ONLINE BRAND EXPERIENCE (OBX) – All the Basics You Need To Know




Brand experience in traditional marketing or (Traditional Brand Experience) is the look, feel, perception, direction and ideology of a brand/organization as perceived by an individual. This perception may have been created willingly or unwillingly by the brand itself and hence becomes the representation of such a brand.


Subconsciously, for any individual to truly experience a brand they make use of their six senses. They subconsciously make use of the sense of sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing and lastly thought (brain) the later being where the conclusion about a brand is been summarized and made. One may not necessarily need all senses at the same time when encountering or evaluating some brands.


For instance, when sizing a brand like Kentucky Fried Chicken you need all six senses but when factoring a brand as GT Bank all you need are just your sense of sight, hearing and thought (brain).
In-essence, the lesser the senses involved the harder it is to send out a strong brand message to either an existing client or a prospect. For example, GTBank however can only be evaluated by just the senses of sight (Images, Videos), Hearing (Audio) and Thought (Trustworthiness, Approach, Customer Service & General Appeal). GTBank can only appeal to the above listed and not to your taste nor your touch.


For a brand like Kentucky Fried Chicken it enjoys the luxury of all the six senses and assuming they have failed with the only three senses available to GTBank, they could still give a customer a good brand experience with the taste and feel of their meals.


Brand experience is not only relegated to Marketing and Advertising but it actually begins with “BRANDING” and sustained by Product Value, Marketing and Advertising.  I will not deviate into the topic “Online Branding” that’s a topic for the future.



ONLINE BRAND EXPERIENCE (OBX) 

OBX is unlike Traditional Brand Experience (TBX) that makes use of all our five senses plus the brain. Online Brand Experience (OBX) is about how an individual PERCEIVES, ACCEPT and INTERACT with a brand while encountering it online. It could also be said to be how a brand is positioned and seen online.


2 Ways to Create OBX
I – Appearance (To Appear Online)
II- Engagement ( To Engage Online)


Online Brand Experience is essentially about a brand being online (Appearance) and the brand making meaningful impacts and interactions that helps its business directly or indirectly (Engagements).


APPEARANCE (Online Brand Appearance)
This refers to the deliberate existence of a brand on the digital web with the aid of multiple platforms that helps put a brand online.


Whichever way we choose to look at it, every sincere and reliable 21st century business that is ready and open to commerce must have an online presence and some of the platforms that put a brand online are its WEBSITE(s), BLOG(s), EMAIL ADDRESS, NEWSLETTERS, SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES and HANDLES, MOBILE APPS, INSTANT MESSAGING CHANNELS and so on...



After establishing your online presence via the above listed, the look and feel of your website and landing page, social pages and handles, branding of your social pages, Online CRM and Search Ranking can directly influence how potential customers view your business.



Whatever view you want for your business can be established online and this essentially is a crowd puller or otherwise. It is better not to have an online brand presence than to have a poor and mediocre online brand appearance – it’s better not to be online than to be with a despicable look.



Factors That Aide Online Brand Appearance
·         Web & Mobile Suitability  
·         Color (Brand Pantone)
·         Font
·         Design & Graphics (Brand Projection) affinity
·         Format and Tone (Audio, Video, Text & Image)
·         Content Strategy
·         Page & Handle Nomenclature
·         Page Branding


ENGAGEMENT (Online Brand Engagements)
This refers to any content driven activities being carried out by a brand via her online PLATFORMS and are aimed at ENFORCING and SUSTAINING a brands online presence, INCREASING sales and brand visibility, SHARING information, GROWING her online community, ENTRENCHING loyalty, PROMOTING costumer relations and customer brand experience.


Factors That Aide Online Brand Engagement
·         Search Presence (Earned Search Ranking)
·         Search Placements (Paid Search Ranking)
·         Display Advertising (Online Display Ads)
·         Paid Social Advertizing (Social Media Ads)
·         Mobile Presence (Native & Optimized Engagements)
·         E-Mail Marketing (Newsletters)
·         Content Marketing (Creative Social Content Strategies)

      
      Advantages of Online Engagement
·         Online Service delivery
·         Online Customer Relationship Management (eCRM)
·         Online Reputation
·         Online Brand Awareness
·         Online Value


With the above listed elements, every business/brand with an (Online Presence) has to their ultimate disposal the power to engage any digital native, troll, newbie or passerby.


However, how you make use of the tools at your disposal as a Digital Marketing Strategist or an Online Reputation Manager depends on how creative and how passionate you are about the job.
NOTE: After every unique and well tailored online brand experience created, online  CONVERSION and RETENTION becomes the price. And this should be the GOAL of every savvy digital marketer.



Qualities of a good OBX Expert
·         Knack for branding
·         Content savvy
·         Multi-skilled (Social media expertise, Graphics & Copywriting skills are essential)
·         Analytics crazy
·         New media driven
·         User Experience (UX) aware
·         Digital Marketing savvy



OBX Monitoring
This is a way of understanding how people online respond to a brands online appearance and online engagements. With OBX monitoring brands can get insights into how they are deemed by digital natives. It helps to easily understand consumer behavior towards a brands online strategy.
 


OBX Monitoring Tools
·         All Digital/Online Analytics tool (Google Analytics, Facebook Insight e.t.c)
·         Commenting & Analysis (Disqus, Livefyer, Storify)
·         Hashtag Monitoting Tools (KeyHole, HashTracking, TalkWalker)
·         Social Media Comments & Feedback Analysis
·         Email Marketing Analytics
·         Social Monitoring tools (Social Mention,Google Alerts, Tweetdeck etc.)
·         Mobile App Tracking etc..



Useful Notes about OBX
·         OBX is not for everybody, it’s strictly for BRANDS
·         It help brands rack up quality (Quality Control)
·         It helps differentiate a brand from every other jargons online
·         Monitoring peoples OBX aide planning
·          Creating & Sustaining OBX increases brand value
·         OBX is a form of digital User Experience (UX)
·         OBX is continuously been created & sustained
·         It’s one thing to create and manage the experience and it’s also another thing to monitor, analyze and evaluate it.


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