CHAPTER 1

The Digital Fever

In this chapter, you will read:

Introduction

The ideas associated with the way businesses used to market a service, brand, or product, are today somehow not sufficient. Consumers enjoy buying, but do not enjoy being “sold to,” which now means the overall approach requires changes. The act of reaching consumers now involves engaging with them as well as being able to show these consumers that a company really cares about matching up with their requirements with what it has to offer.

For many marketers, one of their largest learning curves is associated with understanding the actual value and concept of a specific brand along with the importance associated with brand building in regard to digital marketing. Today, the industry in which businesses operate moves at a lightning speed with technologies that are constantly evolving, viral videos, algorithm updates, the emergence of social-media platforms, streams associated with memes, the increase in mobile adoption, and so much more. With all these going on, it becomes easy for many businesses to forget that one thing that remains a constant through all these changes and this has to do with the brand. As companies continue to push new boundaries in association to marketing activities with this fast-paced digital environment, it is important to still maintain fundamentals in association with brand building based on long-term success.

The digital landscape continues to grow in the form of an active and living environment whereby consumers can be reached instantly, but the way this will be achieved also needs to evolve. In some cases, ideas of disrupting a person in order to display what a company is about can have undesirable effects, which can drive these consumers away from digital landscapes altogether. An example of this would be when video advertisements based on something that is totally unrelated interrupts what the person is watching on a medium such as YouTube in the middle of the video. It is far better for businesses to gain an understanding of where and who their audience is and then proceed in creating approaches that are more organic in order to reach them, which won’t take the viewer out of an experience, but rather add to it.

The principles associated with digital brand engagement explain the approaches that augment or replace the traditional type of “one-way” advertising messages that are aimed at an audience with the strategies that are able to build up a connection in the way of two-way conversations with audiences. These conversations should be aimed at truly engaging with consumers as well as assist them in building up relationships with that brand. The CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) will continue to require more sophisticated approaches in order to maintain the attentions of audiences, which have become ever more demanding. Digital brand engagement involves disciplined principles that when they are applied in the correct manner are able to reinvent, grow, and connect brands with audiences in an intimate way.

Basically put, digital brand engagement is based on redefining marketing in association with the “modern” digital era, in the way of creating meaningful connections with audiences in the way of leveraging the online tools and ecosystems. Tom Gallego from forbes.com states that the use of apps monitoring social buzz as well as the creation and launching of influence-based marketing campaigns, can form an important part of brand-engagement strategies. The brand of a company has a service or product that can assist consumers; how they are able to communicate this with their audiences is what will result in the defining difference.

It’s All Digital

The traditional-based marketing is associated with a one-to-many approach. This means that the business is able to reach larger audiences; however, the message will be solely between a brand and a person who views this advertising. In the social world, marketing is often labeled as a one-to-many approach and is able to achieve that the initial responders of this marketing can now have relationships with a brand as well as the marketplace. This opens possibilities related to far richer experiences, involving consumption between the digital networks that allows for a mass participation that stretches across hours or day opposed to a few minutes. These types of experiences are reliant on engagement which provides a way for the brands to collect real-time and accurate information that are associated with reactions of these fans.

Branding is the type of tool used to develop as well as maintain competitive advantages. In the somewhat noisy digital media world, staying competitive is even more challenging. There is a big difference between a brand and the brand name. Brand names are tangible and consumers can view them. The actual brand exists only in the minds of consumers in regard to what they will be thinking when hearing this name. The building of strong brands in this age of digital is crucial. Even though branding was always of importance, when considering the current online environment and the constant changing behaviors of users, here are some of the obvious benefits associated with branding:

Most marketers are aware that integrated marketing is one of the factors related to success within digital environments. Strong brands will support all these channels indirectly and directly so that both resources and time will need to be set aside for brand building through the process of digital marketing. Because of the fact that branding is based on the development of emotional connections, strong brands always have influencers, advocates, followers, and fans who will actively promote these brands. To achieve the most from integrated digital marketing, it is important that businesses do not overlook how important brand building really is. Companies should define their brands and what they stand for, give thought to what drives this brand, and focus on how consumers perceive these brands in each aspect of a business.

Who Is Watching You?

Any relevant brand understands the importance of the customer in the decision-making process. If that golden rule isn’t followed, there is always the risk of getting low-quality leads that might not guarantee 100 percent loyalty. It’s important to understand that customers go through various stages with the brand. They might not be ready to purchase anything the first time round. The most important thing is providing relevant content for the consumers at every purchasing stage. Thereafter, leveraging the content properly moving the customers from one stage to the next should be the logical next move. Understanding the customer life cycle and meeting the needs of the customers, the brand should enjoy increased conversions as well as engagement. It’s also a good way to develop brand loyalty to allow viral sharing of the relevant information to potential customers.

