There were days when marketers used to spend untold millions of efforts at branding themselves using the blatant cold calling and outbound marketing measures; however, with the proliferation of internet in all major industries, the latter has become a cakewalk for them. While I don't undermine the role that offline marketing plays in an organization's branding and promotion, its no exaggeration that online branding is slowly taking over the charm that offline marketing once possessed. The Internet has made it extremely easy for a new entrepreneur to set up business & promote his/her brand. For those of you who are still not aware of Internet marketing & how it can help a business get noticed, it is high time you do.
Read This Before You Begin Your Efforts :
- The keywords included in your content should be in such a way that the content remains meaningful. Stuffing of keywords i.e. inserting keywords randomly even where it is not required is a very unethical technique and it lowers your website rankings.
- Having different domain extensions like XYZ.org, XYZ.com, XYZ.in, etc. is a good idea. Another idea that works is to buy a lot of domain names that are keyword optimized, & direct it to your business website.
- The first step in making a unique identity for your online business is to purchase a unique name for your website. Try to be creative and make sure to incorporate the nature of your business in the domain name. For instance, if you are in the web development field, then web development would be the key term here.
- Having SEO optimized content is essential for featuring on the top search results of search engines. Also having unique content which is updated and added to, on a regular basis is necessary to stay a favorite of popular search engines.
- Create company blogs, provide press releases, etc. This is an interesting and creative way to stay connected with customers. These blogs could be about your products, industry, related products, latest developments in the field, etc.
- Social networking is another way that you can build up your brand value. Create accounts in popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Through these profiles, you can target specific people who are interested in the products/services you offer.
Ways To Brand Your Business Online
- Enhance Your Brand's Visibility
Begin with working on making your brand attractive to search engines. Making your page attractive and engaging, enhance the UI and helps your website to show up in SERPs. Along with that, build a solid strategy on making your brand discoverable via a search and visible on all the social networks. It is a tough task to optimize search engines for specific keywords and requires at least basic knowledge about SEO. While it takes significant efforts, the good news is that there are loads of quality guides available for the non-pros and a lot more reasons to start doing SEO today itself! There are also many tools available in the market if you don't want to optimize your brand's visibility yourself. To make your band visible you can hire an agency. SEO is a very crucial step in taking your brand to new heights. It does not just make your brand visible, but strong as well.
- Engage Your Audience
Don't assume that all you have to offer is a kickass product to make a place in your audience's mind. Put some extra efforts to proactively engage your audience through optimizing your strategies for the channels they frequently visit. One of the best ways to make an abode in the minds of your audience is by actively engaging them on Social media. It helps you to establish your company as a strong brand online as you reach potential target directly. To constantly engage your customers, ask for their opinions and fill their news feed with intriguing posts that generate conversation. Social media marketing is much more than talking to your customers in fact, its a way to understand what your audience wants, the type of media they enjoy, how they converse, and what they do to spend their free time. By using social media you connect with them on a level that takes 10 thorough market research studies to understand.
- Connect With Them Personally
The age of digital marketing doesn't really allow any business to be a faceless company. Today, it has become crucial to give your business a personal voice. While reaching your target, try to keep your message consistent and use same voice in every platform you target them with. Just remember, its all about language and communication. Building your brand identity online helps you to build a rapport with customers, as you are feeding them valuable information before any sales pitch is actually coming to the table. Because of all the above-listed techniques, the Internet is being leveraged by the marketers as an effective tool used in Online Branding.