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In 1997, Apple was in an awful state. Steve Jobs, who was one of the founders of Apple was previously fired from his own company was brought on as a last hope of reviving the company. Once Steve Jobs returned as the interim CEO and he immediately did something that inspired not just Apple’s customers, but also the employees who’d forgotten what Apple meant. He launched the campaign ‘ Think Different .’ He had two core strategies in this campaign:


1. Make the best products in the world, and

2. Kill Apple’s products before someone else did with a new product


Apple
When a fruit changes the world

The results? It’s evident today. I'm sure you've heard of Apple and know clearly what the company makes and sells. Apple is worth over $1 trillion and still climbing. They produce some of the best products (arguably) and are known for great best customer service (genius bar!). Their iPod crushed Sony’s Walkman. But they didn’t stop there. In 2007, they introduced the iPhone, dubbed the “iPod killer”.


Steve Job: “Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and

we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company

is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”


Even great brands need investment and care if it’s going to retain relevance and vitality. In fact, the older the brand, the older the customers who connected with their mission are. Eventually, you’ll want to connect with the younger generation to increase LTV. It’s a constant reinvention and adaptation that keeps your brand relevant for ages.



Update Your Brand


Thinking of updating your brand can be overwhelming. As natural selection has proven over time, change always happens whether or not you like it. That’s the immutable law of the universe. Your brand has to either “ innovate or die. ” So the smartest decision is to move forward and make changes in order to thrive. When this moment comes, or when circumstances (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) make it necessary, what do you do? We will tell you what rebranding, refreshing your brand or updating your brand means, what you stand to gain from it, and how to go about it.


What Exactly is Rebranding or Updating Your Brand?


Apple’s logo speaks of premium quality every single time—and high cost, of course, but first, what is branding? Usually what would come to mind when you think of the word “brand” is the name,

colors, logo, etc., of a business. And that’s correct for the most part.


Branding is a technique of using easily identifiable symbols to market your business.These are symbols that once spotted in the market will make people think of your brand and what it stands for. Like a country’s flag.


Updating your brand is taking all these “easily identifiable symbols” and crafting them into a different story than they were telling before.


An important point to note: Brand refresh/update differs from rebranding. While refreshing your brand involves subtle changes in your pre-existing brand identity, rebranding can involve a total overhaul of your identity. It sounds like a bold business move to make, right?


It could change a lot of things. What if your customers don’t like it? What if this changes everything you stand for?


These are perfectly normal concerns. And the extent to which you want to change things is up to you. But when the need arises, adapting may be one of the smartest moves you’ll make. And taking that risk can prove highly beneficial. Blockbuster, Blackberry, and MySpace didn’t make these moves when it was time. For Blockbuster, they failed to update their brand and business model during the rise of on-demand video and Netflix. And Blockbuster met its demise.




Let Go of the Past — Think The Long Term Strategy


In the wake of climate change awareness, oil and gas companies were at the receiving end of heavy criticisms concerning the damage on the environment caused by their operations.


British Petroleum (BP), in 2020, decided to let go of their 70-year-old logo that depicted strength and adopt a new brand image showing their new focus on the environment: their helios logo that looks like a stylized sunflower. This is just one example of rebranding. Even though unfortunate events in 2010 (the Deepwater Horizon oil spill) later cast a shadow on their efforts, it is still a beautiful example.


McDonald’s, Apple, Burberry, and Target are other brands that were successful in their rebranding efforts too. Let’s check out some ways they benefitted.





Benefits of Rebranding


There are some reasons you’ll want to (or have to) rebrand, such as

● Your business strategy/model changing

● Changing your market or the demographic of customers you appeal to

● Recent tragedy involving your business

● Public opinion about your brand

● New competitors on the turf


They can be blessings in disguise. Because the most effective rebranding strategy can lead to:


1. Standing Out

If, as a pet company, you have the same look and feel as all the other pet companies in your area, you’ll look like just another pet company. Like a part of a huge franchise. Work on your brand to set yourself apart from the competition so you're more memorable to the audience.


2. Modernizing Your Brand Identity

Change is constant, that’s a cliche at this point. What worked as a beautiful website design in 1999 for most people wouldn’t work today. You should always stay on top of upgrades so your brand doesn’t feel like that old stuff we knew from our childhood that’s fading into obscurity.


3. Expanding to a Wider Customer Base

Imagine yours is a car brand beloved by middle-aged moms. Rebranding to include storytelling and features that appeal to younger women too will expand your customer base.


4. Making a Better Impression on the Public

Whatever the reason might be to rebrand or update an existing brand image, if you tell a magnificent business story around your new brand identity, the public will love your brand. Your new brand persona should be an authentic reflection of how you intend to do business all-round.


5. Boosting Your Search Engine Optimization

It’s possible to mess up your SEO when changing your brand image. With the proper help, you won’t ruin your SEO when setting up your brand identity for maximum benefits. In fact, a great rebranding or brand refresh will boost your SEO.


Move Forward into the Future


For many industries in the world, this is a turnaround period. Many brands will change forever, some emerging stronger while others will sadly be overtaken by their competitors. Effective brand management should be one of the major concerns of forward-thinking enterprises. If you need help in strengthening your brand image, updating your existing brand, or a simple refresh, contact us at info@brandandbranders.com

The year is 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Felix, a 20-year-old undergrad, has lost interest in his major Industrial Economics and Technology Management. He would later start drifting away from his academics and towards his passion — Photoshop and video games. Then he shares the latter with the internet on this new site called YouTube. Today, Forbes named Felix Kjellberg the highest-earning Youtuber. He makes up to $15 million per year. The name of his channel is PewDiePie.



