How To Build A Thriving Digital Brand And Business

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In this new article, we are talking about how you can build a thriving digital brand and business.

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How To Build A Thriving Digital Brand

There are many great and thriving digital businesses around the world. Digital businesses have so much potential: they can connect with more of their specific customer type and they can offer unrivaled communication options.

They can even expand their business model fluidly to suit what their customers want to see from them.

Building a thriving digital brand does take time and effort.

You will need to first improve your business model, craft a great digital presence, and then finally work on improving your customer service.

When you are finished it is all about monitoring, testing, and improving.

A digital brand, just like any other successful business, is always searching for a way to be better for its customers.

Before you get to A/B testing and the analytics side you need a good launching off point, and that is where this guide comes into play:

Your Business Model And Plan

A great digital brand and a great bricks-and-mortar or office business both have the same origin story.

They all required research. They all needed a plan. The only difference is that you need to keep your focus on digital opportunities and be realistic with what you can do, either on your own or with minimal staff.

Research

Research is the most important stage of building a digital business, but there is a limit.

You can research until the end of your days and still likely not know enough if you allow yourself.

Things change all the time and, as any academic can tell you, it is impossible to know everything about a subject.

At some point, you are going to have to jump in.

When it comes to research, however, try to get a good grasp on your competition, in your industry, and especially on the regulations and laws that affect a business like yours.

If you are in doubt, hire a consultant to help you start a business within the confines of the law.

Build Stages to build a thriving digital brand

When creating your business plan a good idea is to keep it simple.

If you have a lot of great ideas, then create stages.

This way you can start a business with a very clear-cut business plan and idea, and then you can evolve and expand it as you go.

This is the best way to keep your company stable.

Start first with selling products, for example, and once you have worked out the kinks from that and have a decent customer base, then introduce a new revenue stream, like a subscription model or perhaps an online course.

There are always going to be kinks and a learning curve.

By keeping your business in stages, you can lower the amount of work and challenges to workable levels.

Jump

It is all too easy to overdo it with research.

You want to know everything so that you do not make a mistake.

The fact of the matter, however, is that you will make a mistake.

Your research and learning never really stops, after all.

Instead, it just has a real-world example that you can experiment with.

You are typically in a good place to launch your business when you have a business plan and a general idea for success.

Everything else will need to be learned and adjusted as you go, otherwise you will only ever learn with a theoretical business in mind, rather than learning what actually works for your digital company.

Your Digital Presence

Having a solid plan for your business can help keep you focused and can even help get you funding.

It shows you have a realistic understanding of the business, the industry, and how you intend to be profitable.

The next step is to build the tools and the platform that you will use to bridge those ideas into the possibility.

Your Aesthetic

You needed to research and plan for your business model, and you need to plan and research when it comes to the look and feel of your digital business.

This type of research, however, is a lot more fun.

You will want to choose a color pallet, a series of fonts, and even the overall effect you are going for with your business.

This effect should be complementary to your business model and the overall industry.

If you work in tech then having a bubblegum aesthetic likely will not go down well.

That being said, there is always the chance you will hit it out of the park when you take risks.

Tech companies often come across as very cold in their bid to look professional, and you may find a great niche by going with a vastly different look for your own tech company by changing up the narrative and going with that bubblegum aesthetic.

At the end of the day, the aesthetic that works for your business will be a mixture of what appeals to your target audience, and what actually works.

Be prepared to do testing and do not be afraid to evolve your efforts as you find what works best.

Your Website

Start with your website, this is, after all, your online store.

It is your hub of activity and everything from social media and articles to print advertising should be directing traffic to your website.

Your website does not need to be complex.

Instead, it needs to be usable.

From a simple, intuitive design to additional support features that make it a breeze for customers to get what they want out of your website.

This includes things like product filters, a live chat window, an FAQ page, and even a blog or set of guides so that they can gain inspiration on how to use your products.

Your Social Media

Social media is how you can easily and comfortably stay in touch with existing customers, and how you can attract new followers, and slowly work to convince those followers to become customers themselves.

Any business type can benefit from social media, but that does not mean that you can get away with poor-quality content.

