7 Key Elements Of Online Branding That No Business Should Miss
Brand building has become one of the key aspects of running a business successfully these days, considering the growing competition in the market.
And you cannot ignore the importance of making a remarkable presence on the internet as well. Unless people recognize your business as a brand online, you cannot imagine sustenance and growth.
And this does not apply to large enterprises alone, even small businesses need to embrace a branding approach to achieve their growth targets and gain recognition in the online domain.
This, however, is easier said than done particularly for startups and small businesses with limited budgets. Still, you can take the smart approach and use the right strategies for this purpose.
Essentially, a successful online branding plan is a mix of multiple tactics. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to recognize these or take their advantage only because they are not aware of this truth.
Here are the elements of online branding that businesses should not miss.
–Brand personality
The first and perhaps the most important element of a branding plan is the brand’s personality. To start with, you need to create a buyer persona for your target audience. This lets you understand your target audience and their expectations as well.
Once you know their expectations, the next step is to create a brand personality that replicates them. Basically, it is an identity that encompasses factors such as your brand’s look, feels and tone of voice.
It should be crafted to establish deep connections with the audience so that they feel loyal towards your business.
–Brand consistency
Having a unique personality for your business is just half the work done. You need to ensure that this personality is consistent across all the selling channels, online and offline.
This consistency must also reflect in your packaging, which showcases the brand name, messaging, and thought put into ensuring your products are in optimal condition upon reaching customers.
Food items, like coffee beans, can fit into custom flexible packaging to keep them fresh, save space in the cupboard, and lessen waste.
Whether it is your product packaging, your website or social media pages, your look should be the same everywhere.
Consistency becomes all the more vital for online branding, considering the length and breadth of the internet and the sheer number of platforms where you are going to promote your business.
A brand logo, signature colors and tone of voice are the metrics of brand consistency.
–Website
Undoubtedly, your business website is the core of your online branding strategy because it is actually your virtual presence.
So you must have one that is a replica of your brand and at the same time, has the most amazing look and feel possible.
Focus on elements such as content and design, to begin with because they must resonate with your brand’s identity. Users have a minimal attention span and you must make sure that your site is capable of keeping them engaged.
The superlative user experience should, therefore, be your top priority. While your website should excel in look, loading speed, security, and mobile responsiveness are other factors that make it brand-worthy.
–SEO
Search engine optimization is the next element of a result-focused online branding strategy. This is a technique that takes your website on the top of search rankings so that your brand is visible and ahead of the competition.
There is much that comes under SEO, from choosing the right keywords to optimizing the content with these keywords to building relevant backlinks.
It is important to know that there are some rules you need to stick to while building backlinks with the branding perspective.
The article Homepage SEO – How To Build Huge Brand Authority from SEOJet explains that when building links to your homepage, you should focus on anchor texts that contain some form of your brand name. Additionally, SEO includes optimization of on-page elements and speed as well.
–Mobile presence
While your business website and SEO cover your brand’s presence across the web, you cannot overlook mobile presence.
This is a major channel where online customers search for products and services and buy them as well. Therefore, a solid mobile presence is imperative for creating a successful brand identity.
First things first, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile. You can even invest in a mobile app to connect better with the customers and be visible on mobile app stores.
Further, mobile apps play a key role in boosting your brand’s credibility and making it a well-recognized one.
–Social media
Besides web and mobile, social media is another key element of a successful online branding mix.
After all, you cannot expect the target audience to know your brand unless you have a wider reach. No other platform offers a reach as extensive as social media does.
To start with, you need to have social media pages for all the popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.
You can even build and grow social communities on these platforms and encourage the members to bring in more of them to join as brand followers. Post regularly and interact with the audience to build stronger connections and relationships.
–Storytelling
Online branding goes much beyond building digital assets such as websites, mobile apps and social media communities.
It is more about establishing long term relationships with your customers so that they trust you without seeing and experiencing your products physically.
A storytelling element in your brand’s narrative can play a vital role in this context. Telling people about your history, approach and mindset builds trust and makes them loyal followers rather than only your customers.
Create a storyline and showcase it everywhere, across your digital assets and physical presence as well. Make sure that you adhere to your brand’s tone of voice in the narrative so that there is consistency everywhere.
Online branding requires a great deal of perseverance and hard work. You need to be authentic about each word you post because honesty breeds trust, which is very important if you want to create a winning brand.
At the same time, focus on real connection with people. Be ready to listen and interact because this shows genuine intentions to serve the customers. Besides investing in strong relationships with the customers, consolidate the relationships with niche influencers and peers as well.
Let people come forward and recommend your brand and you will definitely be able to achieve your growth targets sooner than you expect.
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