Few restaurants can claim more than half a million Instagram followers. Even New York City Michelin darlings Per Se and Le Bernardin top out at around 300,000. But Momofuku, David Chang’s popular restaurant group and consumer packaged goods (CPG) retailer, has more than twice that number.
Why is it so popular online? According to Kyle Seebohm, Momofuku’s director of growth and ecommerce, the company has been telling a consistent story from the very beginning, both on and offline.
“Since inception, the restaurants have focused on innovating in flavor and providing exceptional value and service,” he says, adding that this strong brand identity has been key to the success of the digital brand too.
“That DNA and brand ethos have carried through to the CPG business as we aim to bring that restaurant-grade experience to home cooks nationwide,” he says.
Digital brand management plays a pivotal role in achieving that level of success. Here’s a look at how you can build and maintain a successful brand online, with expert insights and best practices from Momofuku.
What is digital brand management?
Digital brand management is the use of marketing techniques to create an effective, recognizable brand identity across digital channels. That may include online marketing channels such as social media, as well as search and community spaces like forums and review sites.
It involves monitoring a brand’s online presence, which can include everything from reviewing the digital assets it publishes to what online users are saying about your brand. That helps a company better understand its positioning and reputation in the digital landscape. It can also help maintain brand consistency, boost brand recognition, and increase brand loyalty.
Effective digital brand management can also help you improve your company’s reputation in a way that’s consistent with your company’s values. Starting from a genuine place can help inform the content.
“We try to focus less explicitly on changing brand perception and more on being consistent with our mission of delivering restaurant-quality flavor to home cooks,” says Kyle.
Digital brand management best practices
- Diversify your tactics
- Embrace brand thinking
- Lead with your brand’s values
- Center the customer perspective
- Create a community around your digital brand
- Prioritize brand consistency
- Use brand management tools wisely
If you own an ecommerce business, your brand’s online presence is one of your most valuable assets. These seven digital brand management best practices may help you protect and promote your brand.
1. Diversify your tactics
Effective digital brand management relies on a range of tools to efficiently monitor your brand across multiple channels.
“We rely on a number of tactics, both quantitative and qualitative, to manage our brand, given the proliferation of touchpoints in today’s digital ecosystem,” says Kyle. Here are a few he recommends:
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Measuring customer sentiment through product reviews
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Tracking Net Promoter Scores (NPS)
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Using social listening to track commentary on social media channels
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Tracking brand mentions from social media users
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Monitoring brand awareness
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Running periodic Google Trends searches
“Each of these tactics allows us to capture different types of feedback from different types of customers to give a holistic picture of brand management,” Kyle says.
2. Embrace brand thinking
Kyle also suggests an approach he refers to as “brand thinking.” Instead of following a single digital brand management workflow, his approach incorporates the principles of brand management into all of the company’s business processes.
“We try to embed brand thinking into every workflow—from creative development to performance marketing to customer experience responses,” says Kyle. “It keeps brand alignment part of our everyday decisions rather than a separate process.”
To help stay on top of this, you can appoint a digital brand manager to oversee the process and ensure appropriate workflow integration. This person can maintain guidelines and represent brand positioning, presence, and consistency in digital marketing decisions.
3. Lead with your brand’s values
Grounding your digital branding efforts in your values gives you authenticity and can help you establish or reinforce a positive brand image. Aligning brand assets, messages, and marketing strategies with your brand’s ethos increases consistency and allows you to lead with authenticity.
For Momofuku, this manifests in a digital strategy that leads with product education instead of flashy marketing. “It can be seen throughout our brand experience, from packaging to our organic content to the unboxing experience,” Kyle adds.
4. Center the customer perspective
One of the main goals of a digital brand management strategy is to help you understand your target audience’s needs and reflect them across your digital channels. To do that successfully, Kyle recommends finding and promoting your best reviews. To find your latest raves, Kyle says, “Set up a Slack feed of your product reviews so that feedback always stays top of mind.” You can also consider sharing a few reviews at staff meetings or reserving time in your schedule to read reviews each week.
You’ll also want to consider perspectives from within your network as a proxy for the customer perspective. “Ask any new hire (or friend or family member) to do an audit of your website from a new-customer perspective,” Kyle says. The more feedback you can get, the more trends you can identify and then reflect back to your audience to show that you’re listening.
5. Create a community around your digital brand
Getting an online community excited about your company involves monitoring the organic conversations that spring up around your brand, plus creating and moderating your own communities. This strategy provides even more access to customer feedback and allows you to build additional goodwill.
“We have a Facebook Community group of 35,000 members that we can use for sentiment analysis, gathering feedback, innovation ideas, and more,” says Kyle. In addition to managing your own communities, Kyle suggests paying attention to conversations on third-party sites. " “Monitor spaces where customers speak freely, like TikTok, Reddit, and Amazon reviews,” he says. Commenters on forums not directly linked to the brand may feel inclined to speak more freely.
6. Prioritize brand consistency
Maintaining a cohesive brand identity is one of the key functions of digital brand management. “Inconsistency across channels is a major pitfall," says Kyle. “Customers are often researching in one place and purchasing in another.” An effective strategy ensures that brand assets, messaging, and values reinforce each other across channels.
Kyle suggests running regular brand audits to maintain a consistent brand identity, which may include a checklist of what to evaluate and how. “Periodic auditing of our online presences both on our own website and retail partner platforms is a key part of our brand management strategy,” he says.
For example, the wellness company Blume has an active social media presence, using Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to engage with customers in comments, run contests, and share user-generated content. Its private Meta community, Blumekind, invites customers to join "a community of energy givers, ritual lovers, and wellness seekers curated by Bloom."
Blume also invites users to become online ambassadors for the brand, and it uses consistent branding elements across various digital channels to maximize brand visibility while telling a cohesive brand story. Its Amazon storefront, for example, uses the same brand assets and messages as its ecommerce website.
7. Use brand management software wisely
Digital brand management tools can simplify the process of tracking brand mentions, analyzing sentiment, and collecting and analyzing customer feedback, but Kyle cautions against fixating on expensive digital tools early on. “Avoid being too worried about tracking brand sentiment formally too early,” he says. “Many solutions can be too expensive and not necessarily provide actionable insights.”
Some inexpensive brand management software options include Canva and Slack, which both offer free basic accounts. A lot of social listening tools also offer free trials and lower introductory rates. Experiment with free trials and the tools offered with free subscriptions first before signing up for additional tracking and features.
