How can you overcome digital age challenges as a brand manager?

Like all channels, you leverage the medium to build an authentic brand that appears in the right places where your audience discovers goods and services. TikTok might be trendy but that doesn’t mean you need to invest in that digital channel. Facebook is still relevant for many brands.

Understanding your target audience is the cornerstone of conquering digital challenges. It's akin to solving a complex puzzle; the better you know your audience, the clearer the picture becomes. Market research and data analysis unveil invaluable insights, while segmentation lets you categorize your audience effectively. But it doesn't stop there. Monitoring online activities and interactions is the digital equivalent of reading between the lines. It helps uncover the nuances of preferences, motivations, and the subtle currents that influence decision-making. Armed with this knowledge, you can craft a brand message that speaks directly to their hearts, a value proposition that addresses their precise needs.

Get to know your data: - where and how it is managed and stored. - what systems are integrated and which are not. - speak with others on the front lines of customer engagement/media operations. - question every insight, statistic, and report you see. Your brand is the sum of all employee and customer relationships. Data flows between them and is there to inform and guide you. You may not be a technologist. You simply need to be data literate.

Knowing your audience means knowing how to relate to them. The core essence of branding is connection. The faster you can connect with your audience, the more trust and loyalty you’ll build, and the faster you’ll build it. When you connect well, you’ll increase engagement. The internet isn’t slowing down anytime soon and a lot of your branding will happen online. But in reality, there’s a lot of noise online and to stand out and encourage continued communication with your audience, you need to connect. You don’t accomplish this solely through efforts like customer service. Everything from your visual assets to the tone and voice of your marketing messages either builds or weakens connection with your ideal customers and clients.

Always ask yourself: Is that activity serving my to-do list, or bringing value to the customer? If the answer is the former, ask: Can I prove it? If the answer is yes, you are on the right track. Platforms come and go, trends come and go, but delivering true value will always win.

One thing I have found helpful is narrowing your focus. We all want our B2B brand to become top of mind so that will then translate into lead generation. But, if we don't decide what our niche expertise is first, gain traction in the specific market segment or segments before widening our 'brand 'blanket', then you are shouting into the void. If you can establish your niche credibility first, you can enlarge your goals more successfully as gain market share.

Brand business goals should be laid out clearly to decide the right platforms to cater to the TG. However, there is beauty in the newness which means openness to newer tech and automation tools which should be integrated once you have defined the need and the RIGHT tech to address it. It's a necessity to stay open yet not fall into the trap of trendy.

La elección nuestros KPIs depende en gran medida de los objetivos específicos de nuestra marca y de la industria en la que nos encontremos. Aunque creo que hay 4 KPIs imprescindibles para cualquier marca: - Ingresos Generados: Este KPI es fundamental para evaluar el rendimiento financiero de tu marca. - Tasa de Conversión: La tasa de conversión te dice qué tan efectivas son tus estrategias de marketing y ventas al convertir clientes potenciales en clientes reales. - Tráfico del Sitio Web: Para marcas con presencia on line, medir el tráfico del sitio web es esencial. - Tasa de Retención de Clientes: Un alto nivel de retención de clientes indica la satisfacción del cliente y la calidad de tus productos o servicios.

Don't view every new digital opportunity as a challenge you need to take on. Avoid the shiny object syndrome and pick platforms and strategies you can commit to consistently. Stay focused on your audience and what will move the needle on your actual brand goals.

If you are trying to do everything, for everyone... that's a perfect recipe for disaster. > Define WHO needs attention, > WHAT are you doing to do, > HOW it is going to translate into success KPIs., It is imperative to have GOALS in sight when you start!

Overcoming digital age challenges as a brand manager involves making strategic choices about which digital platforms to use. By carefully choosing your digital platforms based on audience research, objectives, relevance, and available resources, you can focus your efforts where they are most likely to yield the best results and effectively overcome the challenges of the digital age as a brand manager.

Using various social media for max impact. Make sure the content for each media is customised according to the target group.

