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In the busy online world, brand building is the best way to stand out. It’s not just about catchy slogans and logos. It’s also about making your brand’s DNA, which is what makes you unique in a crowded market.
There are various brand-building strategies to consider, and understanding the brand-building process is essential. This means you need to do a lot more than just be online to be successful.
The only way to build trust with your customers and boost sales is to have a strong online presence across many platforms.
This article will guide you in establishing and strengthening your online presence. With the right brand-building strategies you can get the attention of your target audience. Let’s jump in.
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What is an Online Presence?
A brand builds its strong online presence through different brand-building strategies. If you have a strong online presence, you’ll be easy to find on the web and social media, making it much easier for possible new clients to “discover” you.
Online presence is the ability to be found in digital media through various online search engines. It is one of the fundamental criteria for businesses in the digital age. It’s a person or a company’s online persona. It includes online presence through social networks, emails, and marketplaces in addition to the web.
At its most basic level, it’s important to have a website and be involved on the right social media platforms. In the same way, making a Google Business Listing can show your contact information quickly and encourage people who are looking online to go to your website.
1. Define Your Target Audience
The more specific you can be about who your target customer is, the easier it will be to craft a brand that resonates with them. This allows you to craft a message and image that will resonate with your potential customers. Depending on your product or service, your target audience can be fairly broad or very specific. For example, if you are selling baby clothes, your target audience is likely parents or guardians of small children. However, if you are selling high-end women’s fashion, your target audience is likely to be more specific, such as professional women in their 20s and 30s. Once you have defined your target audience, you can begin to develop a brand that speaks to their needs and desires.
2. Develop A Unique Value Proposition
Your unique value proposition is a statement that concisely summarizes what makes your brand different and why customers should choose you over your competitors. It should be clear, concise, and highly relevant to your target audience. Keep in mind that your unique value proposition will evolve as your business grows and changes. Don’t be afraid to revisit it on a regular basis to ensure that it still accurately reflects your brand.
3. Create A Catchy Name And Logo
Your name and logo are two of the most important elements of your brand identity. They should be memorable, easy to pronounce and spell, and reflective of what you do as a business. If possible, they should also be distinctive enough to help you stand out from the competition.
4. Build A Strong Online Presence
These days, having a strong online presence is critical for any business that wants to succeed. Make sure your website is professional-looking and easy to navigate. Be active on social media and produce high-quality content that will help promote your brand (blog posts, infographics, videos, etc.). And finally, make sure your SEO is on point so that people can actually find you when they search for relevant keywords online.
5. Leverage Social Media
Social media is a great place to start when it comes to branding. Many people use social media to learn more about brands, discover new products, and find inspiration. Leveraging social media can help you build a following around your brand and introduce your business to a larger audience.
You can also use social media to respond to customers, answer questions about products and services, and interact with customers in real time. This can help you build stronger relationships with customers and create a more personal experience. It will also give you a chance to correct misinformation and engage with customers in a way that suits their needs.
Social media is a great way to get your name out there and connect with customers on a personal level – which is important for building a strong brand.
6. Keep It Consistent
It’s important to maintain consistency across all channels, your website, social media platforms, print materials, and email marketing campaigns. This means using similar colors, fonts, and images throughout all of your marketing efforts so that people begin to recognize and associate those elements with your company. Consistency will help create a stronger connection with customers and make it easier for them to remember who you are and what you do.
7. Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Rebranding
Rebranding involves changing the way a company presents itself to the world. It can involve changes to the company’s name, logo, tagline, color palette, and more. Rebranding can also involve changes to the company’s website, packaging, and advertising. In some cases, rebranding may even involve changes to the company’s products or services.
Rebranding is not a decision to be made lightly. It should only be undertaken if there is a clear strategic reason for doing so and get the right checklist for rebranding. However, when used correctly, rebranding can be an incredibly powerful tool for business success.
8. Create A Customer Loyalty Program
Having a strong brand will help you build a loyal customer base, but a customer loyalty program can take that one step further. A loyalty program can help you engage with customers and reward them for their purchases. It can help you collect data and get a better idea of what your customers want. You can then create more sales and increase your bottom line.
By creating a customer loyalty program, you can encourage customers to shop with you more frequently and build loyalty among your followers. The loyalty program will distinguish your brand from competitors and show customers that you appreciate their trust. That way, you will help a good relationship with customers.
9. Utilize Influencer Marketing
Engaging with customers one-on-one is important, but it can also be time-consuming. Influencer marketing is a great way to reach a wider audience and build brand awareness.
Partnering with influencers in your industry can help you reach a wider audience and create brand awareness. These influencers are often trusted by customers and can help you drive brand engagement. Partnering with influencers can also help you build a more meaningful brand because these people who many people have trusted are using your brand.
10. Engage In Customer Service
Strong brands aren’t just about building a visual brand identity and connecting with customers. They’re also about providing excellent customer service. This is usually where the brand and the individual product or service intersect.
