One of the most important assets that one can develop for their business is a powerful brand. Brand not only represents an organisation's logo or its tagline but it also serves as a reason for a customer to buy your products, their perception about the superiority of your product when compared to your competitors and above all it represents what you stand for. Brand development does not happen in a day or two; it's an ongoing process and may take several years for an organisation to successfully communicate their distinct attributes, image and personality. Therefore it is imperative for every organisation to evolve with the changing trends and to position itself accordingly, in order to remain competitive.
With the advent of internet, the customers now have access to a wide variety of products and services from the comfort of their home. Initially people were apprehensive about shopping online but with advancement of technology like secure online banking and with increased disposable income, their faith in the online market grows with every passing day. And it's advisable for any organisation to take a cue from this changing consumer behaviour by bringing amends in their current brand management programme and having their presence felt online as well, because online presence is considered equivalent to brand awareness in the current scenario. Your online presence is what people look for before planning to purchase your products or services. It is important for an organization to work on their visibility, as high visibility ensures that people are able to relate themselves with the brand thereby being loyal to it. Let us look at some of the ways in order to maximize ones online presence:
Be Consistent with Branding: Ask yourself one question: "What is my business all about?" It's very important to remain true to one's core and display a consistent branding strategy across all online media so that there is no scope of confusion in the mind of the consumers as to what a particular brand represents. A business may choose many online communication channels like websites, facebook, twitter, blogs etc. But they need to ensure that they send across the same kind of communication across all the channels. This will create brand recognition thereby enhancing the brand value.
Optimize Your Website: Any business that caters to the online segment needs a website. This website needs to be optimized to get the maximum performance in terms of speed, as a typical customer does not have the patience for a site that takes a long time to load. Also in order to achieve high visibility, website optimization needs to be done for optimal performance on search engines that would maximize the traffic to a website. In simple words a website will be ineffective if it is not easily found on major search engines like Google, Yahoo etc.
Social Media: serves as the best online media for a business to promote itself on a large scale. It is cost effective, caters to a worldwide audience, promotes visibility, creates a loyal customer base and above all may lead to an increase in the sales. The world is moving towards social media and so shall any business that wishes to remain competitive.
Content Management: Creating and sharing quality content is a good way to attract potential consumers. It results in brand recognition and serves as one of the best strategies to gain visibility.
Press Release Marketing: Press release distribution is a very effective and inexpensive way to enhance brand visibility and recognition. If it is picked up by Google News, your company will receive additional coverage for your brand.
Video Marketing: Lately video marketing has become one of the most important strategies through which businesses can leverage their position in the market. The number of hits on websites like youtube is probably second best to only social networking sites. Businesses must see this as an opportunity to reach out to the masses by posting advertisements on such sites which would increase their visibility thereby increasing the brand awareness. The 5 second commercial just before your favourite video on youtube is one such example where businesses have successfully been able to cater to a worldwide audience. Another example was the 5 second Pepsi commercial shown after every over of the matches played in the IPL. All this creates an impression on the minds of the consumers which in turn benefits a business.
Blogs: Writing, following and sharing blogs is fast becoming a trendy way of information exchange. In fact the more you blog, the better are your chances of enhancing your visibility as it improves your search engine rank. Moreover people with common interests connect with each other which provide another means for information exchange through Word of Mouth. Hence it is important for any business, big or small, to keep their audience engaged with the latest promotions or news by regularly updating their blogs.
As a final point businesses should keep in mind that while creating an online presence, they should try to differentiate themselves from their competitors. They should be authentic, open and honest while communicating their offerings as at the end of the day the customers should not feel cheated. The businesses must always remember that branding be it online or not, is all about trust.
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