Digital Branding Trends for 2021

Welcome to the Internet. Everyone’s trying to be seen here.  

Digital branding and marketing trends over the years have shown us that being current and empathetic attracts potential buyers. Be it a luxury brand or a niche, it’s important to talk about current issues, especially those close to your target audience, through your brand.

It provides a sense of inclusivity that buyers are attracted to. It draws them towards your products and/or services because they feel directly spoken to by the brand. So the next video, blog or social media post you put up, think how you can make it current and personal.

Social media platforms are constantly releasing tools that make it easier for businesses to market and sell their products.

Instagram allows businesses to showcase their products as posts, which users can simply click on and purchase the product, that too from within Instagram. The amount of steps to be taken between seeing a product and purchasing it are greatly diminishing, which both customers and businesses are thankful about.

Collaborating with influencers is a fantastic way to get the word out about your brand. These are people that your audience looks up to. Seeing them promote your product or service instantly makes your target audience trust your brand.

Influencer marketing is a great approach to implement, however, don’t collaborate with just anyone under the sun. Businesses, especially those new to digital marketing, make the mistake of getting swept away by the follower count an influencer has. It may not be necessary that their followers are your audience, or the kind of content the influencer creates fits your brand vision.

If you’re just starting out, the most fruitful collaboration you can have is ideally with a Micro Influencer. While they may not have hundreds of thousands of followers, they do have a comfortably sized audience that they are well connected with.

This way, you can advertise yourself more locally, targeted and closer to the people.

Sustainability, eco-friendly etc. are all terms that are on everyone’s lips – even your audience. Netizens is becoming increasingly aware about environmental issues and are being vocal about it. This means that they expect their brands to do the same.

Just like being current and inclusive, promoting yourself as a sustainable brand makes your customers see you as a progressive, conscious and empathic business that they want to associate themselves with. Regardless of what your brand is, every brand can benefit by being sustainable.

The best ways to be vocal about your environmental consciousness is by highlighting your sustainability where you are most visible. This could be a banner on your website, social media posts, a small description of how your product is sustainable etc. Your brand and content should easily showcase the environmentalist identity through these methods.

You might be aware of searching for a picture by using keywords, but did you know that you can use existing pictures to search something? This is something that Google Lens provides, and is being used by people. So why not use these SEO techniques to boost your visibility? You can add keyword descriptions to your product images so that they can appear first on Google search. This can be done by:

 -  Including alt-text in your image descriptions
 -  Adding your product images to your sitemap, or creating a dedicated sitemap              altogether
 -  Providing SEO keywords to your original image filename
 -  Putting out high quality images or videos

By managing your SEO techniques and familiarizing yourself with tools like Google lens, you can shift the audience’s focus from your competitors to yourself.

Personalized content is becoming a key in making yourself a sought-out brand. It gives the audience a personal, humane touch to your business.

Social media is a great tool for this. By creating interactive polls, quizzes, contests, giveaways etc. you let the audience get closer to your business as a vision or belief that they want to be a part of. It ultimately provides a great boost to the overall user experience.

Google constantly updates its local SEO algorithm. So if you’re a local business, it’s a good idea to keep updating your own information so that you appear active and up-to-date when being searched.

By updating your information frequently, you increase your chances of appearing at the top when someone searches for your type of business in a specific area. These are especially the kind of people you should be targeting, as they are more inclined to purchase what you offer.

You can verify yourself on Google by signing up with their Google My Business program. This will integrate you into the program and help you rank higher. You can also provide additional information about your business through the program.

Digital Branding can be intimidating at first, but a willingness to adapt and a steady guide to teach you the ropes can open up wonderful opportunities for your business.

If you’re an aspiring luxury brand willing to adapt to this ever-changing environment, let us help you. At JK Diamond’s Institute of Gems and Jewelry, our Digital Luxury Branding course provides luxury businesses the right strategic understanding to flourish. Begin your journey now!