How An Agency Like Percepto Digital Can Maximize Your Content Marketing Plan

Landing customers is not just a matter of convincing people they want to buy the product you’re selling. Consumers also decide between vendors by choosing to buy into a brand. If a man is known by the company he keeps, then much can be inferred by the companies from which he shops. Businesses should take a proactive role in developing the narrative attached to being their customer, not only to curate a positive and intentional public image, but also because online branding in digital marketing is key for strategic and successful campaigns. If you’re aiming to increase brand awareness, there are a few things to consider that are essential for a solid foundation.

Creating a Community

Sometimes, the quiet part needs to be said out loud—in order to increase brand awareness, you need to have a brand. Being branded online involves a more holistic approach than traditional, above-the-line marketing. To build brand awareness   a customer should know they’re not just buying a product or service. Rather, association with your brand denotes inclusion into a community or network.

A community is composed of individuals who share a common identity or goal. Whether you’re selling chicken noodle soup or a CRM, your product or service should not only be a value-add, but the fact of being your customer should add to a core value. Your customers should know that your brand aligns with their identity. Whether they see themselves as expertly efficient, wellness-oriented, a digital nomad, or whatever the case may be, it should be self-evident that, because of this mark of their character, your brand is the obvious choice.

Speak Truth to Power

The tough part begins once you’ve determined the key principles of your brand. Any company can draft a mission statement that outlines their values and identity, but what will differentiate your brand’s online reputation is to live it, prove it, and share it. Making every effort to incorporate and embody your mission provides compounding benefits. Living by your values ensures that your messaging is genuine. Disingenuous assertions are easily sniffed out by consumers and can only lead to more trouble than they’re worth. Additionally, being able to capture or quantify ways in which you embody your intentions supplies you with easy fodder for online content and social media that will both increase brand awareness and establish faith among customers or potential customers in the messaging of your brand.

When Consumers Are Also Brands

This method remains as relevant when branding direct-to-consumer as it does when marketing to other businesses. Brand awareness for B2B companies is increasingly integral to the success of their marketing. While your guiding values should be specific enough to target end-users, they should also be broad enough to connect with a wide audience. Sharing values doesn’t create competition between brands because brand online reputation isn’t created in a vacuum. Rather, in B2B marketing, having congruent values creates an opportunity for partnership.

Defining your message is a great step to building your brand, but living by it authentically is even better. Discovering and associating with other companies similar in character leads to several positive outcomes. It generates accountability to live up to your own expectations and communicates consistency in your brand’s messaging. Not only that, but it ensures a network of solutions with ethic compatibility for consumers who are looking for that kind of unity across their environments.

Branding your company involves completing a list of processes before you’re nicely packaged and ready for market. It will certainly include creative components—designing a logo, writing a slogan, or potentially even composing a jingle—but unless you’ve thought about what it means to be your customer, you’ve put the cart before the horse. Creating the identity of your brand is imperative, but it shouldn’t be intimidating. As individuals, we’re all guided by a set of personal values, and that can be a great place to start when looking for which principles you want to weave into your brand.