When you boil it down, your brand is your company. Think about the impact if your brand reputation did a 180-degree turn. The Internet is gradually becoming the window through which consumers see the products and services you offer. Having a strong Internet presence can affect how your brand is perceived on and off line. According to a December 2006 survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project, 78 percent of American adults researched a product or service on the Internet before buying it. With such a large percentage of consumers using the power of the Web, harnessing its full potential could be the difference between gaining a customer’s business or losing it to a competitor.
This InSite will discuss how implementing Search Engine Marketing and Email campaigns can keep your brand top-of-mind with your current customers and grow the number of new leads to increase the number of individuals who have a relationship with your brand.
A Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign can be an effective means to continue to grow the offline brand you have worked hard to build. There are essentially three SEM tactics that can be employed to build your online brand. Primarily, natural search and pay per click campaigns are the most widely used, with the third tactic, Social media, rapidly gaining popularity.
Natural search engine optimization has become a mandatory online strategy not only for branding but to achieve your online and offline business goals. A consumer who searches for your products or brand expects to see your company as a top result regardless of the search engine. According to Andrei Broder’s Taxonomy of a Web Search, nearly 25 percent of searchers were looking for a “specific site that I already had in mind.” If you are unable to meet this need you may have already disappointed a potential customer. Understanding how you can implement new content and leverage existing content can make significant impacts on search results. It is important to your brand to make sure that you are maximizing your presence online.
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Pay-per click (PPC) campaign can also help solidify your brand in terms of search. Pay-per-click campaigns can be optimized to achieve any outcome your budget allows. Usually your natural search results should work well enough for “branded” terms, however in order to optimize your PPC campaign you may want a “branded” as well as a “non-branded” campaign to accompany your natural search results. This strategy can only help maximize your exposure if you have the budget for it. Not only will bidding on “branded” keywords assure you a spot in the top sponsored links it will also help keep your competitors from cutting into your share of the market. By dominating the search results for “non-brand” and “brand” keywords little doubt will be left in the consumer’s mind about with whom they should do business.
Once you have gained exposure with both natural and PPC campaigns, driving traffic to your site using email to continue to grow your brand online is an effective strategy. However, if email is not executed properly it can damage your brand in ways you’ve never dreamed. Taking steps to ensure you are enhancing your brand with email is vital. If you follow one simple rule you should have success with email: Always provide value to your customer. Value means different things to different customers, which is why you need to take an active role in learning what your customers’ expectations are. Email is ideally a two-way communication medium. This allows you to provide relevant content and in return your readers provide feedback on your products, divulge information about themselves or make a purchase. Finding the right balance of relevancy and frequency ensures there is value in your email communication and in your brand. In order to maximize this balance you may find it necessary to segment your list in order to offer more value to your subscribers. The more you segment your file the more relevant your content will be. Frequency will then be based on how often you have something relevant to communicate. Frequency will also vary on your customers’ buying cycles and expectations. Keep in mind this may vary by customer.
Another key strategy to an effective email campaign is ensuring your messages are technically sound. Testing messages and using appropriate design will enhance your brand. Leveraging offline designs is appropriate to tie your campaigns together. Doing this will reinforce your brand and create additional touch points with your customer and create familiarity. Testing messages will ensure that designs are rendering properly. All too often, a company will spend time on the front end creating content and designs that may not even make it to the end user. By creating a simple testing plan, you can increase the number of individuals who receive your message in a user-friendly, readable format that allows them to take action and engage with you.
Leveraging the growing popularity of
Social media can also help brand your company online. Social media has gained popularity during the last couple of years and will continue to grow. These vehicles allow consumers to become involved by sharing content, opinions, videos, and experiences online. Social media opportunities can range from advertising on social media Web sites to encouraging user-generated text, images, audio and video of your company’s or brand’s products or services. Small businesses have been the early adopters and drivers of social media, but large companies are taking quick notice.
Advertising your brand on social media sites engages the consumer. It can take quite a bit of research to study a blog, video, or ratings site to ensure those potential ads are relevant to the targeted audience. The goal isn’t necessarily for a consumer to purchase one of your brand’s products, but more about partnering with them and letting them communicate with you. This is important since the Web is a lot more social than it was just a few years ago.
Along with the YouTube boom, video media is another way to partner with consumers and has become popular especially since both Google and Yahoo are now incorporating videos in their natural search results. Many marketers are pushing videos to increase brand awareness and loyalty, but it’s important to not just make a video for the sake of making a video. You can be very creative while branding your business at the same time. There are dozens of video sharing Web sites and almost all of them allow users to email, share, embed, and even comment about the video.
Blogs have been around for years, and some companies do a great job of branding them. Blogs are a great way to interact with consumers. Having an active blog will require you to accept criticism and feedback, which is something that larger companies can have a hard time accepting. Before starting a blog, there are a few things to think through. Careful and creative thought along with the ability to manage a blog, and the willingness to participate in a dialogue are musts. When done right, it can really enhance a brand while influencing consumers.
Rating and review portals such as BizRate, CitySearch, and Insider Pages are also extremely important. Consumers can already freely submit reviews about businesses and companies as well as their products or services. Most reviews are positive, but even negative ones may not always be bad. Simply put, consumers are smart. If one consumer didn’t like a particular feature of a product other consumers can decide for themselves whether they can deal with the limitation. They may feel more comfortable with the “devil they know than the devil they don’t know.” Acknowledging this and communicating with these consumers can help built trust with your brand. Listening to negative reviews could also be a time to take action and make changes to your product or service based on what consumers are saying.
The idea of online consumer communication has scared traditionalists in public relations as consumers can appear to become an uncontrollable influence with other Web users about a brand. Many others are embracing these ideas as a way to have an honest conversation about company products, services and news. The companies that will succeed online will more than likely be the ones that adapt to it and use it to benefit their brand. If you are interested in implementing any of the above strategies or learning more, Aware Web Solutions can guide you, help build your strategy and execute your campaign.
If you have any comments or questions about any Aware InSites, feel free to contact us at
info@awareweb.com or call 800-783-8919.
Featured Resources
Brandweek Magazine
Brandweek is the leading source of news and information in the U.S. marketing industry and the only trade magazine to offer saturation coverage at all levels of the brand-activation process. Brandweek covers the world of brand identity marketing from big-budget ad campaigns to under-the-radar "street" efforts.
ExactTarget - Email Branding
Marketers not paying close attention to their name capture practices can quickly see their mailing reputation sour at ISPs.
Wikipedia - Local Search
Local search is the natural evolution of "yellow pages" directory advertising moving to the internet. A variety of search engines are currently providing local search, including efforts backed by the largest search engines, and new start-ups. Some of these efforts are further targeted to specific vertical segments, and several are tied into mapping products.