The Keys to Building an Online Brand

Why Brand Management is Important for Businesses

These days we live in a buyers market society in that for every decision we need to make there are countless options for us to choose from. At times, it can be downright overwhelming.

Not only is there 10+ choices for everything we use, but we are constantly bombarded with advertising and marketing messages. As a small business owner, the thought of trying to leverage enough product support can seem a daunting task.

With so much chatter on every available media channel, how does a smaller business brand and position itself so it can compete with the bigger brand names? This is where creating a strong and identifiable brand concept becomes crucial.

Building Brand Awareness and a Reputation 

Creating a Brand Strategy takes time and careful planning to be certain that the message, colors, fonts, and more all match up with the mission statement and culture of the company which must also coincide with the overall tone of the copy and content on our social media channels and our website as well.

When we create a solid brand image, we can then create buyer personas and our branded content to help build awareness of our business, services offered, or product line.

By building awareness of our company we are actually doing a number of things. Not only are we increasing the visibility of our products but we are building something just as important as a following...We are building trust.

The purpose of building all this visibility and trust is that it creates the most valuable asset a company can have and that's a great reputation. In this age of competition among brand choices, consumers rely on reputation heavily to make buying decisions.

Every Brand has its Target Audience

Once we define our company image and culture we can identify our target audience. We do this by developing buyer personas and then employing a listening strategy to determine

⦁ Where our target audience spends time online and at what times
⦁ What keywords they use to search for answers to their challenges
⦁ How and why they choose to make a purchase
⦁ What specific challenges they have in common and what makes them unique

Now then, armed with buyer personas and target audience data, we can position ourselves to stand out in the marketplace by tailoring the content we create specifically for them.

Our amazing content we create should highlight our expertise, what problems we can solve for our target customers, and why we can solve their challenges better than anyone else out there.

We can further our understanding of our target audience by simply asking them. This allows us to create a top-notch user-based experience for our brand.

Using surveys on gated content offers or contests, we can dig deeper into their likes and dislikes, their satisfaction with our products and services, and allow them to make free improvement suggestions.

The use of surveys and question-and-answer based outreach also does something else that is incredibly powerful in persuading potential customers to choose our brand. It creates user-generated content such as quotes and testimonials.

Be the Brand (nana-nana-nana-nana)

Consistent brands are worth up to 20% more than those that aren't. And, who doesn't want to be worth more money?

Showing up consistently across multiple platforms multiple times per day is a way to stay solid in the public eye. The more frequently a company's content shows up online, the more dominant or authoritative it appears.

The old marketing paradigm still applies for the most part in that consumers require 7- touch points before making a buying decision. In other words, consumers who see 7 consistent messages in multiple places from a brand tend to recall and choose that brand above others.

The power of association is uber-important when it comes to marketing our business brand. Industry leaders become that way when other companies in the same industry depend on your brand for information.

When other brands in our specific industry link back to our content, we get an instant SEO boost and position ourselves as the thought leader or authority on our keyword topics.

Owning your domain and using a branded email such as service@ContentCollectiveMarketing.com further builds our reputation and clout as an authority brand.

The key is consistency! Anywhere your brand shows up the message should be targeted, consistent with similar recognizable graphic elements.

The Purpose-driven Social Brand

Packaging is vital. From the time we are young, we are drawn to things with a more visually appealing package. Product packaging designers and marketers alike almost need to have a psychology degree to be effective these days.

OK, so that's not entirely true, but it would help. It does help to have a base knowledge of certain fundamentals such as color theory in psychology, visually appealing design functions, and even the importance of "mob mentality" or what it takes for our content to go viral.

The look and feel of our website should closely match that of our social media presences as well. This congruency ensures that our brand's contact info, logos, images, and basic descriptions all point the same direction.

Keys to an Engaging Presence Across Platforms

⦁ Using custom short URL's: Brands that shorten their URL's with a custom base are easier to recognize. There are a ton of link shorteners out there like Bitly, Clkim, droplr, Rebrandly, and TinyCC.
⦁ User-friendly Terms: Avoid using industry jargon and create content in a voice that sounds natural and conversational in tone.
⦁ Create Conversations: Create a dialogue with your target customers that they want to join in. Using social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook make it simple to start a conversation with your audience. Other advice column style sites like Quora and Alignable also help to increase brand engagement rates.
⦁ Monitoring & Response: The most respected brands monitor their online mentions and presences and can respond in a fast, professional manner. In fact, some brands have specific departments or assign one employee to do this important task. According to Hubspot, 70% of customers expect a reply to their social media complaints or questions within an hour.

Brand Management is Key to Business Success

Running a successful business is hard work. Brand building doesn't have to be. In fact, most of the steps to managing a business brand successfully are plain common sense.

Maintain a consistent brand voice and message. Do your homework and research your target audience and their buying habits. Finally, create amazing content to build your brand's visibility and influence and engage your potential customers across all of their favorite social stomping grounds.

Good luck and happy branding!


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Having difficulty with your business brand? Call us today to for a free review of your website and social media presence. If you have additional tips that we missed or have success with the tips in this article we'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.