In the wake of recent changes, you have decided to move much of your communication online and invest a new slice of your budget in digital marketing.
For work or for fun we are constantly connected and use search engines, emails and social platforms as casual users… but how do you move online in the service of a brand? How do you communicate messages, products, services, values, in a recognizable and memorable way ? Unique and empathetic, interesting and capable of building trust, relationships… and ROI?
Short answer : with an intentional and coherent digital brand identity .
It goes without saying that by digital brand identity we do not mean something different and separate from the commonly understood Brand Identity , but rather its articulation and expression on digital channels.
The buyer’s journey: three phases, one experience
As you may have already heard on various occasions, and as Inbound Marketing theorizes , the average user goes through rather defined behavioral and cognitive phases before arriving at the purchase.
It starts from a phase of Awareness (of his needs first and of the existence of your brand then); it goes through a phase of Consideration and evaluation of the offer… to arrive, if you have acted well, at a phase of Decision , in which he is ready to make his choice to purchase from you.
buyers-journey
Even though they are different moments of the journey and interaction that the user has with your brand, these must represent a single experience , characterized by continuity and a sense of direction, ease and familiarity. In front of every email, every social post, every story , every article, etc., the user must know that he is with you, without having to think about it. And a logo or a palette is not enough.
Of the same substance as pixels: online brand identity Digital Brand Identity: How to Make Yourself Known and Recognized Online
But let’s take a step back. Often when clients ask us to do or redo their brand identity, they have the logo and a color palette in mind… only along the way do they realize that communicating a brand means much more, even more so online, where channels multiply the areas of application, and they do so with needs that are often very complex and not without technicalities.
Your brand is the soul of your business, the set of values, deep motivations, goals, your services/products: your what, how and why , mostly in reverse order.
(If you’re interested in the topic, we’ve explored the concept of brand in this article ).
Brand identity , or coordinated image – if you will – is the set of all the elements that can be experienced and their interaction , which together communicate the brand.
In online communication there is a verbal identity, starting from the name, passing through the tone of voice, the lexical choices, the syntactic structures, the reference narratives.
And then there is a visual identity , the one we are dealing with here. Made of formats, channels and graphic elements .
To increase the number of people in the UK who can purchase our products, we are always working on digital marketing. We take these actions to increase revenue and business expansion. Because it enables us to communicate with our target audience directly, WhatsApp marketing is essential to our digital marketing approach. Our area of special database expertise is offering WhatsApp data to support the growth of enterprises. One of our services is the provision of UK WhatsApp data, which enables companies to communicate with prospective clients more successfully and economically.
Visual Identity – The visual identity of the brand
Your brand’s visual identity introducing: sendlane forms communicates in every “place” : website, blog, newsletter, social media (posts, stories, covers, events), landing pages, presentations, the most diverse digital products – such as ebooks, Advent calendars , videos, etc.
It is something that communicates above all on an emotional level, but asia phone number it is made up of very concrete elements: colors, texts, shapes, use of space, photographs, icons, videos – which must be chosen and related to each other with great awareness and intentionality. A visual identity is not (only) the result of aesthetic choices, but above all of functional and communicative, strategic and technical choices.
The identity you choose to communicate will be all the more successful the less self-referential it is . It will talk about your brand, of course, but not only that: it will talk about your brand in relation to your target and your buyer persona . Of its values, its needs, its analog and digital behaviors.
Digital Brand Identity: Digital Brand Identity: How to Make Yourself Known and Recognized Online
What it is and what it is for When you do online marketing and communication you have to interface with different formats and platforms, and maintain visual coherence and consistency when moving from one tool to another. It’s not easy.
A digital visual identity that works has specific characteristics and advantages. You know it works if:
even in the absence of the logo, it is clear that it is your brand that is speaking,
attracts a target with rather well-defined contours (spoiler: communication that speaks to everyone does not exist!).
But how would having a recognizable online visual identity benefit your marketing?
Make yourself known:
In the Awareness stage, digital brand identity allows the user to know that you exist and distinguish you from competitors.
Getting Recognized: In the Awareness and Consideration stages, the coherence of visual communication allows the user to recognize your presence across different channels and begin to connect communications, remember you and perceive you as a unified and reliable reference.
Familiarity: Recognizing yourself in different digital places creates habit and familiarity in your buyer persona… and familiarity means comfort and ease of interaction. This pleasant user experience predisposes people to interact with the brand (and to purchase, in the Decision phase).
Affection: we become attached to what becomes known, what becomes habit, and in the user who corresponds to your values, the emotional bond generates trust and loyalty.
Identification: a consistent mood in time and (virtual) space gives the user time and opportunity to understand the message, make it their own and share it. This means generating not only customers, but also ambassadors of your brand.
buyers-journey_brand-identityHow to Create a Digital Brand Identity: Practical Tips
Make a brand manual (in jargon, regulatory ), that is, a collection of guidelines that can help you stay on track. A regulation should contain information on:
– Logo : which versions to use, where, improper uses, minimum distances and dimensions, etc.
Color palette :
main and secondary, with unmistakable numerical codes;
– Style of icons and graphic elements : what type of shapes and lines best describe your brand? Thin and sharp lines, thick and soft, full or empty, colored or monochrome… and so on;
– Photographic style : what mood do you want to convey with the photographs you use? What type of subjects will you choose, what shots, what objects, colors, lights, treatments, filters…
– Use of space : does your brand prefer full or empty spaces? To what extent? With what expedients? Does it use space in an orthogonal or diagonal, rigid or fluid way? And so on.
(We have also talked about how to create a coordinated image that works here ) .
J&P_Brand identity
Example of digital brand identity elements of the law firm Jacobacci & Partners
Choose 3 key words that summarize your identity (adjectives, values, characteristics): every time you produce content, ask yourself if it embodies these words… the more specific they are, the more they will help you. Words like “quality”, “competence”, “creativity” will perhaps be less useful, for example, than terms like “chic”, “order”, “warmth”.
Make a moodboard : Pinterest is the queen of moodboard platforms, but you can also set up a magnetic board to hang pieces of paper on, or a printed sheet, or a folder on your desktop to collect images and files (we don’t recommend this, as a folder is easy to forget about and turn into a closet you never put your nose into).
Use templates :
don’t reinvent the graphics every time, but prepare formats with fixed elements and elements that can be modified from time to time. Small variations can add a touch of novelty, but avoid big changes that could distort your brand image .
To do this, we recommend using editing programs external to the sharing platforms: this will allow you not to be at the mercy of the limits and options offered by one social media or another, but to centralize your choices and expressive possibilities on tools that you can manage entirely. Once the graphics are prepared, all you have to do is upload them from time to time to the platform you want.
If you are not an expert in graphics, we recommend using intuitive online software, such as Canva , or if you have the possibility, to contact an agency or a professional.
And finally, be sincere : the visual identity must be honest and reflect the real values of your brand, not reflect the fashion of the moment. The imagery you create around your brand must not be betrayed by the reality of the experience that the user will make of it… otherwise it will be abandoned and a great waste of investment, time and effort.
