Online marketers tend to be of a single purpose when it comes to making money: generate leads, showcase the product with meaningful content, make the sale. The one misstep that many of them make, particularly small businesses and entrepreneurs, is not investing enough time or resources in branding.
The Value of Branding
There are no two ways about it: If you want to grow your business online, you need to first grow your brand. It drives incremental revenue and will carry you further on toward your goals if you do it right.
Contrary to what you may think, there is more to good branding than simply throwing money at a branding strategy. This isn’t as much about how much you spend as it is about how good a job you do of building an entity to which your customers and prospects can easily relate. The goal here is to get their attention and make them like and trust you. That takes a solid branding strategy that is built on more than just visibility. Being visible is important, but so is being relatable. The former tells them what you have to offer; the latter tells them why they should get it from you.
Here are five strategies you can implement that will help you develop a solid online brand.
1. Get to Know Your Audience.
Do your homework. Develop an ideal avatar and get to know everything about the market you are attempting to reach. Research your target audience thoroughly. Start developing a content strategy that would best appeal to the people in that demographic.
If you don’t know how to do that correctly, there are tools available online that can help you, including Nielsen and ComScore. These are just two examples of tools that can help you learn about your audience using all kinds of demographic information (age, gender, income, relationship status, location, etc.). There are also professional website content writing services that can help you with planning and producing appropriate content.
2. Have a Clear Message.
You brand needs to have its own voice. Research what your audience wants to hear and balance that with the message you wish to send. This will help you establish a solid foundation for the voice of your brand.
Consider every idea that comes to mind, no matter how outrageous it may seem. Some of the most effective branding strategies begin with something that seems ridiculous until you look at it from the perspective of your ideal avatar. Remember, this is about them, not you. How would they respond to, let’s say, a lizard selling insurance? Imagine the guts it had to take to lay that one out on the table…
…but it worked, didn’t it? Always trust your gut and at least consider every idea.
3. Be Consistent.
People look for this, and they can tell right away if you’re shifting gears in an effort to get/keep/regain their attention. Have a good mix of media content and deliver it via multiple channels, particularly social media. Use behavioral targeting to get your ads in front of the right people. From an SEO standpoint, be sure that the name of your brand and its message are consistent in meta descriptions and title tags (a good Web content writing service can help streamline that, too).
By creating consistent brand messaging at every phase of the buying cycle, you give your customers the opportunity to develop a better recognition and recall of your brand. The more they associate your brand with the product, the more likely they will be to get it from you. You want to be the clear and obvious choice when it comes time to make a buying decision.
4. Integrate Via Social Media.
What is it that you want your brand to do or say online? What kind of interaction do you wish for your customers to have with your business? Is Facebook the ideal platform? What about Twitter? The answers may not be readily apparent, but with a little bit of research, you should be able to develop an understanding of your audience and the best way (or ways) to interact with them.
Remember the cardinal rule of social media: Your job is not to sell, it’s to engage. You’re not there to fling a sales pitch; you’re there to have a conversation, so keep the product in front of your followers, but talk to them, not at them.
5. Build Your Online Reputation.
You need to have a clearly defined strategy for reaching your audience. In large part, that is going to mean interacting with them regularly on social media and maintaining a steady flow of fresh, relevant content. Don’t be afraid to interact with the competition either. The more visible you are, the better. Be a helper. Answer questions and join conversations (notice we said join, not hijack).
You also want to leverage any offline partnerships you might have established to grow your online reputation. This will help you generate backlinks and enhance your presence in organic searches. The more credibility your brand gains among your peers, the stronger the reputation you will build over time.