Brand Building, Evolved. Thousands of Micro Interactions

With the rise of social media and the internet, customers are more connected than ever before. They can easily find out about your company and what you stand for, and they can share their experiences with friends and followers. That discovery and sharing takes minutes, if not seconds, and it can have a huge impact on the reputation of your company.

In the past, the only way for your brand to be visible was for you to put up a billboard, print a brochure, or buy an ad in the newspaper – in other words, one-way communication at your audience. Nowadays, people find out about your brand through websites, social media, real-time feeds, email lists, and many other sources over which a company doesn’t even always have control. Brand building is evolving to a new level.

Today, brands grow through thousands of interactions between customers and companies. These interactions can be positive or negative, and they can help build your brand to become something great, or they can destroy it.

Rakuten Viber is a popular messaging app used by people in 190 countries that provides a variety of tools you can use to grow a brand. We work with banks, retailers, logistics companies, pharmaceutical companies, telecom and IT providers, hospitality and travel, and CPG brands – all of them use Viber to connect with their customers and use the platform as one of the channels to strengthen brand engagement and brand loyalty. These companies trust Rakuten Viber for an opportunity to build a deeper connection with customers and followers, because every message, ad, and interaction adds to brand building.

In this article, we are analyzing all elements that are essential for today’s, modern brand building on Rakuten Viber. Each of these elements matters and adds to the perception of your brand.

Rakuten Viber Business Messages

First, define your brand and let customers know who you are. After you opened a Rakuten Viber Business Account, it’s time to decide how people will see your brand on Rakuten Viber.

It can be really tempting to try to be all things to all people, but if you want quality engagement, you need to focus on defining your identity and distinguishing your products or services from those of other sellers. Think about what makes your company unique. What’s your brand's personality? What do you want people to feel when they interact with you on Rakuten Viber? 

• Use colour scheme and logo consistent with your brand in other marketing channels
• Follow on-brand messaging across all of your marketing materials
• Train your customer support employees to be familiar with your brand philosophy so they can represent your company well.

In terms of brand building, Rakuten Viber Business Messages works best for staying in touch with existing clients. There are 3 types of Viber Business Messages to reach out with timely and relevant communication: 

• Transactional
• Conversational
• Promotional

Transactional Messages are one of the most effective ways to keep your customers informed about their order status, delivery updates, appointment reminders, transaction details, booking confirmations, etc. And thanks to TTL (time-to-live) and SMS fallback options, your messages are delivered reliably and on time. 

Brand-building benefits: Show your brand as being attentive, competent, and trustworthy.

Conversational Business Messages are a two-way communication channel, especially effective in conversational commerce, that lets you engage with your customers in real time, just like you would in a conversation. This is a great way to help customers choose the right product, answer questions, provide support, and drive to new purchases. You can also use it for collecting customer feedback, reviews, and testimonials. 

Brand-building benefits: Conversational messages make your brand more approachable and trustworthy and enhance customer experience, leading to improved customer loyalty.

Promotional Business Messages are used to reach out to your customers with special offers, coupons, and discounts. Thanks to capacity for CRM and CDP integrations, your business messages can be personalised and targeted at audiences, for which they are most relevant. 

Brand-building benefits: Promotional messages help you increase brand awareness, drive sales, and improve customer disposition. Relevant content not only increases conversions, but also shows customers that you care about their interests and needs. 

The key to successful brand building on Viber is to send timely, relevant, useful, and interesting messages. Your messages should be tailored to your audience and offer value. You can use all three types of business messages to create a deeper connection with your customers and followers, and to consistently increase brand loyalty.

Rakuten Viber Chatbots

Rakuten Viber Chatbots is another solution for business messaging designed to automate tedious tasks and provide fast responses to customer inquiries. Using Viber Chatbots, businesses can save time and money while providing a higher level of customer service.

It is a great element of brand building, because it helps create a more personalized experience for the consumer. Chatbots can be used in a variety of ways, from answering simple questions and providing product information, to helping with more complex tasks, such as booking travel or ordering food. They can also be programmed to recognize customer frustration and react accordingly, for example, by connecting them with a human support agent or by offering them the option to receive a refund if they are unhappy with the product or service.

Your brand can use Viber Chatbots to provide a better customer service experience and to automate tasks that are tedious or time-consuming. By doing so, you can save time and money while providing a higher level of customer service. 

Brand-building benefits: Your brand will be perceived as more efficient, more responsive, and more customer-centric.

Rakuten Viber Ads

Rakuten Viber Ads are one of the most effective ways to reach new customers and let them know about your brand. With the help of Viber Ads, you can advertise to people who aren’t yet customers but may be interested in your products or services.They can also be used to drive traffic to your website or to your Rakuten Viber channel. And the best part is that you can target your ads by age, gender, location, and interests. Promote your brand, products, and services to a wide audience. 

Brand-building benefits: Reach your target audience with highly-relevant, on-brand, native ads.

Branded Rakuten Viber Stickers

With creative and non-intrusive Rakuten Viber Stickers, brands can elevate their online presence and brand identity natively. Excellent at raising brand awareness and user engagement, each sticker pack has the potential for viral reach: users send over 1 billion stickers every month, and each sticker is shared 11 times on average. Rakuten Viber Stickers can be static, animated, or even audio-rich. They work well on their own, to give a constant boost to brand awareness, but can also be used in tandem with other Rakuten Viber solutions: as effective elements of complex marketing campaigns.

Brand-building benefits: Reach vast audiences with vibrant, shareable visuals that make your brand recognizable and approachable.

Branded Rakuten Viber Lenses

Rakuten Viber Lenses are an augmented reality feature powered by Snap. Branded Lenses allow users to overlay various images, 3D objects, and effects on their real-life videos and selfies, and share this content with their friends, which gives an organic boost to brand visibility, particularly among the Gen Z users. Viber Lenses are a viral, engaging, and interactive solution that leverages the social component of messaging apps and creativity of the users themselves.

Brand-building benefits: Show off your branding and creativity with a viral, interactive tool or use in synergy with other tools to create impactful marketing campaigns. Particularly advantageous for reaching Gen Z users.

Rome wasn't built in a day. It takes time, effort, patience, and those thousands and thousands of micro-interactions to create a strong identity. Even if you're doing everything right, it can still take months to see results. If you're just starting out, don't get discouraged if you don't see results immediately. Keep working on it, and eventually, you'll see the fruits of your labor.

Learn more about Rakuten Viber for Business and reach out to discover how our products and solutions can help your brand.