Branding has become a hot topic in the search marketing industry recently. Taking the time out to understand and define your brand will help you become more focused about the way you market your business online. Companies need to start branding as it helps clients understand their brands better, it helps businesses connect better with their target audience and come up with a solid business plan.
What Is A Brand?
When many companies talk about defining their brands they usually focus on the following:
- Brand name
- Colors
- Logo
- Look and feel
- Font
- Imagery
- Fonts
If your company has taken the time to define these things, things will be easier because you have a style guide. While a style guide is an essential component in brand marketing, there are other larger things you still have to worry about. To create a strong brand presence, you have to work on your core values so the customer knows what he/she will be getting from your brand.
Defining Your Brand
If you thought defining your brand was a piece of cake, you are wrong. There are tons of things that you need to figure out. Here are some things you need to nail down:
- Your Core Values: What makes your brand different from other brands out there, and what do you have to offer that nobody else does? Look beyond typical answers such as customer service. Think about it: why do you do what you do, and how will customers benefit from your business? Differentiate yourself from your competitors. If you have the best customer service, what does it do for your customers, and how can you be sure nobody else does the same?
- Your Customer Persona: Who is your ideal customer and what do they like? You need to define your target audience to create ideas or give them the kind of services they will enjoy. Nail down as much information you can get about your target audience as possible, including getting your demographics together. This will help you devise a proper plan.
- Your Brand Personality: Your brand needs to have its own personality and attitude. Is your brand playful or professional? Think about your target audience and the type of personality that will be most attractive to them.
- Being Honest: Brands are like people. They have their own personalities and carry both positive and negative traits. Therefore, it is essential that you focus on the negatives of your company. You need to be honest and deal fairly with your competitors. It is fine to aspire with your brand, but you need to be honest. People are not stupid, and they will not be happy when they find out they have been lied to. Remember, you need to value the trust of your customers. It is the only way you will build stronger relationships and foster brand loyalty.
Brand Building and Information Architecture
Once you have figured out who your audience is and how to uniquely position yourself amidst your competitors, it is up to you to distribute these factors throughout your website. You should start by making small changes to your existing website’s architecture. In case you are building a new website, you need to put in your best effort. For each page of your site, keep the following things in mind:
- Map out which of your personas will be highlighted on that page
- Use page copy to address concerns and provide answers to questions that are important for your customers
- Link internally to additional resources to help them complete tasks
- Keep customer loyalty and retention in mind. While sales is important, you need to preserve customer relationship
Tracking Brand Driven SEO
Now that you have made all these efforts, it is time to check how well you are doing. Here’s how you can track your performance:
- Invest in CRM
- Enable demographic tracking
- Track user pathways
- Monitor brand mentions
- Change attribution models
- Track co-occurrence
Well there you have it: keep all these things in mind and you will surely be able to boost your revenue.
Source: https://moz.com/blog/great-seo-starts-with-your-brand
