Your brand presence online can make or break it, particularly for small business owners. While having a website plays an important role, your brand presence goes beyond that and paints a more comprehensive picture of your company. It considers your actions and where you stand in the eyes of search engine algorithms. It also includes what others say about you and how they feel about your brand.Building and maintaining a strong online presence is critical for differentiating your brand, finding and converting customers, and growing your business.
Strong brand awareness and brand recognition indicate that your brand is at the forefront of people’s minds when they consider the category of products or services you sell. They recognise your logo or tagline, making it easier to communicate effectively through social content, particularly images and short-form videos.
Brand awareness is a necessary first step in developing brand loyalty. Customers won’t love your brand unless they know and recognise it. Here’s how to grow your brand presence online.
1. Extend Your Reach to a Larger Audience
While traditional marketing tactics have their uses for many businesses, they are all fairly limited in terms of reach. Cold calls, flyers, print ads, and even billboards can only take you so far. An online presence allows customers to find you. For instance, your website allows customers to shop whenever and wherever they want. Some customers prefer to shop online and confirm inventory before visiting a physical storefront.
Another way your online presence can improve your customers’ experiences is by allowing you to communicate with them directly. Positive interactions that help convert prospects into leads (and then into customers) include:
- Include a phone number and email address on your website so that people can contact you.
- Using a chatbot to answer questions.
- Responding to social media comments.
2. Enrich the Customer Experience
Providing educational, free content online is one way to add value and enrich the customer experience. This not only benefits your customers but improves your online presence.
To begin, make a list of your customer’s pain points and motivations. In other words, consider your buyer persona. Then, come up with content that will answer their questions. What information is beneficial to your customers? And there you have it, your content strategy.
3. Build Your Website
Your website is frequently the first point of contact for prospective customers. It’s their first impression of your company, and you want to ensure it’s positive.
A flawless website results in a positive and lasting impression. It features your brand guidelines on every page via colours, images, fonts, tone of voice, and copy that is consistent and aligned while ensuring the site is UI and UX optimised.
4. Conduct SEO
With algorithms changing daily, search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best strategies for increasing your brand presence online. SEO entails employing a variety of strategies to improve your SERP ranking and visibility. Among the most common are:
Use tried-and-true best practices such as creating high-quality, keyword-targeted content, optimising images, and acquiring backlinks.
Enhancing your website’s user experience.
Use schema markup so that rich snippets, such as ratings or main navigation pages, can appear below your site title in the SERP.
Make local SEO a priority. The pandemic has increased consumer support for local businesses, and this will continue after COVID.
5. Create Valuable and Relevant Content
Well-crafted content is a valuable asset in increasing your brand presence online. It helps you demonstrate your industry expertise and establish your brand authority. It also provides relevant information to your current and prospective customers.
For instance, a free eBook is a great way to provide valuable gated content for your customer to download and join your email list. Determine what your ideal customer’s pain points are and create an eBook or guide for them.
The more content you create, the more opportunities you have to appear online. An online presence boosts your chances of appearing in search engines, social media, and sites such as YouTube. Prioritise the social channels where your customers are active (based on customer research) and begin brainstorming content for those mediums.
6. Create Your Email List
Creating and growing an email list is one of the most effective ways to increase your brand presence online. Email marketing allows you to communicate with your current and prospective customers directly from their inboxes. You can share information about your company, product or service launches, sales, and other activities. With an email list, you communicate with current and potential customers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
You also use your social media pages to promote your newsletter and encourage sign-ups.
7. Enhance Your Social Media Presence
Be active on the platforms where your target customers are to get the most out of social media marketing. Social media is an excellent way to establish your credibility and reputation while also promoting your brand. When potential customers are researching your brand, the first place they’ll look is social media to see what you’re posting and what others are saying about you.
Make time to interact with your customers in addition to posting snippets of your blog, interesting facts, and the occasional promotional piece:
- To gather feedback, create polls or ask questions.
- Create live videos to interact with your followers in real-time.
8. Allocate Budgeting for Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is a faster way to establish an online presence. You increase brand awareness and online visibility when your ad appears in the top search results. Advertise on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, depending on your target audience. You can also look into social media advertising. Advertising options on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are well-known.
Knowing what you want to promote and which platforms are best for your campaign will help you achieve the best results.
9. Analyse and Optimise Your Results
Some efforts, such as brand awareness, are more difficult to track. That doesn’t mean your efforts aren’t effective or worth tracking. Track your progress, analyse the data, and make adjustments as needed to ensure what you’re doing is effective. Therefore, determine which metrics you want to track.
- Track the effectiveness of your content by looking at your blog page or video views.
- Monitor the amount of time spent on the content page.
- Analyse your likes, shares, and engagement to track the success of your social media strategy.
Growing your brand presence online doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not as simple as creating a website and accounts on Facebook and Instagram. You must put forth the effort as a team. Building an appealing, user-friendly website, constantly improving your SEO, creating valuable content, and engaging with customers on social media will all help your efforts.