The digital age has ensured intuitive, holistic, and interactive customer experiences. This has directly impacted how they look at and engage with brands, and hence, the brand-building process has come a long way from where it started roughly two centuries ago. Since almost every consumer has a smartphone, an iPad, and a laptop these days, creating smart digital experiences that align with offline efforts have become more of a necessity than a choice.
The focus has shifted from building tactical relationships to long-standing, emotional ones. Since more and more businesses are also becoming consumer-first as compared to process-first, branding is your best at creating a differential experience that keeps customers coming back for more. It is easy for consumers to shift to competitor brands since there’s a plethora of them available, and difficult for brand owners to sustain these relationships.
Today, marketers and brand custodians need to look at a 360-degree experience, that covers everything within the unforgettable brand ecosystem. The design has a huge role to play here since the look and feel of the brand can make or break the consumer’s initial reaction to it. To get this right, we really need to look at enhancing the various touch points that consumers interact with, and the first step to getting this right is empathizing with them and stepping into their shoes.
Build a Memorable Brand in the digital age →
Creating brands in this digital age might be easy, but creating a memorable brand today might be tough competition. Building brand identity in this digital era gets its way towards social media, and the urge for a unique campaign within the advertising industry has increased.
To build a memorable brand, one thing that is not so new but never fails to give you the results if performed perfectly – “Insights & Research” Let’s understand the core pointers that will help us
1. Consumer Understanding:
This is the first and foremost approach that needs to be taken since we are often too close to our business to see it the way customers do. It is imperative to talk to consumers to understand their pain points, how the brand affects them, and what they feel about it. Talk to them as much as you can and record their experiences to research.
2. Competitor mapping:
If there’s anything more important than crafting your own strategy, it is understanding what the competition is up to. Only then can you stay a step ahead of them. Identify what they are doing and then create better engagement for customers. This holds true for both direct and indirect competition. Analysis of the current market trends also fits in here and must be undertaken regularly
3. Define Positioning:
Positioning is about determining what really sets you apart. Think about that one thing unique to your brand that can tell its story best and lead from there. Once you are clear on this, it becomes so much simpler to lead communication, the brand story is already in place.
4. Develop your Brand Personality:
As every person has a unique personality, so does every brand stand with a unique personality. It is referred to with the human nature adjectives, – caring, trustworthy, leader, etc. Having clarity on what your brand personality is, helps you to set your brand in the right direction for further brand strategy planning.
5. Creating Visual Brand Identity:
Visual assets play a key role in branding but align with the unique positioning and tonality of a brand. As we said earlier, the look and feel can either make for awesome customer experiences, or those that are easily forgotten. It is very important to streamline the visual approach for a brand, across all kinds of collaterals, be it websites, flyers, business cards, or marketing assets. That’s what maintains credibility and aids brand recall.
6. Elaborate on your Brand key:
A brand key is research-based done for creating a brand, what will be your target market, this is an important exercise that every brand owner needs to do, fill out the brand key elements clearly. This will help your business to move forward in the right direction.
7. Brand Mantra:
Last but not least, have a one-line brand mantra! This is for the internal exercise to follow, this is not publicly announced anywhere. People tend to get confused between the tagline/slogan with the brand mantra. Brand mantra is 3-5 words/sentence that represents your brand’s purpose of existence in the industry market.
Not every step is common and easy, according to the industry preference your research needed to be planned & executed. Let your research & mission help you to achieve your goals. All these steps are much easier said than done, but the tougher challenges are always the most fun to crack!
Conclusion –
Being present in the era of digital does not mean staying active on social media/ digital platforms. Understanding the brand purpose and what differentiates you from the competitors in the market is important to understand.
And we understand that sometimes it’s hard to crack the concept and make a unique mark in the market by creating a memorable brand experience. We’d love to hear your approach to branding and design. Get in touch with us for more!