Providing excellent customer service can help you build great company branding that people can trust. Having a strong customer service presence can help you connect with customers on a more personal level. It can also help you build trust among your followers and set yourself apart from competitors.
11. Optimize your SEO Strategy
SEO isn’t something you do once and then wait months or years for it to stick. You should try to improve your overall approach.
Pay attention to your analytics data to find out which keywords you’re ranking for and add more content to those pages to boost them.
Also, check your website often to make sure it is designed for the best keywords possible and that you have used all of the best on-page practices.
You should also keep up with the latest best practices since changes to Google’s algorithm can cause your strategies to change a lot over time.
Optimizing Your Brand For Google
In the past, SEO has focused on non-branded searches and we have built our campaigns and other marketing efforts around this fact. We direct links to our website and optimize keywords in order to rank for them. It makes sense; this is where we want to send potential customers and what key terms we want Google to associate our work. However, recent research has demonstrated that branded searches are also impacting results. If you haven’t incorporated branded searches into your marketing efforts, it is a missed opportunity for improved results and higher site traffic.
What Is The Difference Between Branded And Non-Branded Searches
What is the difference between branded and non-branded searches? If, for example, your company sells promotional products you would naturally link build to your key terms (what you sell or do) and under which topics you want your website to appear in Google’s search results. This would probably be promotional products, promotional gifts, business gifts, tradeshow giveaways, etc. These are non-branded keywords. You can also create branded keywords by placing the name of your company before those same non-branded keywords. At the same time, you should also be linking to branded searches themselves, which direct to your search results page, not your actual website. Branded searches are not limited to just your actual business name. There are many other ways potential customers search for you online:
- Your brand name + reviews
- Your brand name +your product/service
- Your brand name + contact/login
- Your brand name vs. your competitor’s name
Obviously, you want to rank as high as possible for all of these, ideally with your link as the first search result. This can mean the difference between a blogger or reviewer writing about your product/service instead of your competitor. This leads us the important consideration of incorporating blended search results such as local pack, video, images, and product results. You should create a strategy for addressing these as well. For example, [brand name vs. competitor’s name] needs a video. The main idea here is to collect and organize all of your branded search queries for maximum results.
Brand Searches Impact Search Results
Google associates brands with sets of keywords and places significant weight on how many times your brand is searched. This, in turn, impacts search results. If you look in Google Trends and put 4-5 brands in, usually the brand with the most brand searches also gets the most organic traffic from non-branded searches. The reasons behind this are two-fold; Google places the highest priority on stopping spammers, and they want to provide accurate and relevant results for searchers.
By focusing on branded searches you will also impact non-branded results. When your branded search starts showing up more, you begin to affect search suggestion. This means that over time Google will associate your brand with your key terms and it will appear in search suggestions, probably towards the bottom of the list. This is a good way to stop spamming and start branding.
Making Your Brand Relevant To Google
If your brand starts appearing in more searches for “promotional products”, Google will start to see your brand as a very relevant result for “promotional products” since people are searching for it, and they will move it higher in the search results for promotional products.
Your brand will also appear in “related searches” when you have more branded search results. This does just what it sounds like, and suggests to the searcher that they should consider reviewing these related searches as well. The related searches results are also influenced by content, which we will discuss more below.
Now That You Understand Why It Is Important To Influence Branded Search Results, Here Are Some Tips On How To Do It:
- Optimize your website for your keywords – You need to make sure that your website is optimized for your search terms, as it will ensure you are viewed as trustworthy by Google’s. It also tells Google which searches you want to show up in.
- Content – Once you have optimized, you need to start thinking about ways you can get people to search for your brand. Guest posting, content marketing, public relations (events and sponsorship) are all ways to drive people to learn more about your brand. This can include adding something like ”read what others are saying about us” and linking to the search results for your company to your content. Again, the key is linking to your search results page, not your actual website. Perhaps including and mentioning a coupon on your Google business page? In a way, you are helping people to “search” your brand even when they aren’t actually initiating it.
- Embedding Searches – This can be tricky and could be done through content, through email, or over social networks. You are basically driving people directly to your search result page by embedding the link itself or suggesting they search and check it out on their own.
- Traditional Media Mentions – TV, radio, magazines, and billboards are still relevant. If people hear and see your brand, they will want to learn more about it. An example could be while you are being interviewed or speaking at a local event, you encourage people to search for your products or services on their mobile devices.
- Influence Trusted Web Documents – Find Google trustworthy places that are indexed on the web where you’d like your brand name to be associated, and find ways to influence authors to consider including your brand in their documents. You can also create content that does so and asks them to post it.
Wrapping Up
A brand is much more than just a logo or a name. It’s the promise of a consistent customer experience that differentiates one company from another. A strong brand can help you attract new customers, retain existing ones, and charge more for your products or services. By following the steps above, you’ll be on your way to creating a brand that can withstand the test of time.
We hope these 6 steps to build a strong brand will help you achieve your goals. Please contact us here at Matchbox Design Group to start a new project today.
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