Going into stories of people or brands who jumped on the right trend at just the right time will have you gasping for air. GoPro, another example, jumped on the picture and video sharing culture of the 2000s. As of 2017, they were worth over a billion dollars. In 2020, you have the power to use the right trend to trigger an explosive growth for your brand. But what are those trends? We’ll show you. Watch out, some older trends (like Voice search from 2019) are waxing stronger this year.


9 Trends in Digital Marketing for Rapid Brand Growth in 2020


“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Kay


If you want to get the best results out of your digital marketing efforts this year, despite all the apocalyptic drama surrounding it, ride the right waves. The right waves could be social media, new tech, or a new (sometimes resurfaced) way of doing business. You don’t have to dig deep to find out what’s trending in the digital marketing sphere this year. Because we’ve got that done for you.


1. Tik Tok


Tik Tok grew massively in a few short years, overtaking a lot of apps to record 800 million active users. It’s no wonder savvy marketers are turning their attention to the short video sharing app adored by the Gen Z. Videos on Tik Tok are doing very well, with millions of views on several videos. If you’ve been watching, many of the memes in 2020 started on this social media app. MAC cosmetics who recognize this teamed up with some Tik Tok influencers to start a hashtag challenge #YouOwnIt. This was in September 2019. It took only 6 days to hit 635,000 videos created and over 1.6 billion views.


Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash


2. Chatbots


Those little bubbles at the bottom of many web pages these days that say, “Hi there! How can I help you today?” are prime examples of chatbots. Here, these bots help you navigate the website in a chat interface. They help website owners deliver the best experience to their visitors. They help answer simple questions, provide 24-hour help, and give instant responses each time. Research shows that Chatbots will own 85% of customer service in 2020. Many brands like Lyft, Pizza Hut, and Whole Foods Market use Chatbots.


3. Voice Search

According to Gartner's - a leading global research firm :

● Half of all searches will be done by voice in 2020

● Voice shopping will grow by $2 billion and hit $40 billion in 2022

● 72% of owners of voice-activated speakers say it’s a part of their daily lives

It’s becoming more and more important to optimize your web content for voice search. You can do this by focusing on getting on Google’s featured snippets and writing with words people speak with rather than write.


4. SEO A/B Testing

Marketers would usually create a piece of copy, content, ad, etc., publish it, and cross their fingers hoping for it to work. But that’s no longer the case with A/B testing. SEO A/B testing involves creating two versions of the same content and analyzing results to see which performs better in real life. Tools like ClickFlow will help you maximize the SEO potential of your website with smart optimization suggestions.








5. Artificial Intelligence


It was in 2019 that Harvard Business Review predicted that there will be more AI

components in new software products. Gartner seconded this in 2020. AI isn’t just a thing of 2020, it has been around for decades. But this year, businesses are using it more than ever to:

● Chat with customers like a real person using natural language processing (remember chatbots from number 2?)

● Customize user experience from a pool of data drawn from social media posts and blog posts

● Personalize emails, etc. AI drives higher efficiency at costs lower than using regular labor.


6. Instagram


Instagram is a video and picture sharing app that Facebook acquired for a billion dollars, which we believe is because Mark Zuckerberg saw it for the goldmine it is. Instagram doesn’t just serve ads as part of its eCommerce service delivery package, there’s also the shoppable post. They unveiled this in 2019. Out of their 1 billion users, Instagram says 90% of them are already following shopping brands. Which leads to the question: If you are not selling on Instagram already, what are you doing?


7. Video Marketing


For many people, this would be their first encounter with the term "video marketing." Video marketing involves your digital marketing effort that uses videos — think YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook videos. And in the last couple of years, internet live streaming too. Most aspects of video marketing are measuring growths, and they haven’t slowed down in 2020. More people are relating better with brands that use videos, leading to higher click-through rates and conversions. You can start. It’s as simple as a webinar, a video slideshow of your blog post, a Q/A session about your products/services, or a live demo.



8. Content Marketing

Permit us to use that cliche here: Content is king.


And it's still on the throne. The most successful brands in the world don't let up on content. What is content? Content is everything on the internet — videos, text, images, audio, flash, etc. They’re the silk of the world wide web. In fact, the fastest way to seal the top position on Google is providing rich user-friendly content. 88% of B2B content marketers agree that creating content makes their audience see them as trustworthy.


9. Influencer Marketing

In number 1 about Tik Tok, we told a story of MAC cosmetics and how they teamed up with influencers of Tik Tok to start a hashtag challenge. Influencer marketing is common these days, and this year it's growing even faster. Social media influencers already have the fans, the following, and the admiration of thousands, even millions of people who listen to them. Recognize this and affiliate your brand with one in your niche to record massive success in your marketing efforts.



In Summary...

The digital marketer sphere of 2020 is still vibrant with old trends and new ones. It’s never too late to grab onto one or two and ride the wave upwards to greater brand growth.


Choose from these 9 digital marketing trends in 2020 for rapid brand growth:

1. Tik Tok

2. Chatbots

3. Voice search

4. SEO A/B testing

5. AI

6. Instagram

7. Video marketing

8. Content marketing

9. Influencer marketing

Align it with your brand and what your audience appreciates. Soon you’ll have a success story to tell.


Looking to see results? Contact info@brandandbranders.com

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