The first step to successful online branding involves the business owner understanding what the business stands for and the goals that should be accomplished. The business owner needs to understand how the consumers perceive the business as well as both the short and long-term objectives. With these objectives, it’s easy to find a good foundation to build the brand identity of any business. It’s ideal for any business to have a branding team in place to handle the entire project. Such a team should have the objectives and standards in existence. If they are not available, they can always be developed to meet the company’s branding needs. To achieve these strategies, there are some branding assets that should already be in place. Basically, it is a branding checklist that contains assets such as internal messages, core messages, targeted messages, the look and feel, and also the identity of the business. With these assets, it’s easy for the business owner to understand what the business needs to reveal to the consumers.

Over the years, consumers have become incredibly complex, especially with various advancements in technology and the Internet. Consumers expect a certain level of treatment as well as relevant but controlled experiences. A business owner needs to find a way to meet the consumer’s expectations by delivering the right offers through the right channels and in the right time frame. The first thought would be to find the existing consumer information and throw everything at it until something comes up. Of course, such data is necessary and excellent in the right situation; it might not exactly address the problem the audience might be facing. Consumers will definitely tune out if they are not getting what they want from any business. Every business needs to know what the target audience needs to hear. If possible, creating profiles that identify the needs of the consumers can allow the business to find customized strategies that satisfy these needs. Such profiles can be used over various platforms to achieve the best results with regard to digital branding.

Because the business has already identified the audience as well as the demographics, the next step is finding out the problems the audience might be facing. Next, the business needs to identify the products or services that solve the audience problems. Such solutions can be achieved by using various tools. For instance, the business needs to find out the specific keywords used by audience when searching for specific products. With the right keywords, the business can optimize content on its sites, allowing consumers to find the best content to satisfy their problems. With such a direct approach, it’s easy for any business to cater to the needs of the audience and satisfy them without fail.

Once the business owner understands the business brand and also identifies the problems the audience might be facing, the next step is determining the middle ground. In simple words, the business owner needs to find the intersection that determines what he or she wants to reveal about the business and what the audience need to hear. Here, it’s mostly a discovery phase that should be based on information. One good thing about this stage is the fact that there is no need for costly focus groups or surveys to help the business owner identify the middle ground. Currently, there are numerous of social-media tools and search techniques that can provide the relevant consumer behavioral information for the best results.

If a proper analysis of the data is conducted, it’s easy to find out a few important things about the business such as the following:

Basic Rules of Digital Brand Engagement

Can Digital Brand Engagement Be an Alternative to Advertising?

The word “brand” is a unique identity that is given to a product line or product, and “branding” is the process of creation for this unique identity that creates impressions in the mind of the consumers. It is very important to create brands because of the fact that every day more and even more products are emerging onto the markets, and companies have to do something that is distinctive in order to stand out opposed to getting lost with the others. Good brands are the ones that are able to achieve distinguished impressions on consumers. In the age of digital, newer tools have been created for the promotions of brands. Digital brand engagement is one of those effective “new-age” tools for the development of successful brands. This has to do with a presence of a brand on digital media and its participation in an active way on the different online platforms. This tool assists in making consumers aware of a brand as well as a way to communicate with consumers.

Once a brand has being created, the following step involves promoting it as well as making consumers aware that it exists. Advertising happens to be one of these ways but also comes with its own set of demerits. The marketers of today need to have an understanding that they can no longer impose messages on consumers. Communication has drastically evolved over the years and today communication that is regarded as effective is the type whereby both parties are able to actively participate. For this reason “branding” requires conversation. Older business models that involved pushing product and messages are outdated, and driving the brand impression is just not enough. The establishment of connection and providing an experience is actually what attaches consumers to brands, which is possible through the process of brand engagement.

What is known as the “digital revolution” has transformed everything as we know it in the 21st century. This means that marketing scenarios have changed drastically from previous years. Consumers are a lot more informed today and this is all to do with the Internet. In addition, everyone today will have their own online presence whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, other social platforms or a combination of all. So, this is by far one of the best mediums for companies to engage with customers. Interaction is easily possible in just about every method possible online, therefore, making digital brand engagement ideal.

