Branding Your Way to Success
Branding is crucial for any serious business. A company's brand is what differentiates it from its rivals. In today's digital age, an online presence is essential to remain competitive. Effective online branding, like its offline counterpart, builds awareness of your unique business offering and drives customer demand. But branding online isn't as simple as putting up a website and adding your company logo and motto. Your branding strategy must make your online brand noticeable, evident, and memorable. Graphics, animation, compelling web copy, and overall site design that reflects your company are the factors that bring your online brand alive. A magnetic site that helps customers easily and quickly find the information they need is the key to customer interaction and, ultimately, business. This guide covers the complete process from foundational steps to advanced techniques.
Chapter 1: Branding Basics
Online branding uses modern tools to create a presence for your business. Your branding plan must include strong design elements and ease of use to produce an effective total impression. A strong online image makes the difference between a customer who buys from you or switches to a competitor at the click of a mouse. Remember that online customers can leave your site and go to your rivals instantly. Much hinges on the impression they get from your website. Branding seeks to convey a unique, immediate message about your business to your target customers. There are many requirements for a successful branding strategy—considering hiring a branding specialist may help you focus your efforts on creating an online presence that becomes a valuable business asset.
Chapter 2: Beginning Steps—Know Your Market, Know Yourself
Branding is much more than a thoughtful logo or slogan, and more than a unique color scheme. The initial steps lay the foundation for your entire brand image.
Analyze the Competition
Among the keys to producing a successful brand image is differentiating yourself from competitors. You must understand how customers perceive your competition. Recognize how your rivals differentiate themselves, and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Your business benefits from knowing this information—learn from their failures and discover how to distinguish your company from theirs.
Identify Your Strengths
Once you understand your competitors' weaknesses, focus on your company's strengths. Perform a target market analysis. Learn from it and use it to your advantage. This valuable tool confirms that your company's strengths are genuinely important to your target market. After identifying your strengths and which strengths matter to customers, think about ways to successfully market these to the world and incorporate them into your branding campaign.
Know Your Customer
Learn about your customer's buying behavior. How frequently do they buy? Do they purchase only during sales or promotions? Do they buy an array of products or just a select few? These questions help you better market to your customers. Additionally, understand your customers' lifestyles, needs, mentalities, and attitudes. Knowing and working with these personality traits is key to marketing success.
Be Your Brand
Ensure your company truly represents what your brand identifies you with. If one of the traits your brand claims is politeness, be polite. This means every employee—from the receptionist to the CEO—must live your brand. Brand consistency across every human interaction reinforces what your marketing promises.
Chapter 3: Be an Expert—Authority Builds Trust
Demonstrating yourself as an authority in your field helps you acquire both recognition and respect. That recognition and respect transfers immediately to your company. If individuals trust that you genuinely know what you're talking about, they'll feel confident investing in your product.
Build an Authoritative Website
A website is the best place to begin. Construct a professional-looking site with sound, informative material and you'll have a source of authoritative information to direct customers to. It's acceptable—and strategic—to give away some of your valuable knowledge for free. Provide the customer something of value upfront, and they'll label you as a legitimate source for whatever your company offers.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is an especially effective technique for achieving authority status. It allows you to distribute articles to a vast number of content-rich sites. The more places your name appears, the more people will be exposed to your website and product.
Forums and Blogs
Another way to demonstrate expertise is through internet forums and blogs. This is more casual than article writing. It allows you to speak in the first person and talk candidly with interested web surfers. The conversational tone puts potential customers at ease. They'll not only view you as an authority—they'll feel connected to you as a real human being. Such platforms also give customers the opportunity to ask questions and give you the chance to defend your product in the face of criticism. Discover the right places to gain recognition. Put yourself out there and command respect through exposure. Spotlight your accomplishments and successes. Branding yourself as an authority is about getting others to realize something about you that you already know.
Chapter 4: Representation—Visual Consistency and the Psychology of Color
There should be a logical look and feel to every page of your site. Visitors should understand they haven't left your website when they navigate to a different page. Navigation icons, print buttons, and menu elements should all follow the same theme as your website. Every aspect of your site should reflect your brand. Standing out isn't nearly as important as having people recognize your website. If a visitor travels to additional pages and they look different, they might believe they've unexpectedly left your site—and then leave altogether.
