How to increase brand visibility online
Tips to help your business stand out online
The best way to increase brand visibility online and to drive more customers to your business is by
- Developing a long term brand strategy
- Creating an excellent marketing strategy
- Designing a website that compliments brand style
- Engaging in social media marketing
- Having an email marketing plan
- Organizing live events
1. Developing a brand strategy
Put simply, a brand is the face or personality of your business. It’s what makes your business stand out. To the consumers, branding plays a very important role of helping them differentiate your products and services from those of your competitors. It equally plays another significant role of building and establishing an emotional connection with your customers.
A brand strategy on the other hand is simply a plan. It’s a long term plan whose main purpose is to strengthen and improve the image, story, personality and pillars associated with your business or brand. In order to develop a successful brand strategy, the following stages should be considered.
- Setting a clear mission or purpose
- Identifying target clients
- Developing brand position
- Brand launch strategy
- Brain storming a unique value proposition
- Developing a messaging strategy
- Coming up with brand attributes and elevator pitch
- Competitor performance comparison
- Repositioning and auditing current brand
2. Creating a marketing strategy
Once the personality of your brand has been established, the next step is coming up with a way of showing your products and services to your target audience. A marketing strategy is basically a tactical plan intended to promote your products and services to prospective consumers. Its purpose is to help turn those consumers into loyal and returning customers. Here are some of the factors to take into consideration while creating a marketing strategy:
- Your marketing goals
- Determining your budget
- Activities review or marketing audit
- Targeted Audience research
- Analyzing research data
- Developing and implementing a master plan
- Implementing a schedule
- Monitoring and evaluation
3. Designing a website
If you are a brick and mortar store, having a website can prove very beneficial when it comes to increasing your online visibility. When designing a website, the following factors should be prioritized:
- Consistency with brand style (design)
- Typography and color palettes
- Website theme i.e. bold, modern traditional etc.
- Ease of navigation and user experience
- Online store or ecommerce section
- Mobile, tablet and desktop responsiveness
- Search Engine Optimization
4. Social Media marketing
This is perhaps one of the most crucial and most vital step in this list as far as marketing is concerned. Social media marketing is the process of promoting and advertising your products or services on social networks. It has become very hard for marketers to ignore this form of marketing, given the large number of people using social media today.
Social media is by far one of the best places to increase customer engagement and interaction. It gives businesses access to unmatched tools, resources and the ability to reach more and more people every day. Boost your online visibility on social media by:
- Determining you social media audience
- Establishing a realistic budget
- Creating Instagram and snapchat stories
- Creating a feasible content strategy
- Regularly posting fresh content
- Doing hashtag research
- Running cross channel campaigns
- Streaming live to interact with followers
- Using brand advocated or ambassadors
- Designing motion graphics
- Monitoring analytics and performance reports
5. Email marketing
Email marketing is essentially promoting your products and services via email. Your website is probably the best source for collecting email addresses for building your email list. When customers sign up or purchase something on your online store, it’s important that you follow up and thank them for making that purchase. It not only builds a connection to your brand, but it also gives you the opportunity to market other products as well.
Beyond that, you create a safe space where you can inform them about new deals, offers, discount and giveaways among many other things. Some of the steps taken when developing a solid email marketing strategy include:
- Creating the email list itself
- Designing a newsletter
- Personalizing your messages
- Testing and debugging samples
- Making sure the templates are mobile friendly
- Designing and presenting email focused content
- Automation and account management
6. Live event marketing
Also known as engagement marketing, live event marketing basically means promoting your business or company at trade shows and conferences. It’s one of the best ways to build trust and engage with customers on a one on one basis. Some of the ways your business can make good use of live events marketing is by:
- Organizing the event
- Streaming live to social media
- Taking professional photos and videos
- Conducting live interviews and testimonials
- Offering early bird discounts to the first few
