How to Build a Brand That Is Profitable and Lasts Over Time

Not many years have passed since those who had a business wondered about the opportunity to open their website, land online, perhaps rely on an Affiliate Marketing Agency.

Nowadays, the market has changed, and there has been a reversal of the prospects in which companies not only rely on Affiliates for advertising campaigns, but all the brands also count or hope to expand via their own websites. Therefore, on a daily base, more and more companies promote their products using Facebook Ads.

The difference between large and small brands does not lie in the marketing strategies they adopt, but in the capital they can invest. Where small and medium entrepreneurs think in terms of hundreds or thousands of dollars, large companies can easily shell out millions without worrying too much about their ROI, contributing in rising the average CPMs of the advertisement industry.

Moreover, those who want to promote their products online face two major problems:

• By relying on Affiliate Agencies, they are often offered old, outdated marketing strategies that nothing new offers to potential users. So, converting users into customers becomes a difficult task, when you add the problem of constantly seeing the same offers repeated.
• Years and years of scams, with companies using techniques such as cloaking — i.e., using techniques to appear in the search engines and then not offering valid content to their users — or advertising that did not keep its promises of high quality have undermined the confidence of consumers in online purchases. Conversions and acquisitions of new customers have therefore become more expensive and more difficult to achieve.

In such a scenario, how can a company assert itself and make a profit from its online presence?

We have highlighted the main issues for those who want to expand their online presence:

• Much more competition, because the various competitors are all online, and some of them rely on Affiliate Marketing Agencies or, for an even more effective and targeted advice to Digital Advertising Agencies.
• Brands of all sizes have to compete against large Companies and the marketing department they can deploy.
• There is a general climate of distrust towards the products offered online, as buyers fear to buy and then receive a product of a poor quality or not at all the one which was advertised.

To increase the product’s online visibility that a brand wants to sponsor to the leads, we must, therefore, add value to it. The question that an entrepreneur has to ask themselves is whether the product he wants to sell through a Digital Marketing Campaign can have any value for eventual users. Does the company only aim to sell or does it also manage to communicate with its customers to reward them for the trust placed? Taking care of customers and studying an item which also converts casual viewers into potential consumers is what adds value to a brand.

This technique is part of the broader pattern of companies’ need to evolve. Subterfuges like banning customers who leave negative reviews on social channels, closure of social pages completely improvised, are halves to be left in oblivion.

As an entrepreneur, to evolve your brand, you can use a tool that all Digital Advertising Agencies– the competent ones, at least — use: calculating the Customer Life Time Value.

To monetize the customer’s time, from this formula

Revenue — Costs = Profit

we move on to this

REVENUE — CPA (Cost per Action)= Profit

It has been shown that 70% of entrepreneurs rightly believe that it is easier to monetize an already acquired customer than to look for new buyers. In order to implement this customer retention tactic, a brand needs to be able to:

• Using value, that means proposing a product carrying an experience that speaks to the customer, telling him something that interests or appeal them.
• To use CLTV, the Customer Life Time Value, means convincing that customer to buy from our brand not just once, but several times over time. This is very difficult to achieve using an Affiliate Agency, as advertising is not tailored to the needs of the customer. Not even using an aggressive Dropshipping technique leads to many results, because selling a product that you do not have physically means condemning the buyer to wait far too long. You can learn how to leverage you CLTV in Luca Borreani’s, EVP of Marketing at Targeto, article.

Another problem with the offers created by an Affiliate Agency is that Internet sites now banned this type of advertisement en masse.

So why not switch to a more profitable kind of Digital Marketing?

We certainly don’t want the Digital Marketing Campaign we commissioned to be obscured online and to risk boring potential consumers. It is necessary to create a brand for the product you intend to sell to avoid these two eventualities

What is it that you can define a brand?

A brand is created when:

• You sell a value that enriches the products offered
• Ensures that buyers can identify with the values or philosophy that the product carries
• A Community grows and moves the contents developed around the product. The item inspires consumers to buy it, identifying the product with the philosophy behind that brand. For example, car’s advertisements mention only a small part of their technical qualities, in favour of mottos. Do you want a powerful off-road vehicle? It’s because you’re adventurous and brave. Do you prefer a small car? You are a parent who puts the reliability and care of their family first.
• Emotions are transmitted, such as the Nike advertisement starring tennis champion Serena Williams: the athlete before the decisive blow retraces her career watching herself through all the stages of her career.

