Why Your Online Branding Is Key To Your Business

Rewind twenty years and, if you asked anyone what branding was, they’d point to the nearest shop’s over-door signage – usually featuring the business’s logo and slogan. Today, with modern technologies driving the evolution of marketing and advertising, branding has come to encompass multiple elements existing in both the real and digital worlds. So, what is the modern definition of branding, what exactly is online branding, and why is it so important for business success in the 2020s? This article investigates:

Branding Defined

We can define a brand as how members of the general public perceive the company to which the brand belongs. Branding, then, is a collective name given to all of the elements that make up a company’s brand. Things like the logo, stylistic elements associated with the logo, the slogan, the colours associated with the company, the tone of voice used in company communication, the appearance and behaviour of staff and owners, etc. Every time a company interacts with a person other than those who work for the company, their brand is being developed. When people look to social media to share their thoughts on a company, their brand is being developed.

Online Branding

Online branding is precisely as defined above, but instead of customers and target audiences interacting with your company in the real world – online branding is built through brand/consumer interactions over the internet. Online branding elements include the business website, company social media accounts, direct marketing like email, content marketing, forums, etc. However, online branding and real-world branding are not to be developed in their own silos. Branding should be consistent across channels, creating a seamless brand experience for existing and potential customers.

Why It’s Important

Did you know that 81% of all people search the internet for the products or services they’re interested in? In fact, search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others are often the first places people turn to find information about companies they’ve encountered, products they’ve seen reviews of, etc. In the past, a company that didn’t have a physical store struggled to move their products. Today, companies that only have physical stores are struggling to more their products. Individuals are now shopping online more than ever before, and this is only going to increase since COVID-19. What this boils down to is that, for a business to thrive in the “next normal”, having an online brand certainly has become a must-have.

As anyone in the marketing and advertising industry will tell you, a business without a brand might as well be invisible. For this reason, building a robust brand that modern consumers can relate to is important to the highest degree.

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