Businesses are increasingly being judged on the strength of their digital branding and their online footprint. Companies that don’t invest in their digital assets risk getting left behind. By Deb Croucher.

Digitisation is a tsunami of unprecedented proportions sweeping relentlessly across the business landscape with no respect for geographical borders, your loyal team or the blood sweat and tears you’ve put into building your organisation. Being big or established doesn’t give you the automatic clout it once did.

Consumers can now effortlessly choose from a multitude of competitors and follow trends with a few swipes of their thumb. An expensive property in a prime location no longer ensures passing trade will come in the door.

And in the B2B world you are increasingly judged by the strength and consistency of your digital brand and footprint. Digital assets are appearing on balance sheets across every industry.

ERP systems that drastically improve performance and productivity are now essential for anyone who wants to have a hope of staying competitive. And effective websites, social media channels and email communications are the minimum required to compete in the marketplace.

As business owners we are staring down the barrel of two stark choices:

Build the right digital assets to surf the wave.

Or watch our businesses get wiped out.

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So, what is a valuable digital asset?

So how do you know which digital assets to invest in? After all, if you get it wrong it can be disastrous. You can waste months of your life, thousands of dollars and a scary amount of opportunity by going down the wrong path.

There are many people more qualified than me who can talk to you about digital ERP systems. But when it comes to digital marketing, we have hundreds of years of combined experience in our team at Brilliant Digital and we certainly know where to invest for the best return.

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Stay on brand … or die!

Let’s start with the basics: Brand.

This is incredibly important. Get your brand right and you will massively multiply the return on every marketing cent you spend. Get it wrong or inconsistent and your business will die… literally. Your business will be swept away by the wave.

Just to be clear, digital brand is not just a logo or a set of colours or images associated with your business. A digital brand is everything your customers or potential customers see, hear, feel and think about when they find you and your business online.

Think about some of the components of that for a moment. Words. Photographs. Videos. Audio files. Logo and colours.

Lots of people do a great job of the logo, colours and shapes. But they don’t think about the words and messaging around their brand. That’s a huge and very expensive mistake. And a great opportunity for you.

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Content is the currency

Your brand message starts with the key problems your client is facing, and builds into your solution. As you create the words around your solution, keep your focus firmly on the customer. If your digital brand message is not clear you need to stop and fix it first before you spend any more money anywhere else on digital platforms and marketing.

A good digital strategist and a content producer are the key skill sets you need if you don’t have those in house.

The reality is that content is the currency. The words, images, videos and podcasts that form your digital brand are actually the most valuable digital marketing assets you own. Take time to produce quality and then guard it fiercely.

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Do you own it? Can you control it? Is it safe?

Here’s an interesting concept. Which digital assets do you actually own and have full control over?

If you put your content on your website, you own it. Period. Your website is yours and as long as you keep it secure … you control the content on it.

You can make the content and structure Google-friendly and get thousands of people coming from free Google searches every day, looking for you and your business. Clearly that’s a very powerful digital asset. Hard work to build, but solid and secure.

Your database and email and phone number list are also obviously highly valuable assets you own and can work to deliver huge rewards.

What about if you put content on Facebook or Instagram? Do you own it now? Or do the social media giants have the right to take it down at any time? (They can and they have.) Can you control what else goes up around your LinkedIn posts? (No, of course you can’t.) So is content on social media a digital asset or not?

To answer that question, you need to think about whether you are taking a short-term or long-term view.

If you are building a solid business based on loyalty, trust and delivering consistently for years and years to longstanding clients, then your website and SEO are the digital assets to invest most heavily in.

Social media is important for brand awareness and as a driver to your website, but trying to feed it several times a day with content that gets washed away by the relentless digital tide is going to send you broke. However, if you have a product, service or business which has a short shelf life, then social media and advertising will create the hype and excitement you need to get a quick and fast result.

Deb Croucher is the founder and CEO of Brilliant Digital.

www.brilliantdigital.com.au