How do you differentiate your digital brand?

A brand will never be perfect because it is made up of humans who are imperfect. A brand with soul understands this and seeks a higher purpose that is greater than any balance sheet or media attention. A brand is more than you logo, digital designs or a meme on Instagram. What do you stand for? What is the hill you are taking and are ready to take your customers, partners and broader community on as their guide? What is the WHY behind what you do and why you do it? This must be more than a set of values plastered on your website and a hallway wall. Do your employees actually live and deliver your value proposition every day to your customers? A brand with soul connects with and serves the hearts and souls of their customers, period.

When given the choice between two similar brands or products, 71% of consumers will purchase from a purpose-driven company over the alternative. A great example is a brand called Toms. As the original one-for-one company, Toms started by donating a pair of shoes to children for every pair purchased. Mable did something similar with great success. For every toothbrush Mable sells, the company donates a toothbrush to a child in the U.S. and teaches schools about personal hygiene and sustainability.

With change being the only constant, never has brand been more important! Clear, concise and accurate message that you can support 100% of the time, across all channels. Every member of the team from Board of Directors to maintenance crew members need to be able to explain to anyone what your brand encompasses. Repeat it often with the ideal outcome of having it be associated inextricably with the product or service you are offering. Think Xerox = copy! Strive to have your brand associated with honesty, fair dealing, excellent customer service and serving your customer's needs at every level.

Be consistent the overall brand positioning and communication. There should be no difference on any of your communication giving it digital or non-digital. Digital channel is a communication channel for business strategy, it could be the main channel in the omnichannel, and it doesn't mean to be differentiate digital and non digital.

For the most part brands and branding are what companies use tell lies to their customers. There are few cases where this is more obvious than British Petroleum who RE branded as Beyond Petroleum and who are now expanding fossil fuel exploration. So Brand Purpose??? It’s to promote the part of the business that you want people to see or believe while hiding the rest.

Knowing your audience is the foundation to success with marketing and business growth for any business in any niche and of any size. Knowing your target audience is more than segmenting your audience into large "buckets." You must know and prioritize your buyer personas. Who are they? What are their objectives? How can you solve their problems? Why should they care that your brand exists? If you can not answer this question, all of your marketing could be a waste of investment. In a crowded digital market where everyone has a voice, the best way to stand out from the crowd of noise is to connect with people at the human level. Smart marketers know this and are already doing this!

Knowing your Target Audience can be very hard, specially when you have a very broad audience. But either way, it's the single most important thing to do in order to create your brand's image. And this should be done before defining your brand purpose. It's of no help to define your positioning (purpose, values, mission, vision and everything) and then trying to force it down your audience's throat, making adjustments for it to 'sound better'. If you do it the other way around, everything within your company - not only your brand - will fit the needs of a real audience and will help you create a solid brand.

Knowing your audience is more than identifying demographics, it requires understanding of psychology. There are many online tools (google analytics, social media, surveys, etc) that help you identify demographics. As a marketer, it is your role to interpret the buyers' objectives, problems and desires. For example, buyers of fast food at 3pm could be - Business person with no time for lunch - Parent buying child an after school snack - Socialite who just woke up People want to feel seen and understood, especially by brands. Understanding the unique motivations for purchase and path to purchase of each persona will help you to best serve each customer while ensuring accessibility.

A brand with soul knows that the first question you should ask when developing an authentic brand voice is "how do I want to make people feel when they experience my brand?" Start by making a list of these attributes. Get in a room with a big whiteboard (or virtual board) and start throwing these words up on the wall. Every word gets written down as the silliest word may take you to the best one! Refine these over the next few days. These attributes should then be prioritized, slept on, thought about and shared with your internal team. You then can use these to define not only your brand tone and voice but everything such as visuals, communication style etc. Do not write only for Google. Write for the heart and soul of your customer!

Brand voice and tone are important. But we’re too focused on how brands speak. We need to focus more on what they’re saying. Understanding who the brand is, the value it brings, the value it adds, and the Key Messages that really resonate with the target audience are what will win you new clients. When you’re competing for customers with 9 other websites on the first page of Google, your brand values, differentiators and Key Messages are what stick in minds. Only then can you think about your voice, tone and how you bring that messaging to life throughout the rest of the page.

Brand tone and voice requires an understanding of - How do you want people to feel? - Authenticity Authenticity comes from how you already talk about your brand, what you're actually saying every day, and from listening to people familiar with your product/problem it solves. If you don't have set language about your brand, start with a brainstorm. Write everything down, encourage "bad ideas" to get out of the box thinking. Refine these and then work internally/externally (for example with an agency, focus groups) to turn this list of attributes into a group of assets (words, images, sounds). Use these attributes to create a cohesive voice that serves as a point of connection with your audiences and a unique identity.

In today's digital age, a brand's website and app often serve as the primary touchpoints for consumers. Thus, it's imperative that we invest in intuitive and visually appealing design elements. This not only ensures a seamless user experience but also establishes a positive and lasting first impression. A well-designed interface can set the tone for the entire customer journey and strengthen our brand's identity in the competitive marketplace.

In our modern world, almost every product is offered by multiple companies and more often then not, the quality of those different offers are the same. Considering: Value = Perceived Offer's Value - Acquisition Costs; if companies can't create ways to differ their offers from their competitors' offers, the only way to increase value ends up being a bid war over price, that is a highly unsustainable market practice. Considering that 'Acquisition Costs' comprises more then the price, and that "Perceived Offer's Value" comprises more then what the product itself delivers, the value of an offer can be raised by improving any of the Marketing Mix variables, not only the product or the price.

Inspire - connect - achieve. Inspire your audiences to connect with you with a goal of helping them achieve their goals. When you do this, you achieve your goals by default as they are one and the same. In a time of automation and artificial intelligence - be the HUMAN! Too many lazy marketers and sales leaders are unfortunately searching for the easy button... be the sweet orange in a world of bitter apples. Be the one who first respects your audience. Be the one who invests in the actual humans within a community. Give before you go for the sale. You can never go wrong by investing in communities and the human beings within them!

Don’t build your digital brand on somebody else’s property. Make sure you have your own domain name and branded email address.

Research your market to understand what unique value you can offer your ideal customer. Know your target customer intimately better than your competition! Do not waste time worrying about the people who unfollow you on social media. Instead focus on those who stick around. Don't worry about what your competition is doing. The world is abundant and there is more than enough for all of us to have a voice and to serve in a unique way. A brand with soul understands that the key to success in business is being authentic, genuinely caring and serving their employees, customers, partners and broader community. You don't need a million dollars to do this. You need a growth mindset and to raise your standard! Smash those limiting beliefs!