How a summer of sport got us thinking about the digital branding process

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09 July 2021

By: Nic Thomas

As this year’s summer of sport literally kicks off, here at Individualise we are amazed at how professional athletes – the footballers competing in Euro 2021, the tennis players participating in Wimbledon and the cyclists toughing out the Tour de France, not to mention each and every one of the athletes at the Olympics – have been able to emerge from a pandemic right at the top of their game.

As this year’s summer of sport literally kicks off, here at Individualise we are amazed at how professional athletes – the footballers competing in Euro 2021, the tennis players participating in Wimbledon and the cyclists toughing out the Tour de France, not to mention each and every one of the athletes at the Olympics – have been able to emerge from a pandemic right at the top of their game.

But of course it hasn’t come out of nowhere.

The digital branding process

Years of preparation, planning, strategy and focus lie behind every performance. It’s not high profile and it’s not even necessarily visible, but you know those years are there, the work has been put in and the foundations for success built.

And yes we’re stretching the analogy but really successful philosophies in sport can often be translated to strategies in life or business.

So what is the strategy?

Elite athletes increasingly follow a philosophy known as “The Process,” devised by one of the most successful American football coaches, Nick Saban. He taught his players to shift their focus away from the result, instead focussing on controlling all the variables that determine the outcome. And once they did that, they started winning.

Atomic Habits - How small habits can help your digital website design process
Atomic Habits, by James Clear

Equally inspirational, James Clear in his NY Times bestselling Atomic Habits (Nic’s current bedside reading) outlines how just a 1% change in your daily habits builds towards success. According to Clear, if you focus on the small things, the results fall into place. It’s the power of tiny gains and it worked for the British cycling team!

If you’re interested in finding out more about any aspect of our digital branding process, and to see how it might help your business, why not get in touch for a free strategy call? We’d love to hear from you.

 

Where strategy meets the digital branding process

What we’re saying is that if you want a great end result, you can’t rush headlong into building a website without doing the preparation, the planning and the strategy first. If you focus on each of the seemingly small things that make up your digital strategy, the rest of your plan falls into place.

We like to break down digital strategy into three main sections, which can each be done individually (working on those small gains) or as a whole to get fantastic end results:

Discover

Knowing who you are and your USP, who you want to speak to and how to speak to them is the foundation of your digital strategy. These three things inform all your digital marketing (including your website) so you can target your potential customers effectively. It gives you a clear idea of where and how to focus your digital marketing efforts in order to communicate your products or services to the right people, converting them into clients.

Create

Once you know who you are and who you are trying to reach, it’s time to create a digital brand identity. A coherent brand identity increases your credibility with a confident voice that helps you stand out from an increasingly crowded market. Your brand needs to have a consistent voice and yet be agile enough to work across potentially many different digital media platforms: a professional looking website and your social media at the very least.

Grow

The final piece of the jigsaw is an SEO strategy. SEO isn’t just about keywords and fixing errors; it involves research, contextual analysis and technical knowledge. A well-planned SEO and full digital brand strategy is all about tailoring your needs with the demands of your customers and will increase not just your rankings but also your conversion rate and your business’ online growth. Targeting the right audience is key to a successful strategy. Which means you need to know who you want to speak to and how to communicate with them from the start – and that’s why all our projects involve a discovery session right at the beginning.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how SEO can work for you, why not download a free SEO report for your website. 

How to win at digital branding

From digital design to complete branding exercises and bespoke websites, we can help with all aspects of the digital branding process. We can take your existing logo and branding and translate those into a unique digital identity across all formats, helping you communicate your message with beautiful, effective designs and powerful content.

And even though we say it ourselves, it’s a winning strategy. Clients report increased sales following a website refresh or implemented digital branding strategy. It may not be the Olympics, but it’s good enough for us.

If you’re interested in finding out more about any aspect of our digital branding process, and to see how it might help your business, why not get in touch for a free strategy call? We’d love to hear from you.

Posted By Nic Thomas

Starting her career building websites in notepad back in the late 1990s, Nic's worked on a wide range of small and large-scale web projects. Nic can take your web project from website design brief, to website development completion and support you with your digital marketing.

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Topics

digital branding process, discovery, process, values, visual identity, website discovery, winning

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