How To Develop A Strong Digital Brand That Lasts

A solid digital brand thoroughly knows its visions and its audience.  

It takes 5 to 7 brand impressions before someone remembers a brand. So, when you intend to leave a long-lasting impression on your visitor’s minds, you must give them what they want, and it has to be quick. From designing a business logo that reflects its core values to developing a tone of content users like, a solid brand knows its vision and its visitors in and out. 

The real question is how. How to accurately show your business vision to your potential customers in a manner they prefer? Well, this article talks all about it. Before getting into developing a solid digital brand, let’s first understand how to sell products online. After all, effectively selling products online is the first step to creating a solid digital brand.  

How to effectively sell digital products online

Selling products digitally is a great way to earn passive income in today’s day and age. The global e-commerce market is expected to reach US$6.07 trillion in 2024. So if you intend to open an e-commerce store or an online business, this is the time. 

However, to sell your products effectively, there are points to keep in mind—effective means driving more traffic and attracting the right audience. 

Below points mentioned focus on this specific question: how to sell digital products online. 

Brainstorm 

Get the creative flowing by putting down every digital product idea that you have on a piece of paper. Remember, your first idea isn’t supposed to be the best one. So don’t overthink it. Once you reach that eureka moment, it’s time to know what the customers want. To know your customers better, you can: 

• Follow facebook groups 
• Be a part of reddit chatrooms 
• Take customer surveys 
• Talk to industry experts

If you don’t get any product ideas, see what others are selling. This will help you find your niche. 

Define your target audience

Now comes the essential and also hard part. 

After you have the product idea, it’s time to narrow down your target users. You can conclude by considering several parameters like gender, age group, demographics, etc. Once you have defined your target audience, it will be easy to build your website and plan marketing campaigns. 

However, it is vital to remember that you can’t target everyone. Targeting everyone is equal to targeting no one. 

Build your online store

Now that you have your product ready and your target audience, it’s time to put it on the market. This step requires comprehensive implementation, from deciding which hosting platform to build your website to visual planning. 

If you are a startup, you can quickly build a website. Platforms like WordPress, Wix, and several others offer simple drag-and-drop features to build a website. If you have a reasonable budget, hire developers from a reputed website development firm.

Drive visitors 

Simply creating an online store doesn’t guarantee success. You need to optimize your website to drive traffic and generate revenue. Incorporating relevant keywords and phrases and reducing the loading speed of your website are important to building an SEO-friendly website. After all, a brand is recognizable only when Google recognizes it. 

Once you have an optimized store up and running, marketing it. Content marketing is an efficient way to drive local and global users to your website. Experiment with different content formats including videos, audio-video, storytelling, funny one-liners. Take note of what your users respond to the most and keep making changes in the formats as and when required. 

Once a store builds its online presence, it navigates toward becoming a brand. Let's understand what bridges the gap between a 'business' and a 'brand.'

1. Focus on the users' needs 

A brand that serves its users, gets served in return. 

The first step to developing a strong digital brand is to focus on why a user would be invested in your product or service. Users are the focal point for any brand. Once you are clear on your business's core values, focus on aligning them with users' expectations/values. Start by thinking about your brand and what it wants to convey. The how to convey comes much later.  

Below listed are a few questions that may help you know your users better: 

• What does your product/service offer to a user? 
• How is your service impacting a user's life? 
• Who is your user? 
• Why would a user choose your service over others? 
• Why will a user be drawn to using your service? 

These simple questions will unveil two crucial things: one is your brand's voice, and the other is to know your target audience. After you have clarity on both these aspects, it gets easier to build out a collection of words and visuals that effectively communicate the essence of your brand. 

Remember, when trying to stand out from your competitors, your story must focus on user experience and not on what you offer. To effectively communicate the essence of your brand, switch the question from What is my service offering? To What is my user getting out of my service? 

You want to give your users an easy and memorable experience as a brand. So from intriguing your users into buying your service to making them buy, you must be present at every step with your user. Doing so requires you to craft a brand voice that attracts potential customers. 

2. Curate a unique brand voice 

Finding what feels authentic for you is key to crafting a brand voice. 

The process of curating the right brand tone varies for each business. It largely depends on the business's core values and the target audience. While you may come up with new content formats now and then that reflect your brand voice, your brand voice should remain consistent across all digital and offline channels or even in-person shows.

A consistent brand voice across all platforms will make your brand more credible and trustworthy for your users. All you need to think about is how you want to be perceived. Do you want your tone to reflect kindness, honesty, reliability, or humor? Which human values does your brand align with, and how do you want to show them through content and visuals? 

Also, remember that curating a brand voice is a process. It evolves depending on how the audience responds across the channels. To evaluate when you connect with your audience, be bold and tweak the approach if it improves your reach. 

3. Pick the right visual elements 

Visuals play an essential role in defining a brand voice. To design a minimalistic and visually appealing logo, look at how other brands create it. Taking input from a trusted community also helps determine what the audience will respond positively to. 

Involve all the stakeholders in the visual planning process before you jump in and start designing. It is easy to get swept off thinking you know everything about your business, only to realize later that you are entirely wrong about it. Ensure your logo isn’t too trendy and is sustainable across different platforms. Choose colors that are decent and can be reversed.

When designing a logo or your website, ensure your designs work across not just multiple digital platforms but multiple electronic devices as well. Customizing a user’s mobile experience should constantly be on your mind while designing. 

4. Be creative with your content game

You may be well versed with the phrase Content is King! However, in today’s digital era, content is an entire kingdom. 

Zillion startups are rising every day in various fields of business. While there are many ways to help companies to succeed in this digital era, you need to create content that brings something fresh to the table. Whether you offer educational and informative content or entertaining, it needs to provide value to your users in an engaging manner, or else they are quick to go elsewhere. 

A few reasons to use content to market your product are listed below: 

• Cultivates trust among viewers 
• Brings in higher-quality leads
• Builds authority 
• Is cheaper than conventional marketing tactics but ensure higher ROI 

Google came up with its 'helpful content update' in August 2022, stressing how meaningful content will affect a business's SEO ranking. Ensure you keep your audience at the core when creating content on social media or your website. 

Don’t forget to be dynamic! 

Strong copy, visuals, orientation, and design will help you find a new audience and grow your already engaged audience. However, don’t get stuck on these elements, as it won't be long before consumers outgrow them. Keep your visual and content planning adaptable to meet your visitors' ever-changing demands. 

Choose digital design elements that work across varying channels. This will help your brand tell a compelling story and build a solid online presence, eventually creating a trustworthy brand. Lastly, be an authentic storyteller and don't refrain from experimenting with new formats of conveying the story. Your brand story will win you customers. 

Good luck devising your strategy! 

Author Bio

Parita Pandya is an Engineer turned Writer. She usually finds herself writing for businesses.  When she is not writing, she is either strumming her guitar or penning her thoughts down on paritapandya.com.