1. Plan & Strategise

You wouldn’t start building a house without a building plan drawn up by an architect. The same goes for building a brand. In this case, the architects are the DMN Creative team, and the plan is a brand strategy.  Strategic branding helps set yourself apart from your competition and build customer loyalty.

A well-defined and expertly executed brand strategy has a positive impact on consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments.

Remember: Your brand is not just your product, logo and website. It’s all of this, but so much more. It’s the things that make your brand feel tangible, it’s what hits your customers in the ‘feels’, separating it from forgettable brands, and making it memorable.

2. Address your customers directly

Customer experience expectations within the digital space are at an all-time high. It’s not enough for your customer support team to provide the “human” qualities that consumers crave — all your brand’s digital touchpoints should be and feel more human.

When talking to customers, on websites, via social media or in sales and marketing funnels – too many companies talk about themselves and don’t focus on their customers. Switch the focus from “we” to “you”, this is bound to improve your response rates.

Question: What’s the most powerful word in sales and marketing communications? Is it the word “Free”? Some may think so, but in fact it’s “YOU”, “YOURS” and “YOUR”. The more time you use “YOU-words” in your sales messages, the more they get read.

3. Present your brand the right way

Making sure your brand stands out in today’s crowded market is challenging. Just as well DMN loves a good challenge! You need to be imaginative, creative, and harness the desire to create something different – plus of course the right team to make it happen.

There are a myriad of ways to engage your customers (or customers to be). Done right, brand engagement can create real hype around your brand – driving awareness and an increase in the likelihood to bag a sale.

4. Free giveaways and contests

Contests and giveaways, who doesn’t enjoy these?! They can be an easy and quick way to generate positive engagement, get more traffic to your site and, most importantly, generate more leads for your business.

Holding an online contest is not as easy as purely buying a new TV, posting a contest on Facebook and then sit back and wait for the results to come in.

You might get lots of interest and participation – and more likes than you ever thought you’d get – but, at the end of the day, if you’re not getting the right people (your target audience) signing up for your contest or giveaway, you’re not going to get a return on your investment.

DMN makes sure the right people are engaging with your giveaway strategy.

Why run online contests and giveaways? Here are a few good reasons:

• Boost follower engagement
• Generate new social media fans and followers
• Drive more traffic to your website 
• Grow your email list 
• Produce more leads, and in turn, more sales for your business 

5. Talk in a consistent tone

Language is constantly evolving. None of us use the same words from generation to generation. Woke. WFH. Bae. Fleek. You wouldn’t find these in any Shakespearian play, let alone in 2019. So how do you keep your brand’s tone of voice relevant, and consistent?

Some companies worry too much about presentations, principles, guidelines to the point of losing sight of what they need words to do for their brand. Cue: Tone of Voice Brief. A guideline containing ‘consistent’ words. DMN takes this to another level and adds words that convey your brands personality. Something that translates values without sounding generic.

6. Clear and concise messages

Your brand’s messaging clarifies how your brand should be spoken about, written about and what words are used in promotions. To do this, identify what your brand is, what it’s values and attributes are, where it’s positioned in the market, and what sets it apart from the competition. Once this is established, keep your messaging clear (remove the fluff!). As part of our service offering at DMN we have an in-house Copywriter, who’s skills are used to hone your message and keep it short. And to the point.

7. Build a follower base

Every established brand needs a decent set of followers. Here are some tactics and industry insider tips for building a follower base that.

1. Create a sense of community – connect with this community on the right level, and your followers, well, they’ll follow.
2. Do not push products that are below average – your followers need to know that what you are offering is high-quality, and valuable.
3. Content must be high quality – we can’t emphasise a good graphic designer more. The right image, paired with the right words results in content magic.
4. Don’t post constantly – quality over quantity, always!