Refresh Your Digital Brand: A Guide for 2021

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February 18, 2021 Marketing

Your digital brand is crucial. It’s the storefront you don’t have the luxury of actually having in a digital, 2D world. Physical stores can use merchandising, scent, and experience in a way that digital brands will simply never have access to. Some brands in the past have tried to be creative with how their online stores operate, to try to capture some of the magic that only that in-store shopping experience can offer, but none of them have been wholly successful. The online store formats we see today are popular because they are the best way to sell items online, but that doesn’t mean that you are in any way forced to be like your competitors.

Standing out is crucial, but you cannot just do things for the sake of it. Your decisions need to matter, and they need to work towards an overall impression that is positive and effective. A great, unified digital brand is a powerful tool that can help drive engagement and sales, and it must be visible and apparent both in the front-facing aspects of your digital brand and in the customer-facing aspects.

Is Your Brand in Need of a Refresh?

It can be difficult to tell when a refresh of your brand is in order, but it is important to remember that it will be at one point or another. The largest, most successful brands in the entire world have refreshed their branding and brand strategy over and over throughout the years to suit trends and public tastes. Over a hundred years old, companies that look very different today than they did when they first started because change is good. Too much change too quickly can be damaging, but if your business fits any of these criteria, chances are yours is ready:

Have your values changed?
Is your branding old and outdated?
Does your branding not get the engagement you want?
Has your business expanded or changed?

Of course, if it feels right to refresh your brand, then go with your instincts. You won’t want to start from scratch in any situation completely, but if your business could do with a refresh, these steps will help you get there successfully:

Rethink Your Brand Persona

Your brand persona is the best way to start any brand refresh. You need to be very clear about who you are as a company and then go back to the drawing board. You can rehash things like your logo, but everything else is free game. Rethink the colors, the symbols, the font, and even the tone of voice that you use. Everything should reflect the brand persona you make for your company.

Remember: Keep things Simple and Clean

You need things to be simple because you need your branding to look like part of one family. Your marketing strategy can look different than your social media content, but it needs to feel like the same people created both. By keeping the brand persona and marketing assets you use simple, they can do more and be tweaked and adapted to suit your every need.

Refresh Your Website

Now that you have an idea of your refreshed brand, it’s time to put it into action. A good way to start is with your website. Don’t be afraid if a new look or theme is in order. Websites get old and outdated just as anything else online and updating the look and function can be as good for your brand as it is for your SEO. Find or build a theme that matches your new branding assets, and then fill in the color from there.

Refresh Your Social Media

Go and do a complete social media audit. Take note of what posts got more engagement and which ones didn’t. You can go through and completely remove old content to get ready for a refresh if you want, but what matters here is that the new strategy you use is based on the best parts of your previous efforts, combined with your new branding efforts. If your customers liked it when you posted stats and figures from your industry, for example, create a new text-template that uses your new branding tools to jump on that and drive up engagement.

Refresh Your Emails

Your emails are crucial. In emails, you can build a real rapport with your customers in ways that you simply cannot through your social media or website. Small businesses can develop a relationship by speaking directly to customers, especially when they have a problem.

That doesn’t mean that you can let your emails be blank, uninteresting blocks of text. A beautiful email template can do wonders for your brand, and it’s so easy to do. An HTML format can make all your correspondence look great, and a rocketseed.com email signature can add beautiful, engaging content right to the footer of every email or newsletter you send.

Refresh Your Marketing

It’s easiest to refresh your marketing because you don’t need to pull old campaigns. Instead, you have to use your new branding tools in the future. Your new logo, or the new colors, or even the new tone of voice you have decided will better convey your brand to your customers.

This applies everywhere, from your social media right down to your PPC. No matter where or how a customer finds you through an ad, they should be able to recognize you again in the future. Retargeting is a powerful strategy to get customers to your site and buy from you, as a single introduction is rarely enough, especially online. By making it obvious that your marketing strategies are related, those who see your ads online can connect the dots and realize that they are looking at yet another version of your business.

Branding is your persona online. It’s how you can engage with customers on multiple channels and still have all those interactions feel like you. If your current branding isn’t holding up, it’s time for a refresh!