Opinion

The value of online branding

< Opinion

The value of online branding

Many Marketeers associate online marketing with generating leads and sales. Many underestimate the value of online branding. In our experience building a brand; its personality, tone of voice and reputation plays a crucial role in the customer decision making process.

How does brand building help sales?

Building a brand that resonates with your customers will keep them coming back again and again and eventually turn them into loyal advocates. Promotional led campaigns may attract short term leads or sales, but do little in building longer term relationships with customers.

Customer loyalty is much harder to earn in todays transient digital world. At the touch of a button customers can switch between brands to find the best deal and price alone does not cement your relationship with a customer. Brand building or perhaps a better descriptive term would be brand experience is what helps bridge that gap and create an emotional connection between your brand and the customer. This encourages repeat purchase and recommendations providing you with both incremental revenue and new sales revenue.

Here are five key strategies to consider before launching your online branding efforts.

1. The Customer is King.

To build your brand online, you must first have a clear understanding of your audience, the customer journey and competitive landscape before you begin creating content strategies and communication plans.

 2. Create a unique brand experience.

Give your brand a voice and personality. Based on agreed brand messaging, create compelling ideas and stories that resonate with the audience. Content should be engaging and needs to talk to both influencers and customers. Most importantly you should be consistent and constantly communicate the key messages you want to be known for.

3. Bring your brand to life.

In a digital world, nothing else creates a connection like a video. Where you can’t touch or smell a product or experience a service, only video can really bring this to life. Telling interesting and compelling brand stories, whether in a short or long version (depending on the platform), provides a longer term emotional attachment to the brand.

4. Multi-channel marketing.

Work to build your brand through multiple channels. Get your ads out in front of your target audience using behavioural targeting, site specific targeting and re-messaging. From an organic search perspective, make sure that your brand name and messaging is consistent in your title tags and in your meta descriptions. In addition, be sure that your messaging is consistent with your brand voice, including paid search. By creating consistent messaging throughout the buying cycle, you allow consumers to continually recognise your brand.

5. Build up your reputation online.

Building your reputation online takes time. It’s important to have a clearly defined strategy for reaching your audience, including how to segment between influencers and purchasers. Next, you need to identify the tactics you’ll use in the process – different routes and channels to market often require different approaches to maximise marketing  effectiveness. Use any type of partnerships, whether offline or online, social media influencers and trade bodies to help build and promote your reputation, which in turn will help build links pointing back to your website and enhance your organic search presence.

In summary, be single-minded, be consistent and believe in the strength of your brand.