Digital marketing is no longer a separate channel aside from the traditional ones, it is surely becoming the norm and successful company are leveraging from improving every point of their customers’ journey online. Companies can leverage their branding with digital immensely.
What are the main mechanisms for creating a strong brand online?
Creating Value.
Creating value has been and continues to depend on how well a company can identify a the potential targeted customer’s emotions. Value is generated between two strong emotions – fear and wish (also addressed as pain and solution).
How a company can create extra value trough digital?
Great example is O2 Guru TV , the Youtube channel of O2 mobile. Besides tips on which apps to download, how to swap sim cards, there are new product launches, unboxing videos and interviews with street artists and musicians. It’s a great way to create a broader meaning of the brand itself and provide users with helpful information.
Creating Trust.
Another example is the Under Armour’s sports gadget’s campaign which too the attention away from the most popular products of the company, which are clothes to a lifestyle of sports, technology and the use of internet of things to achieve better sport performance. It brings a different association with the brand, without selling the product directly.
Another way of building trust is by humour. French clothing company La Redoute had a photo on their website which became the reason of a huge internet scandal. It was an image of children on a beach wearing the company’s outfits and in the far background a completely naked man could be spotted. The negative comments and jokes went viral.
What was the response of the company? Organising a competition for web visitors to find other on purpose put photo “fails”. The winner was getting a £500 worth goody bad with the company’s products. The competition generated huge amount of traffic on their website and increased sales for La Redoute.
Digital provides challenges, but also amazing opportunities for brands to deliver their message and communicate with customers. It’s a win-win situation in which companies are able to talk about their brand on a much broader scale, and for customers who get to experience higher quality and make more educated choices.