Your Logo as an Icon
An effective online branding concept is using your logo as an icon for buttons. Every time someone clicks, your logo makes an impression. Obviously, it will need to be much smaller than your main logo—perhaps as small as 16 by 16 pixels—but the reduced image continues your branding throughout your pages. With this level of branding, there will be no doubt in your visitor's mind where they are. You can even make it so visitors who bookmark your site see the icon in their favorites, further imprinting the image. Returning visitors frequently purchase more than first-time visitors. Keeping your image in their minds supports your marketing efforts. With creativity, you can make it so prospective customers automatically think of you when they see your logo. This is one of the simplest yet most effective branding techniques.
The Psychology of Color
Color plays a vast role in memory recall. It excites all the senses, instantly conveying a message like no other communication method. Selecting the right dominant color for your brand is important. This color should appear on all promotional material.
Blue: Perceived as trustworthy, dependable, financially responsible, and secure. Particularly popular with financial institutions.
Red: Stimulates the pituitary gland, increasing heart rate and breathing. Count on red to arouse a passionate response.
Green: Connotes health, freshness, and serenity. Deeper greens are associated with wealth or prestige; light greens are calming.
Yellow: Associated with the sun in every culture. Communicates optimism, light, and warmth. Certain shades motivate and stimulate creative thought and energy. The eye sees bright yellows before any other color, making them effective for point-of-purchase displays.
Purple: Favored by creative types. Evokes mystery, sophistication, spirituality, and royalty. Lavender evokes nostalgia and sentimentality.
Pink: Hot pinks express energy, youthfulness, fun, and excitement. Dusty pinks seem sentimental. Lighter pinks are more romantic.
Orange: Cheerful orange arouses exuberance, fun, and vitality. Considered gregarious and often childlike. Lighter shades appeal to upscale markets. Peach tones work well with healthcare, restaurants, and beauty salons.
Brown: Transmits simplicity, durability, and stability. Certain shades like terracotta can convey an upscale look.
Black: Sober, bold, powerful, and classic. Creates drama and connotes sophistication. Works well for expensive products but can also make a product look heavy.
White: Implies simplicity, cleanliness, and purity. The human eye views white as a brilliant color, so it immediately catches attention in signage. Frequently used with infant and health-related products.
Chapter 5: Selling With Branding—The Practical Toolkit
When you think of Coca-Cola, what comes to mind? A red can with white lettering, or perhaps a glass bottle. Similarly, you must pick your niche online and brand your name accordingly. Be known for excelling in one area before moving to the next project.
The Essential Toolkit
1. A website that belongs to you. Your own domain and hosting give you complete control over your brand presence.
2. Auto-responder and opt-in box. Most visitors won't purchase on their first visit, and once they leave, you may never see them again. Capture their details with an auto-responder opt-in box and follow up with a series of emails. Follow-up emails reinforce your brand name in the reader's mind. Respectful persistence wins sales.
3. Photo and signature. Include a professional, smiling photo of yourself and your handwritten signature. This adds a personal touch that lets your audience know you're a real person.
4. Audio. If you have a pleasant speaking voice, combine audio with your photograph and signature to humanize your site and establish rapport with your audience.
5. Blog. A blog can be an add-on to your main site or a free alternative until you're generating profits. You can incorporate every aspect of name branding into your free blog. Update your blog at consistent intervals with material specific to your vision. Avoid off-topic material to keep your message and theme uniform. Use RSS feeds to keep readers updated about your content.
6. A domain name. Register a domain name and forward it to point at your blog. Use domain masking to give your site a professional appearance.
Wrapping Up: Be Yourself
If your online marketing material provokes an image in your mind that simply isn't you, you've likely been trying to model your approach after someone else, or you've been using work produced by others without incorporating your own personality, thoughts, and approach. The answer is to be yourself and let your personality show through in your marketing content. If you're writing a blog post during a blizzard and it's cold outside, don't hesitate to say so. When you let your personality shine, your image will be your own—not one that changes daily based on what you've most recently read.
The basics of branding are determining the image you wish to portray and the message you wish to drive home. The purpose of a brand is to create something that sticks in people's minds and helps them recall your business. Creating and building a strong brand doesn't require compromising your personality. The only real decision is whether you wish to be casual or professional. In online marketing, retaining your personality and individuality will go far in branding your business. You'll be much happier with the long-term results of your marketing if you don't try to be someone you're not. Be yourself.
