Online Branding | Online Brand Management
One
of the most important assets you can develop for your business
is a powerful brand. Brands are not just logos or tag lines,
they are the culmination of who you are, how you’re different
from your competition, and why a buyer should do business with
you.
Whether you’re an established company or small start-up, a brand
has tremendous impact. A brand instils confidence, creates
loyalty, and many times can command a premium price. But most of
all a great brand reduces a buyer’s perception of risk and makes
the purchase choice easy.
A brand is the sum of all you do. It’s derived from all touch
points with your customers and prospects. Developing a brand
requires having a plan that consistently communicates what your
company is and does, along with your distinct attributes, image,
and personality. Here at Fresh Traffic we provide a complete
range of strategic
brand consulting and creative design services: Call us
today.
With online brand management, we have learned that sometimes the best way to say something on the social web is to, “have someone else say it.”
In today's world an online or social media brand manager has more than a single audience to worry about. There’s the company website, corporate blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page, YouTube channel, Foursquare presence and so on and so forth. Staying competitive in today’s social media landscape means setting up shop where your fans are.
An online business has a greater chance for success if those
who buy its products and services recognize its brand. A
recognizable
online brand also makes a business's site more attractive to
potential advertisers and partners.
Remember:
Recognizable doesn't necessarily mean universally known. This
idea simply means that a business's brand will increase its
chance to compete successfully for attention and market share in
the appropriate space.
It doesn't take an expensive global advertising campaign to brand your business. Branding can be accomplished through partnerships, direct marketing, a robust Web site, and a modicum of good public relations.
Fundamentally,
branding online is pretty similar to branding offline. The
palette is different because the medium is reduced to a screen
instead of a billboard or a print advertisement, but the
opportunity for messaging is the same.
When a bricks-and-mortar company takes its business to the Web,
an online brand
usually serves as an extension of its offline presence. Think of
FedEx, AT&T, or CNN. For these companies, their online brands
reinforce or influence the pre-existing ideas about the company.
On the other hand, Amazon and Yahoo have developed brands that,
for the most part, only exist online. Dotcoms need to carefully
execute their brands and remember that there are more
restrictions due to the constraints of the Web.
Your logo is a visual cornerstone of a company's brand. Your
company's identity is visually expressed through its logo,
which, along with your company's name, is one of the main things
that makes your business memorable. Think of eBay, Google, and
Yahoo. Each one of these companies has a distinctive logo that a
large percentage of people would be able to describe without
seeing.
Successful branding helps to position your company as you hope to be viewed in the minds of your prospects. Remember, your brand is not what YOU think it is. It's what your customers think it is. Your branding efforts (logo, website, advertising, etc.) are simply here to influence how your customers think about you.