Over the past few weeks, through multiple webinars and conversations with prospective clients we have been creating a template for brands who want to move from Offline to Online.

There are concerns about budgets, which mediums to use, what to do as a first step - a lot of anxious questions from founders and CEOs with small teams, looking to find some answers and fixes to building their brands online.

We think, the journey can be categorised in a few key directions.

Brand Consistency:

A lot of the journey has to do with explaining your brand to new customers through your marketing strategy. This information goes out through your website, social media platforms (linkedin/ twitter/ insta/ youtube/ quora and others), webinars, blogs, articles. Social media and digital marketing are powerful weapons in this new age.

Consumers are already bombarded by information and marketing messages.

To drive your message, reply on two pillars:

• Consistency
• Frequency

News is made when there is new information. Whether once a week, twice a week, daily. Your task is to choose your frequency of information sharing and stay with it. A fixed timetable creates anticipation and that is a very big step in building recall and hence your brand’s identity and position.

However, the second pillar of consistency is very important. You can choose your messaging strategy and personality. Whether funny, serious, visual heavy, text heavy. Whether your content goes into an industry or several.

Repeated brand messages which are consistent in their nature are your most powerful allies in building the brand.

But give Consistency and Frequency some time to work in your favour. That is what will separate your start from your finish.

Brand Authenticity:

Authenticity is the ability to express the brand honestly. Standing by what the brand knows and what it doesn’t.

This is a difficult ask. Authenticity demands that we draw a clear line at who our customer is and who isn’t. Who we can serve and who we can’t.

For example: if your blog is for the SME market, what experience with this segment allows the writer to represent that segment. It shows in the issues that the blog would address, the solutions and the nature of story telling.

Brand Originality:

If you think hard enough of your target segment’s challenges, you will find your own take on how to solve them. Originality is the demand made on your time to think about your consumer. To spend some time in her shoes.

And from this will come ideas that are unique to you, your way of thinking and your way of connecting with your customers.

In fact authenticity and originality are very close friends. They work very well together.

Brand Belief!

Knowing you believe in your company, its services and the brand gets communicated in very subtle ways.

Either the words you use, the frequency with which you communicate or even the topics you choose to communicate for your brand.

Prospective buyers are looking to trust you and your brand. Brands need their owners to stand in front of them sometimes, besides them at other times and behind them when times are toughest. Are you there for your brand?

That’s when customers see authenticity and reliability in your brand/ product or service.

Consistently delivering on these 4 tasks is in our view a very powerful way of getting your brand known out there.

In part 2 of this note, we will discuss which are the right platforms, budgets and approaches to go online.