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Whether it is about digital marketing or online branding through digital marketing, there are a lot of misconceptions floating around. Most of the brands, especially the ones who are newly starting their business, think that digital marketing or digital branding will bring instant results.

This is not true at all. And when the results are not according to their expectations, they think that digital marketers are not efficient enough or digital marketing is not for their business. Here is where a lot of brands have a preconceived notion about the ill effects of digital marketing.

On the other hand, there are a plethora of brands that consider digital marketing and branding to be one of the most effective tools for their growth. In fact, they also agree that with the increasing use of the internet and social media platforms, digital branding creates faster and better ways of brand awareness.

Regardless of the numerous advantages of digital branding, there are a lot of myths and beliefs. It is important to confront these needs. This is why, in this blog, we are going to share a detailed on the expectations vs. the reality of a digital branding agency. It will help you understand how a digital branding agency works and why should you trust it.

Digital Branding – Expectation vs. Reality

What is a brand?

A lot of people think of a brand as a simple logo. Also, they think that the concept of a brand is exclusive to big shot brands like Adidas, Puma, or KFC. This is not true at all. A brand is a name or a symbol that represents any seller’s goods or services. It is unique to every business.

What is branding?

Branding is one of the vital aspects of a business. Whether it is a small business, a retail one, or B2B, branding should always be done. It is an iterative process and you have to touch the heart of your customers.

For any company, it is important to be unique and different from its competitors. Branding includes the promotion of your business brand. If you want your business to survive this competitive market, you have to ensure a planned branding. Branding helps you in:

• Getting to know your customers better and you can relate to them more
• Creating a strong relationship with your customers
• Creating your own business identity
• Ensuring that your products and services sustain a high-quality
• Offer better value
• Create uniqueness of your business from the competition

What are the different types of branding?

There are different types of branding. They are as follows:

1. Product Branding: This is the most common form of branding. It is a compulsory branding technique because it helps in identifying the product easily. Also, Product branding is the reason why the products are easily noticeable in shopping malls or supermarkets.
2. Personal Branding: It is a compulsory solution for renowned individuals and eminent personalities. It can include politicians, celebrities, athletes, and more. We are in an era where self-branding has become a very important tool for someone looking for jobs as well.

It is important to have personal branding skills because they help you in presenting yourself as an “expert” in a certain genre. When high credibility is combined with higher consumer demand, then it becomes easy to ask for higher prices or salaries and still get the job.

3. Corporate Branding: This kind of branding is important to ensure a proper reputation and maintain the good name of your brand. Corporate branding includes a lot of strategies. These include logo designs, treating employees in a good way, offering great customer service, maintaining a good quality of products and services, and advertising.

With corporate branding becoming more and more important, many corporate organizations change their strategy accordingly. It is very important at present because a lot of consumers ask about the company philosophy, their values, stance on sustainability, and contribution to society.

Digital Branding Agency: Expectations vs. Reality

Expectation – More visibility will bring more traffic and more traffic means more business

Reality check – Yes, it is true that getting traffic is very important for a website and a social media page. However, you have to know that getting visibility doesn’t necessarily mean more traffic and more traffic doesn’t mean more business.

The reason is a website or a social media page can get millions of traffic through different tactics, but not all of them could be interested in being their customers. Thus, you have to understand, do you only want random traffic or you want organic traffic?

For instance, if you are in the business of selling tables and chairs, then you need an audience looking for furniture, not for sports products. Organic traffic takes time! Also, getting high traffic is not enough. It is important to have a good conversion rate as well. To have a good conversion rate, you have to get relevant organic traffic for your business.

Expectation – More followers means more business

Reality check – This is a common misconception that is faced by almost every digital branding agency. A lot of business owners, especially the ones who are looking for digital marketing services for the first time, think that the more followers they can get the more business they will do. This is not true.

The number of followers is a metric that is tracked by the digital marketing team. It merely indicates how popular a post has been or rather your brand has been on different platforms. The ‘number of followers’ acts as an anchor to test the performance of your business against your competitors.

Also, this is a metric that is used to test the performance of the contents and posts on a social media page. With better performance come better conversions, leads, and sales.