If your business is not naturally aesthetically pleasing, then you will need to make data and information sing.

Many people follow accounts that work to display interesting information in a beautiful way.

This can be an infographic, a graph, a text headline, and more.

By finding a unique way to convey your expertise and what your business does, you can bring in new customers or clients.

Your Content

Content is critical. Content is king. Aesthetic is just the wrapping paper, and your website the frame.

The true star is and always will be your content.

The content in question should be a mixture of different mediums.

Written content is always going to be important because it is one of the best and most comprehensive ways to communicate with others online.

Photos, videos, guides, and infographics, however, are just as important when it comes to your overall content strategy.

Using a mixture of all of them, and remembering to make every option you choose accessible, is a must.

You will also want to make sure that your content is optimized for search engines.

This includes photos and videos, which have their own SEO strategy, not unlike the SEO strategy you would use for your website and written content.

Your Customer Service

Digital brands must invest in customer service.

Being polite in-store and having a great atmosphere might be a good launching point for brick-and-mortar locations, but that is far from the case for digital businesses.

You need to offer all the very same digital customer service offerings that traditional businesses offer their customers online, and then you need to go beyond that.

Convincing a new customer to trust in your new brand is hard.

Great customer service will not just win them over, it can possibly win you a loyal customer for life.

Great customer service has never been more important in an era where online sales and subscription sales have soared through the roof.

Customers are willing to give new digital brands a chance, but you need to work hard to convince them every step of the way that choosing you, was the best decision of their life.

There are several ways to do this.

1. With Direct Conversations

A great place to start with your customer service is to improve your direct conversations.

This will always require a human behind the wheel, but there are many great ways to make it easier on yourself.

There is an iPhone live chat app, for example, that will allow you to see and manage all conversations with your customers.

This way you can have all of your conversations with you on the go.

You can even track visitors, add personalized messages, and more.

Talking directly to your customers is going to happen.

They may have a specific question for you, may have a complaint, or may just want to thank you.

To win over customers (happy and unhappy alike) then you need to be communicative.

Do not make it harder for yourself, use a single communication portal that you and everyone on your team can access, and make sure the option you choose allows you to integrate the data from your chats to your CRM.

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2. Social Media

Social media is another excellent place to offer service to your customers.

After all, the relationship between you and your customers does not only exist when your customer directly gets in touch or makes a sale.

Keeping them engaged is critical for a lifelong relationship.

There are many great ways to do this, thanks to different trends and tools you can create online.

Stories on Instagram and TikTok are two great ways to create content that is intended to be engaged within more than just a like or share.

There are easy ways to get people to play games online that will help you to build a thriving digital brand and also give you fairly important data, for example, if you ask a question or host a quiz.

3. Community Outreach

There are several ways that you can enjoy community outreach, and they all depend on your brand and what you do. These can even bring in new streams of income if you have the right business model.

For example, you can bring in new customers and engage the community in person if you sign up for your brand to be a part of a market or conference.

You could also offer additional resources. If you offer a service, for example, you can create a course or series of webinars (free or paid, it is up to you) so that you can teach others, showcase your own expertise, and engage with your community.

Community engagement can look like collaborations. It can look like contests. It can look like special events.

They are fun ways to break up your business year and give customers and followers reasons to stick with you.

4. Personalization

Personalization is one of the best and most powerful business tools available to you.

It is how you can sell more, improve your business, and appeal to your customers.

In today’s age, it is also something that customers have come to expect from you, and you cannot let them down.

Thankfully, personalization is so easy with today’s tools that even small businesses can offer it.

Personalization can help you craft better emails, better updates, and can even help you sell more.

5. Live Updates

Live updates are a great way to make customers feel comfortable and confident when buying from you or hiring you.

Like personalization, it is once again very, very easy to offer this feature.

All you need is to find the right software tool that integrates with your existing system.

Customers should be able to log in to track their package, or to keep track of where your employee is if they have hired a service.

The best part of offering these tools is that you can collect better and more comprehensive data for your own business, allowing you to make smarter decisions for your company in the future.