Now that the brand has been created, however, how do I earn money from my business?

When you sell what you produce, you’re not just proposing a mere purchase, but also an inspiration that interest a customer, and make them stay true to the brand. This will happen if they meet an excellent customer service experience and the trust he has placed is not betrayed.

Therefore, in addition to having a brand with a clear identity, customer service must ensure that the customer feels involved and appreciated, considered not for the money but because he or she has given us confidence and time. It doesn’t even need to be said that the product a brand wants to sponsor must live up to expectations. Having a good philosophy and then delivering poor quality products is the quickest way to premature closure.

You also have to consider that those who purchase an item also buy the emotions the item inspires, so you have to encourage the interaction and engagement between the brand itself and the customer.

At this point, a company has its product, its own brand and now it’s a matter of promoting both successfully. And how do you do that?

The answer is to rely on an agency that knows how to use Brandformance — as we do at Targeto.

A fusion of the words Branding and Performance, Brandformance combines the objectives of a branding operation with a results-oriented campaign.

There are two ways of branding: a Like Campaign and an Engagement Campaign.

Going beyond the mere product, we can follow a customer without making them feeling surrounded, interacting with him or her, studying tailored offers, listening to what they have to say and at the same time proposing content of interest to them.

What about performance?

The Touchdown Strategy is our best ally.

This strategy puts an end to the scams and helps companies achieve a brand value that allows them to survive. It’s divided into three steps:

1) You upload a group of products online and instruct an agency to launch Digital Marketing Campaigns. To get the best results, propose something that interests and fascinates you. What is it? It doesn’t matter if you immediately find a niche within a sector, everything related to a topic can be launched online, and therefore the Campaign is spread over several products. To understand how things are going, let’s keep an eye on the ROAS, the return on the cost of ads. If it is greater than 4 it is a winning return, and at this point, we can determine which of the products proposed meets the greatest interest of the public.

2) We can now focus on that product. It’s a wise move to order it in bulk, and store it in a warehouse or Virtual Warehouse. In this way, we could ship the product more quickly and get positive feedback from the customer. In the meantime, the Agency of our choice will continue with the Campaigns. Within that product, we can then see which group is selling the most. For example, if we sell beauty products, with a focus on facial treatments, we try to figure out which treatment has the most following: night masks? Serums with organic ingredients?

3) At this point, it’s time to find your niche market, where you specialize in the sale of that product. Now you have a valid and concrete experience to sell; you have your brand, your specialization, a store with your logo. All this is destined to last over time; there are the foundations to build an excellent business from which customers are happy and led to buy several times. You could even open a physical store!

Now that we have customers and leads, it’s time to monetize it all.

You can use email for marketing, Bot marketing like Facebook’s ones. You may be surprised to learn that as many as 98% of users open notifications from these bots, while emails have lower engagement rates.

With your agency, you can think of special offers via newsletters, social pages to maintain and expand, create viral content where you call fans of what you sell to say theirs or post a photo in which they use your product.

This also has the advantage of adding material to our archives, through feedback and reviews. We can show our future customers how much we care about their opinions and how we take care of our buyers. In short, we establish a relationship of trust.

By doing this, the cost of acquiring new customers is lowered, and profit margins for a brand are increased. We can invest more in attracting new customers because we know that over time, thanks to the techniques we’ve been talking about, we’ll be able to recoup acquisition costs.

Now that a brand has been founded, you as the owner can decide how to act.

The great thing about having a brand is that you can manage it as you see fit. You can sell leads, create a new brand, cross branding, partner with another company.

The options are endless!

At Targeto we can help you in creating your Brand, establishing a strategy followed by a serious digital marketing campaign. Moreover, we offer competent advice and help you to increase your visibility online, carefully crafting and full — time managing your digital campaign.

If you’re curious to see what other we can offer you, visit us at www.targeto.com/