Digitizing your Brand

With the proliferation of digital media channels, it has become difficult for brands to follow new trends and be relevant. Entering the digital realm might be easy, but maintaining brand presence and keeping it alive is a difficult task.

Over the past few years, I have been to multiple meetings where brands wanted to know, how to digitize their brand. In other words, ‘how to be more social’. Common sentiments are shared by all these brands, a sense of frustration.

Be ready for the worst

Your brands history becomes as transparent as clear water, within the digital realm. Imagine worst case scenarios and pre plan to defend. Most brands come unprepared for such situations and find themselves in a difficult position.

Focus on customer service

Before making strategies or building campaigns to promote your brand, focus on customer service. Customer service on social media is the most important investment. Create a social media workforce to respond and engage with customers in real-time on social media.

Create content strategy, not campaign strategy

Many brands start off with cool campaigns and lose tractions within weeks. Today, customers are exposed to campaigns across the world and have very less attention span. You have to fight for your time-share with innovative content. Start with a strong content strategy to slowly build communities around it.

Not everything is measurable

A common myth that most brands believe in - everything is measurable in the digital world. Not every aspect of brand-customer interactions can be measured to minute details. Brand need to create their own measurable KPIs that can be tracked on day-to-day basis.

Don’t fake it

Faking to look cool on social media, becomes uncomfortable when someone spots it. Hence do not try to project an image that you cannot wear.

Many brands have tried to enter into the digital realm without much research. This can back fire. Brand lose their hard earned reputation within minutes, if negative sentiments go viral. Hence, digitizing your brand must be a well planned step within your marketing strategy.