Expectation – Publishing a certain number of posts daily will generate results

Reality check – It is not the number of posts, but the content of a post matters. For instance, a single data-driven post will drive more results than four random posts. Also, it is important to consider the timing of posts on different social media platforms.

A lot of brands expect their digital marketing team to publish a certain number of posts on a daily basis. The more important thing is to understand the best time, frequency, and post something that carries information or adds value.

Expectation – Creating good social media content will be GOOD ENOUGH!

Reality check – Well, to be honest, creating a good social media content is just a part of the process to impact your business. It is important to make sure that the content has the potential to engage. That is how you involve people to find relevant information and make purchase decisions.

Therefore, whether you publish video content, a social media post, audio, a podcast, a gif, or anything, make sure it is of high-quality and offers useful information. At present, video content has become very popular in multiple social media platforms. Thus, for the time being, you can dedicate your resources to create high-quality video content.

Expectation – Digital branding is only relevant for big companies

Reality check – This is not true at all. Digital branding is for anyone and everyone. Whether it is a big company or a small startup, to run a business, you have to be online these days. More than half of the audience today is on social media and they are always looking to buy products or services online. This is why, when the business is online, digital marketing has a huge role to play.

Expectation – Digital branding is a one-time process – ‘set it and forget it’

Reality check – Once again this is a major misconception. Digital branding is not at all a one-time process. Whether it is about running a campaign on social media platforms or a paid ad campaign on Google, you cannot just set it and leave it. It is important to monitor them consistently.

Sometimes the audience might get exhausted, sometimes; the frequency with which the ad was working last week might stop working this week. This is why it is important to keep an eye on ad campaigns and social media platforms. Also, you have to keep changing the written copy design of the ad time to time.

Expectation – Digital branding services will bring instant profit

Reality check – Yes, it will bring you profit, but only when you can set up campaigns accurately in conjunction with historical and actionable data. This is where a professional digital branding agency comes in. Even Google talks about the importance of setting up a correct campaign with the right goals in mind.

Almost everyone underplays the amount of hard work that goes into running a profitable paid ad campaign. You have to create relevant ads for the target market, you have to test and retest them, you have to add retargeting and the list will go on. Also, you have to monitor these segments of your campaign and all the possible variables, all the modifiers, bid adjustments, device, audience and so much more.

All of these things take time. Thus, you ought to have patience and trust your digital branding agency. You cannot expect magical ROI’s and flowing profits in a week.

Expectation – Expanding brand awareness will increase conversions

Reality check – This is only true if you can optimize the conversions. A lot of brands consider the “spray and pray” approach while using the display advertising and marketing tactic. In simple terms, if you cast the widest net, you will catch the most fish out of anybody.

This logic is not useful because it doesn’t go with the present best branding practices. The best branding practices teach us that brand awareness will not mean anything unless i) you know your target audience and ii) drive them to convert.

In reality, casting a wide net will be expensive. If you are not aware of the right cost-of-sales, cost-per-acquisition or the returns on ad spend metrics, then you will run the risk of not hitting the optimal ROI. This is where professional digital branding agencies take time to do the homework that enables them to cast the good-size net for your ideal potential customer.

Expectation – Digital branding is quick and you get unlimited revisions

Reality check – Digital branding is not a quick process. It requires a deep dive into understanding your brand to unearth the good, the bad, and the ugly. The more you know, the better it is to create proper digital branding strategies.

If you are working with the right people, digital branding will not be a quick process. You will work with your agency to determine your target market and pain points. Then, the agency will create a timeline based on the number of rounds for revisions.

Understand that if you throw things back and forth over and over, costs will go high up. Most importantly, the brand image starts taking up a hit because your brand is not showing a sign of stability.

In conclusion, it can be said that digital branding is an investment to grow your business. It is not a magic mantra to make your business/brand successful overnight. It is not just about a logo designing service or a social media campaign or a Google AdWords/PPC campaign.

You need to have a consistent, detailed, data-driven approach to make your digital branding a successful one. If you decide to brand your business professionally, you have to get in touch with the professional agencies that align with your brand objective. In an ever-changing world, work with those that want to lift you up and see you succeed.