Platform selection is not a digital challenge. The tactics you employ must be linked to your market research, objectives, and how well each tactial platform helps you fulfill your objectives. Your budget and resources will play a role in which platforms you can feasible leverage

Digital presence across different platforms and media tools is important; customer acquisition doesn't happen when they just see an ad. Retargeting works magic. Think of the customer journey. Consider him / her a friend you want to convince of a new product they never heard of for their own benefit. Would you say: "Hey have you heard the news? Product XXX is now available with 25% off just through the weekend, you gotta buy it or you'll miss it!" Maybe they never heard of XXX, don't know how it's going to be useful for them or solve their problem. As a brand manager, it's your role to attract, educate, and inform the customer on what you're offering before encouraging them to buy. Strategize That ;)

Choosing the right platforms is crucial. Depending on the budget and how much capacity you have to run across various channels, choose the best channels that will maximize your ROI with where your target audience and hitting your objectives. Use the ICE method to choose your platforms: Assign a value of up to 10 to each of the below and allow channels picked in an impartial way with the highest scores selected: I-mpact: Which platforms will give the most impact to your marketing goals? C-onfidence: How confident are you using the platform and getting results from it? E-ase: The level of effort to use the platform to achieve one's objectives This ensures a team effort when there are time and resources limit to choosing the better platforms.

Not all content is made equal. And it only needs to serve two purposes. 1) Building emotive brand awareness and trust 2) Sell Attention is fleeting in a time when consumers are bombarded with content and multiple devices may be used at once. Which you should have found from your research. With these two objectives ingrained within your strategy, a brand manager becomes focused on building audiences, reinforcing brand distinctiveness and conversion.

Understand the user behavior on every platform, read about the platform online, and even what its creators say about it. They probably are demonstrating why they've created it and how they expect people to engage. Being such famous platforms, you can trust the creators did achieve the intended mission. Go check the platform then and see how users engage to verify this in your mind. Then, when strategizing your content for every platform you'd be visualizing their engagement with the type and media of content you're suggesting. Instagram is visual, naturally. Facebook is light, short, and not too serious. LinkedIn is rather formal and informative. Snapchat is more about locations & and happenings, and Tiktok is for fun lipsyncing videos :)

Content is certainly king for connecting with your audience as you build your brand. However, there's nothing worse than developing content for the sake of checking a box. Make sure your content stays on-brand by maintaining consistency in your messaging, consistency in your look and feel of audio and visual content, and consistency in your cadence or frequency of your posts... did we mention "consistency!"

In today's fast-paced digital age, brand managers face a plethora of challenges as they strive to maintain and elevate their brand's presence and reputation. The relentless evolution of technology and the ever-changing consumer landscape require brand managers to adapt constantly.brand managers in the digital age must be adaptable, data-driven, and customer-centric. By embracing technology, staying agile, and fostering meaningful connections with their audience, brand managers can not only overcome challenges but also thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Understand that the same style of content may not be suitable across platforms, and that different members of your team may be better at communicating on a given platform than another team member (or, at least, use different AI prompts when generating TikTok content vs. LinkedIn content).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in the success of any brand's digital presence. As a brand manager, mastering SEO is essential to overcome digital age challenges and ensure your brand stands out in the crowded online landscape.

SEO is not a branding concern it's a marketing one. And the teams who then deliver the brand and marketing strategy will have their own objectives that feed into the macro brand or marketing ones. As a brand manager I'm not concerned with SEO. The metrics I obsess over are brand equity, SOV, gaining ESVO, my funnel, market share linked to profits etc.

Deep SEO isn't my top-of-the-list priority. But hygiene SEO items like meta tags, description tags, keywords, FAQs, and sitemap, are. It's a tough call for a brand manager to be responsible for GTMs, GAs etc. One should push for it, to track data and understand consumer funnel behavior, but to be fair these need to be under product or tech.

SEO + emailers are the Cinderella of digital marketing. Crack the code by balancing technology with outstanding quality content. Because that's what the algorithm is looking for. Also patience and consistency are the name of the game. For me and my team its super gratifying to see our work being shared as snippets above organic search results. We're doing something right for sure.

SEO is the process of optimizing your rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords and phrases related to your business or industry. The higher you rank in search results, the more likely it is to be seen by potential customers, which can lead to increased traffic and ultimately, more conversions and revenue for your business. It is important to note that SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular attention and updates to stay ahead of the competition. Investing your time and efforts in SEO will provide better market reach.

