Digital Marketing V Digital Branding: Why Brand Image Matters

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Over the last two years, e-commerce has seen a staggering 45% increase in market share. The pandemic has managed to push the numbers to an incredible height. It has transformed the way we shop. The pandemic also saw significant shifts in societal perception of corporate accountability. Now more so than ever, people are making their purchases after factoring in the image of brands. A digital branding agency must work harder to humanize brands and appealingly present them to their consumer base. 

But what exactly is digital branding, and how does it differ from other online marketing strategies. The answer to this question tends to clarify all the queries about why digital branding is necessary.

What exactly is Digital Branding? 

At its core, digital branding is the process of forming a confident presence for your brand in an online format. The target remains the same as traditional marketing to create a meaningful connection with the consumer base. The image that the brand goes for then defines its marketing strategy. 

The aesthetic and the outlook the brand presents lays the ground for the kind of engagement it will get online. For this reason, digital branding companies will ask owners and business people to choose what they think will be good in a long-term capacity. This is because the brand image is not built overnight by one campaign. It is built over time with consistent efforts. So, to change or deviate from it also takes considerable time (think years). 

How is Digital Branding different from Digital Marketing? 

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is primarily focused on the products or services that the brand provides. The goal here is to get the largest number of people interested in the product so that as an ancillary result, they would visit the brand. This primarily relies upon content making, growth hacking, and other strategies that have a more specific target. So ultimately, digital branding is a lot more product-oriented. 

This is the primary difference between digital marketing has with digital branding. Brand campaigns management is brand-focused as opposed to being product-focused. This is a much more holistic approach that requires long-term strategies that must be cohesive. 

Digital marketing usually moves with a one campaign at a time approach that does not work for digital branding—the lengthier approach ties into the permanence of digital marketing. Because you cannot change the brand image overnight, you have to plan for things in the long term. If, for example, your brand image at launching is very high-end and sophisticated, you cannot change it by the second launch to something more comedic. That would make the branding disjointed and hamper the reach of your products. 

Ultimately, digital branding determines the approach you have to take for your marketing strategy. In that sense, digital marketing is a part of the digital branding process. Without knowing how you want to present your brand, you cannot effectively learn how to market it. 

Effects of Good Digital Branding 

Most people tend to focus on digital marketing without having a concrete branding strategy. This can be a big mistake. Brands like dollar shave club have amassed a cult following primarily based on their branding. They presented the brand as a humorous and cool actor in an otherwise mundane industry. They fixated on an aesthetic (not just visual, but also of appeal) and built all their marketing campaigns on that. It is the cohesive consistency that gets them a mass of loyal customers.

This shows us that while a pumped individual marketing campaign might get people interested to look at the brand, it is the brand image that gets them to stay. A good brand image makes for a reasonable customer retention rate. 

Branding also allows for a more authentic connection between the consumer and the company. This is the best possible way to humanize the brand to the customer. This is primarily desirable because we have seen a shift in the way people consume. Relatability has become an essential factor in consumption. For that purpose, a humanized image and an authentic connection will eventually lead to a stable consumer base committed to the brand.

Ultimately, marketing and branding have to be complementary. Disjointedness prevents brands from expanding consumer bases and retaining customers. That is not ideal, especially in the long run. To effectively carve out a market share, a clear digital branding plan is vital.