Digital brand engagement is a very effective technique used to initiate connections with various prospects. It also offers all the advantages of two-way communication. In addition, it is able to account for personalization with a brand. Advertising on the other hand is merely a technique used to create awareness of a service or product existence. It is a type of one-way communication whereby marketers are only able to convey a message to prospects, but the end users are unable to talk back. Some of the stronger aspects of digital brand engagement over advertising include some of the following:

When considering the aspects that have been listed previously, digital brand engagement is recognized as a real winner, but advertising still holds its place within the organizations in the process of creating awareness. Ultimately, both these mediums should be utilized in collaboration to each other and the core focus of a business should be based on association with consumers. Digital advertising is useful in creating awareness on the different social-media platforms. Once consumers are provided with this knowledge, brands can now begin to exchange dialogues with these consumers. For this reason, digital brand engagement is known as an efficacious tool that is beneficial to new-age marketers in order to offer their customers as well as prospects a far better type of brand experience, which translates into the creation of a brand that is successful.

Popular Misconceptions Associated with Brand Engagement That Can Derail Digital Campaigns

A logo for a company is not its brand, and those attention-grabbing tactics can actually result in turning consumers away. Branding is recognized as a tricky and complex practice and happens to be all-encompassing and multidisciplinary. This is why there are so many individuals who have misinterpreted what brand engagement is really all about. The majority of the digital-marketing campaigns can run amok when they do not integrate correctly with their efforts associated with branding. Following are seven important misconceptions that cause issues for the digital marketers in search of a way to engage with consumers in regard to their specific brand strategies.

A Logo Is Sufficient

Big brands have become synonymous when it comes to their splashy and big logos and since then, most of the laypeople are unable to differentiate brands from what happens to be just packaging. In order to engage with the consumers, branding has to be executed in the form of a full discipline. Value proposition, messaging, organizational ethos, persona, and differentiation are some of the important elements that a company’s branding should be able to cohesively quantify. It is only when the consumers are able to clearly identify these particular aspects of brands will they open up to engagement.

Social Media Is the Best Method to Increase Engagement

Certain individuals misunderstand that engagement means a direct type of consumer-to-organization communication. However, this is just one of the components that results in true engagement. The focus of this narrow definition can result in a failure in a digital-marketing campaign. Social media happens to be just one of these channels for connection. Studies have gone onto prove that the best methods to engage will involve multichannel efforts.

Go for Emotional, Evocative, and Loud

It has become an increasingly difficult task to break through noise present on the global marketplace of today. The competition among the brands is no longer just relegated to zip codes. This often leads to a conclusion that is very poor that the best way for a brand to engage is to be bold and splashy. In more cases than not, the successful digital-marketing campaigns happen to be an antithesis of these ideas. They are actually reliant on a carefully measured budget and sound metrics. They also place the needs of the consumers above their own needs. Being loud and splashy can risk these objectives in the way of making them appear that it is just about a brand’s needs to gain attention.

No Sales Is Equal to No Engagement

Sales happen to be one of the important brand-engagement metrics. However, there are also other types of engagement factors that will contribute to the organization’s understanding in association to its positioning. A few of these factors cannot be quantified readily. An example, powerful and extraordinary word of mouth will increase page hits, which are a marker of fantastic engagement.

Only the Costly and Extravagant Ads Will Drive Engagement

In many cases, some of the largest brand-engagement campaigns will appear in Adweek. These are the types of brands that hired expensive and fancy agencies, and these agencies achieved phenomenal digital shares. Engagement should and can be the key factor on any aspect of a digital-marketing campaign. Social-media activities and valuable content can work together to entitle healthy engagement. This is also possible through stimulating customer-to-customer activity, offering solutions to issues, and hosting chats. Businesses need to develop the processes that will guarantee outstanding customer service as well as invite the users to share the success of a brand. Companies also have to be honest and realistic about the failures of a brand.

A Focus on Content Marketing Is the Ideal Way to Increase Engagement

This is very similar to the misconceptions surrounding social media. Content marketing is unable to solve all problems. In some cases, one of the better ways to engage with the consumers is to simply say “hello.” Content is a fantastic way to deliver value, but at the same time a circuitous method to engage. It is also better for businesses to diverse their efforts and not to solely rely on content to tell the story of their brand.

Brand Engagement Is Separate from the Rest of the Digital-Marketing Campaign

At its very heart, this happens to be the central theme for all the previous misconceptions. Brand engagement must involve every person within an organization, which should include the operations-team members. The reason for this is that engagement actually means that a brand willing extends its reach to the consumers. True brand-engagement is always an open-door policy. Whether these doors are opened to the brand’s products, material, ideas, or people, they seek an interaction between not only the consumers but also with their most “valuable” assets.