There's an old, yet still relevant and adequate adage that says, "what's measured improves." If you aren't monitoring and measuring your progress and results, how will you know what to do more of... or in many cases, what to STOP doing? The best thing you can do for your brand is test, measure, evaluate, improve, repeat! When you know what's working then you can build systems that help you create more predictable results. Digital moves at the speed of light, so you can get close to real-time results from many of your branding and marketing efforts. Let the data be your friend and use it to build a better brand.

Measurement brings truth to efforts. Brand awareness metrics, aided and unaided brand recall, consumer funnel data, bounce rates, SERPs, top rankings, DA,..... all should be seen in totality to assess brand results.

Leveraging tools like Google Analytics and social media insights help track audience behaviour and content performance. We create custom analytic dashboards to track our KPI's month on month, per quarter and per year. Being more analytical in our social media and branding strategies mean we can understand what content is performing well and how we can adapt our upcoming calendar based on that.

As we close out 2023 and roll into 2024, it's impossible to overstate how significantly the switch to GA4, the devaluing of 3rd-party cookies, and the rise of ATT and other privacy measures has impacted a company's inability to accurately track its customers and calculate a true lifetime value has become –?and the biggest changes have happened in the last 18-24 months, with even more radical changes to come in the next 12. A master data management plan that incorporates accurate identity resolution, real-time data ingestion across disparate sources, and a 360 view of the customer are going to separate the winners from the losers in '24 and beyond.

Track KPIs, run A/B tests, analyze campaign performance, and optimize efforts. Pivot quickly based on learnings. Per Satya Nadella, "Every company's greatest asset is its culture." Foster a test-and-learn culture. Tools: Google Optimize, Hotjar, Google Analytics Leverage influencers and UGC. Stay on top of digital marketing trends. Keep honing your brand story and persona. Measure incrementality. Develop seamless omnichannel experiences. And never stop testing and optimizing! As David Droga says, "Disruption is just an excuse for not trying hard enough."

Having a brand management software (brand guidelines, digital asset management, collaboration, templates, etc.) can help you to improve and maintain brand consistency across all channels.

My advice is to Zoom out. Build yourself a custom funnel with all of the steps that loyal customers take from first learning about your brand until they become your ideals - loyal, repeat purchasers, advocates. Work out the conversion % between each step in the funnel and then compare with how you perform across these steps vs your competition. Then you can set Smart objectives to improve a few of these steps. Then, when you’re thinking about what you’ll do to achieve these objectives - don’t jump straight to your media choices. Stay agnostic until you have defined your TA, built your positioning and how you’ll message it AND then make your media choices based on (i) reach to your TA and (ii) ability to achieve the Smart objective.

FOMO is real. Keep your eyes and ears open always. Curate your own personal list of the following to stay current and future when it comes to digital marketing. Here are some options you can check out for yourselves or ask Chat GPT to create your laundry list and refine it as you go along. - Consulting firms practice web pages / web sites - Google Trends basis your list of keywords - Thought-leaders - find them on Twitter and LinkedIN - E-mailers from industry leaders - Books - Websites - that talk about business / marketing / advertising. - Courses !!

The following pointers would help brand managers - Human-Centric Approach:?Prioritize understanding your target audience deeply, going beyond demographics to grasp their emotions, aspirations, and pain points. Agile Behavior:?By aligning stakeholders, adeptly managing change, and fostering talent development to navigate the dynamic digital landscape. Technological Mastery:?Managera must stay abreast of technological advancements, leveraging them to propel their brands forward. Cultural Integration:?Foster a harmonious blend of corporate culture and digital initiatives, ensuring that the transformation aligns with the organization's ethos. ?

Trends are acquiring an impressive relevance in today's brands. How you relate to trending topics is the ultimate engagement hack in community-based platforms like X (Twitter) and LinkedIn. However, brands must be careful in not forgetting their brand values while trying to tap into users' conversations. Not all newsjacking opportunities relate to all brands and that's ok. Otherwise, brands can easily lose their essence in an ocean of frustrated attempts to catch eye balls. Cuustomers will remain loyal to brands that have defined personalities and stick to their values, and don't follow the crowd ddesperately. They'll forget the others exist.