The world is at our fingertips. Through our smartphones we can easily access the entirety of humankind’s collective wisdom, and can resolve any conundrum in seconds with a quick Google search.

Nonetheless, most of us instead prefer to spend time online swiping through Facebook rather than scrolling through Plato’s archives.

While this scenario may not be ideal for the development of our species, it’s great news for businesses looking to reach a captive audience through digital marketing in Thailand.

Whether you’re B2B, B2C, an NGO,  or a government entity, you can now, for the first time in human history, immediately connect with your target audience through online marketing. While many old industries are falling by the wayside due to digital transformation, creative startups with compelling stories to tell can quickly become market leaders.

People go online to be entertained, informed or educated; they’re not interested in advertisements. Therefore, to have success with online marketing in Thailand, your business needs to get creative and establish a respectful, ongoing relationship with your (potential) clients; sales should be a secondary consideration.

In this series, we’ll explore the ten essential steps of digital marketing. Today we start with the foundational core of all online marketing: Branding.

Online marketing takes many forms: from content marketing to blogging; and from social media to SEO via seeding, live videos, guest posting and targeted advertising.

So where do you begin?

Branding Begins at Home(page)

Your website is the online equivalent of your office, your brochures, and your brand book. It is the first impression potential clients get when they find you through Google, and it’s where social media traffic should flow. It’s also the first place a prospect goes when they’re given your business card at an event or as a referral from a friend.

Just as your brochures and office are designed to transform leads into clients, your website has the same goal — impress prospects, tell your brand story, and reveal your unique value proposition. Do all this effectively, and you’ll soon be on a first-name basis with cold leads who discover you on Google.

Unlike other online platforms, you have complete control over how your website looks. Therefore, it offers a prime opportunity to explain your goods, services and company philosophy, all while impressing prospects with your brand’s unique personality.

To maximize conversions, we recommend ensuring the following elements are present on your homepage:

• Professionally designed logo
• Consistent use of colour and font
• Consistent tone of voice
• Clear visual style and use of images
• Clear links to the About Us page and a blog
• Answer the question, “Why choose you?”

Your website is your online home, so consistency and clarity are key. The brand personality you establish here, creates the blueprint for your digital marketing efforts across the web.

Social Media

While your website allows you to control every small detail, social media platforms provide a lot less freedom. Nonetheless, your brand’s personality must still shine through.

Your business’ Facebook posts are competing with millions of others published each day. Therefore, your posts need to stand out or risk ending up as white noise.

When attempting to create a unique brand personality on Facebook, consistency of style, topic choice and language is key.

To gain a better understanding of these three elements, let’s look at some examples starting with Twix’s use of style in the following images.

A quick peruse through their Facebook page and you’ll notice every image Twix posts uses the same color palette: yellow, brown and red.

You’ll also notice, how images are brightly colored.

These characteristics—their color palette and bright colors—are hallmarks of the Twix brand. When people think of Twix, they think of these color styles.

Style is equally important to video as it is to images.

L.L. Bean, the outdoor recreation retailer, infused a consistent style into their “Be an Outsider” campaign videos.

Notice how all videos share a common theme: young people outdoors, doing things a little bit differently.

Each video is somewhat surprising. And each is short and professionally produced.

Now that your visual style is well-defined, next it’s time to consider topic choice.

If you click on Lexicon’s Facebook Feed, you’ll notice all our topics are focused on the services we offer: social media, content writing and multimedia. However, our posts aren’t selling anything. Instead, we provide valuable information to business owners about these services.

For example, see this post.

Or this post.

Both are about a core service we offer: social media management. But the focus is on providing value, instead of selling. By providing value, you position yourself as an expert, which builds trust and will eventually lead to new sales and customers.

Tone of voice is another key area for your brand to stand out and, again, consistency is key.

See this post we created for Banyan Tree Bangkok.

Notice how the language is experiential in nature? The focus of all branded Banyan Tree content is to position the hotel as a Sanctuary for the Senses. Therefore, language emphasizes sensory experience. As this is a luxury brand, the company’s style guide would also reccomend words which imply modernity and distinction, such as “classic”, “exclusive” and “contemporary”.

Why is Consistency Important?

Consistency is at the core of branding. All humans have characteristics that our friends, family and colleagues come to recognize as our unique personality. Companies do, too. Consistent brand traits humanize your company. They make your company feel like a friend; they build relationships with your potential customers.

If you regularly change your brand’s tone and style, you’ll confuse your followers. This can be catastrophic for relationship building. The friend your followers were just starting to warm up to suddenly acted out of character. Now, they’re questioning; who is this brand? Can they trust it? Should they unfollow your page?

This is why consistency is vital. Consistency breeds familiarity and ensures your followers know who your brand is and what to expect from it. When followers can count on you to get a specific type of service, product, content and style, you can win the trust and loyalty needed to develop enduring relationships. That’s when clients instinctvely choose you over your competitors and your sales funnel ignites.

Branding is the foundational element of longevity. 

How to ensure consistency with every post?

We recommend a brand book. From the type of font and colors your brand uses, to its tone of voice and image style, a brand book defines every aspect of your brand.

A brand book ensures that everyone who publishes content for your brand—whether yourself, your employees or an outsourced online marketing agency—understands your company’s identity, how you talk, and what you talk about. A brand book is your emergency brake. If anyone in your company forgets the correct pantone for your logo (or another element of your brand) are supposed to look like, your brand book is there to gently remind them.

With a clear, consistent brand defined, the unique personality of your company can shine through. Your next step is to provide followers and potential customers great content each day that keeps them coming back for more. This is how strong brands differentiate themselves online.

Once you feel confident in your brand, the next step is to get to know your audience. Stay tuned for lesson 102: understanding your audience.

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