We’re celebrating and spotlighting some of our favorite, highest rated sessions from our Digital Summit at Home events from 2020. In this recap, we feature Juntae DeLane (@JuntaeDeLane), Founder of the Digital Branding Institute and Digital DeLane. Juntae gave a ton of insights at our DS at Home October and December events about the best ways to grow your brand in the middle of a crisis. Enjoy this free session!
At Digital Summit at Home in October (and again in December), Juntae DeLane, Founder and Chief Strategist for Digital Delane shared his best tips to help you create a brand that is resilient to crises in 2020 and beyond. Juntae begins by digging into moments of crisis – Occupy Wall Street, Me Too, and the Black Lives Matter movements – and how consumers were able to force brands into being more transparent, responsible, and accountable.
With COVID-19 in 2020, we’ve witnessed an economic transformation that is once again changing the ways in which brands interact with consumers. Businesses and brands are starting to understand they need to be as dynamic as their customers.
How to build a future-proof digital brand (08:13)
The first thing to do is to build a digital brand. Your digital brand should have an identity, visibility, and credibility.
- Identity: In addition to your website and digital touchpoints, your digital identity revolves around content. Create more content and re-purpose existing content to build your brand. Use a content calendar to help manage your content strategy and ensure your content is aligned with the expectation and behaviors of your target audience.
- Visibility: Use this time to push more paid ads – particularly social media ads. Display and video are other ad mediums that are great ways to build visibility.
- Credibility: Earn credibility by establishing your brand voice. Brand voice is composed of character, purpose, language, and tone.
So how do you accomplish this? Follow these tips to future-proof your brand and watch the full session video above for even more tips and details.
Develop a Pandemic-Style Marketing Strategy (22:05)
Understand that your customers may change during crises. Begin by determining where they live online and focus on starting conversations with them where they live. You may have to rework successful campaigns for the new normal. Then learn and improve as time goes on.
Leverage Existing Assets and Resources (25:53)
Evaluate your existing assets to see if you can leverage them in the digital space. For example, testing e-commerce as a way to drive additional revenue.
Deepen Loyalty with Existing Customers (26:39)
Focus on your top 20% of customers to make sure they stick with you during a time of crisis. Offer deals or extend olive branches to keep them happy and engaged with you.
Explore the Benefits of Collaboration (27:23)
Collaborate with other businesses or brands that resonate with your target audience. This could provide additional value to your audience while giving you more support and stability during a crisis.
Embrace the Pivot (28:05)
You can’t fight against the rest of the world, so find ways to turn the negatives into opportunities. Whether you’re able to sell your goods or services or not, you can and should focus on establishing your identity, visibility, and credibility. Be able to adapt your current strategies, ad mediums, or however you’re connecting with your audience. Go from a transactional mindset to an educational mindset.
By following these tips, you can become smart, efficient, and effective in growing and protecting your digital brand for what’s to come in the new era of doing business.
To hear from experts like Juntae and hundreds of others that teach at Digital Summit, check out our 2021 calendar of virtual and in-person events.
Kick off 2021 with a bang and join us on January 27 for Digital Summit Go!, a FREE 1-day online event featuring 12 of our best speakers. Hear 12 rapid fire talks on Content, Social, Email, and SEO with tons of actionable takeaways to help your marketing soar in the new year. Did we mention that it’s FREE? 🙂