Effective Digital Brand Engagement

Successful digital branding or the use of digital networks to convey and build a company’s position can become the deciding factors associated with decline or growth. Nowadays, it is required to have a specific approach of marketing: in the form of a digital brand experience. Consumers connect to the different social-media channels at all times of the day or night, 365 days in the year. But what does this mean in regard to digital marketing? People no longer want to be barraged with massive amounts of information; they prefer to rather engage with materials by their own choice. Businesses are now unable to push their brands, but rather need to inspire an interaction through the process of conversing and listening instead.

Nurturing relationships through communication is regarded as the quickest methods to engage with customers. However, the management of digital engagement and digital branding strategies is the sole way to build a business. It is very important for businesses to know the differences between earned, owned, and paid media and to then tailor their strategies to a current marketplace using these three important types of marketing.

Earned Media refers to “free” promotions that are generated through word of mouth and social media. By knowing what type of technologies are available, it is easier to optimize and manage your strategies.

Paid Media refers to anything that has been paid for, which increases the visibility of the brand. An example of this would be Facebook advertising that allows companies to target an audience based on locations, demographics, and a variety of other metric types. Other examples will include pay per click (PPC) and search engine marketing (SEM). Ad blocking will continue to increase; counteracting this will be the engagement ads. These work in the method of expanding a “lightbox” into a bigger window when a user hovers over this box for more than two seconds. The larger box will then display videos, purchasing along with other types of brand interactions in order to attract the attention of customers.

Owned Media is any type of channel that a company has full control over, which includes online profiles and websites. The foundation to using websites fully is based on keeping it up to date, relevant, and continuously providing high-quality and new content. The content should never remain static on websites, but rather be distributed through other channels. One of the best methods to raise good content is the use of infographics. Combined with video, popularity associated with infographics is in fact growing. Currently, this visual data type is shared more frequently by the Twitter users compared to any other type of content. One of the advantages of infographics is the method in which it is able to clearly lay out research and statistics. The audiences respond well when information is interesting and relevant, as well as conceptually or factually derived from customer comments and social media. It is also able to provide researchers with potential blog topics that are new. These charts can easily be divided or broken down into more-in-depth and smaller posts and articles that can be distributed to a target audience and then utilized on the company’s website.

On the other hand, real time does translate to real profits. The inclusion of live broadcasts, virtual reality (VR) clips and video segments is guaranteed to attract bigger audiences. The companies that make use of real-time posts that provide relevant coverage in regard to affairs and events, which appeal to fans and consumers, is able to grow audiences in a more effective way compared to those that only focus on the product-centric narratives.

The banner advertisements were and still are a widely used method associated with direct-response campaigns in order to urge consumers to take advantage of time-restricted deals. But when it comes to digital marketing and, more specifically, the display advertising can be far more than only generating those immediate clicks. Marketers are now offered opportunities in developing campaigns with the purposes of branding. The digital-branding-based campaigns have become increasingly effective in the abilities to understand and track the browsing behavior of user. Marketers are now able to focus their efforts on the building of brand awareness and brand recall (as a long term goal) rather than focusing on short-term conversions. Data associated with past-purchase information, search history, and demographics can be utilized to create branding campaigns that are extremely effective.

Brands take a lot of hard work. However, those successful brands are the types that work smarter. Here are some tips on how to achieve digital branding success.

Summary

Engagement happens to be the word commonly used by the different brands that describe actions taken on the social-media platforms. However, this particular term has been overused and taken for granted in the way that just about any of the social-media posts is able to engage with audiences. In reality, regardless of the amount of followers that can be viewed on a post or even interact with this post, only the people who take a further action are the ones who are really engaging with a brand or business. Fans happen to be central to any of the brands in the way of driving forces to achieve long-term growth. But how do brands clearly define the way in which they should progress in engaging with these fans and what is the purpose behind this engagement?

The definition of true engagement is when consumers deeply connect with a brand, category, or topic and form part of a type of topical microcommunity. These types of “connected activity” are divided into four subcategories:

It is with the engagement strategies that companies are able to advance practices in association to marketing, which is awareness based on a place that the fans actually grow with brands and form a real part of activities opposed to just recipients. Business objectives that can be enforced through these processes are able to drive a variety of actionable outcomes that include purchases, downloads, transactions, signups, and more along with a long-term goal of achieving a retained and loyal user base. It is important to know that engagement will not be achieved from singular posts. The single-post “interactions” are misunderstood as a type of true engagement. However, actual true engagement is achieved through a process of a far longer journey.

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