to understand or to explain something to themselves.

The background story of your brand is essential just because it will help your target audience to get you and identify with the values you represent. Isn’t it the basis of a trustful relationship? Tell your story, choose a narrative that works.

Examples? Well, there are plenty of them! First of all, remember about Apple? The whole story and a mystery about its icon is a huge part of the narrative. 

Show online activity

To be engaged in online activity is not only posting regularly; there is much more to do. It would be best if you were quick at responding to commentaries, to answer a question or even gently interfere in conversations that might touch you the industry your brand is representing.

Produce lots of content

Your audience probably spends more time on certain social media pages. Focus on these pages and create a lot of content to post there. The reason is simple. It is not the case of creating animated video ads content for content. The thing is you need new, engaging content to show up online. Otherwise, how are you going to maintain an online presence? Online presence’s main characteristic is a strong presence on social media.

First and foremost, a brand should seek excellent content. A relation between our subject and content is inherent. However, it’s important to remember that different social media represents different ways of engaging with the audience. You should take one tone in Instagram and another in a bit more wordy Facebook. Do you have TikTok? Well, get a page! Yes, short videos – maybe with an influencers’ help – can keep interested to you at the highest level.

Advertise

Advertising – both native approach and direct is a very good way to tell about you in a good

Analyze your own strategies and test new hypotheses

It is similar for every business – you should know what worked and what was only a try that didn’t work. Revising your strategies is vital because that’s how you learn what your audience enjoys. In order to test your results in a particular area, choose one thing you want to test. Track the results and compare them to other metrics you have.

Please don’t get into a rush with it, though. To test results, you have got to let them become results. This means applying them for a while. Gather your team once a month or a week (actually, that is what the Netflix team do – they get together to think how to make the company even better) and brainstorm for new ideas, approaches and hypotheses.

Once you have some – test it, find a way to validate and use it. All of it can work for a business as a great way to improve and build a stronger online presence.

Overview

Marketing operates according to specific rules. Among the vast requirements that successful brands find out to win a customer, an online presence is one of the most important. Having a strong brand presence online will make your brand higher than you could even expect.

It sets you apart from those who happen to be competitors in the industry. Invisibility is a barrier to overcome for a brand to become competitive in the field. Would you like to build a digital online presence with help of such an engaging tool as animated video? Contact us and get a video for your brand!