All Brands Need Online Marketing

Think about those instantly recognizable brands you know like Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple. Forbes recently compiled a list of the world’s most valuable brands, based on earnings for each company. Those three famous brands made the cut along with 97 other global businesses. Coca-Cola alone is well known for its memorable TV commercials with celebrity guest stars like Taylor Swift and Jennifer Lopez. Big brands like these might have the advantage of having star power and being familiar to people around the world, but all brands, no matter what size, need consistent advertising and marketing.

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Businesses Of All Sizes Can Be A Brand

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Although these top businesses have access to big budgets, you don’t need a ton of spending money to become a successful brand. As Anderson states, businesses of all sizes can be a brand. That’s right, even the mom and pop shop on the corner can achieve brand status. It’s all about creating a reputation and an image that attracts customers. So what does it take to grow a brand, and what does branding involve? Branding gives a business an identity. It’s “the product, personality and values of a business,” Myles Anderson explains in a Search Engine Land article, and “having a strong brand builds familiarity between a business and its customers, which makes selling to customers much easier.”

Grow Your Business Through Local SEO

When it comes to building a brand and getting your name out there, it’s more than having a snappy tagline, catchy colors or creating a Facebook page. Nowadays, a business needs SEO assistance. Sure, we’ve all heard about social media and how businesses should be easily searchable, but it goes beyond a business being on Twitter, in order to create a lasting brand. It’s a way to build your brand without buying billboards, as Trond Lyngbø says in a Search Engine Land article. Lyngbø believes it’s something every serious business owner should consider. Not being in control of SEO branding is a costly mistake.

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In local online marketing, marketers usually spend most of their time optimizing for keywords and locations for clients, but there are ways to step up your marketing efforts without breaking the bank and getting beyond the keywords, says Anderson. First, your business name, address and phone number or NAP needs to be consistent in each of the directories in which your business is listed. These listings are also referred to as citations, and they are created anytime your business is mentioned online. Descriptions should also be consistent and can be used to reinforce the brand name and company history. But be careful, because “descriptions aren’t just there to stuff full of keywords!” as Anderson says. Write a description of your business that gets to the point and expresses what you’re all about.

Use Social Media To Build Your Brand

If a citation has the opportunity to include multimedia, upload as many images as possible. These photos should be professional and can be workplace photos of staff or of your logo. A short video can explain what you do and the personality behind your business. Lastly, make sure your social media profiles are consistent across your different platforms. For example, make sure your photo, description and message are the same on both Facebook and Twitter. Social media is also making it easier to build your brand. As Marcela De Vito states in a , “brands have collected 90 percent as many fans on Google Plus as on Twitter.” These stats come from a Forrester Research study that also found that Google Plus posts generated twice as much engagement per follower as similar Facebook posts.

Twitter’s new profile options also can give businesses ways to build your brand. IIya Pozin in a Forbes article shares suggestions for utilizing Twitter’s visually-focused layout to leverage your brand. The new 1500 x 500 pixels cover image and the larger 400 x 400 pixels profile image can be used to tell your brand’s story. The updated page also provides a great opportunity to pin some of your most important tweets for all to see. This content should reinforce your brand message and what your company is all about. As Pozin shares, 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual, so make sure your images truly tell a story! And as Anderson says, “A picture speaks 1,000 words, and so does a brand.” Use multimedia to bring the focus back to your brand and your personality.