Every business strives to be that business, the one that has the product everyone wants & the logo everyone recognises. Why are some brands fine wines like Google for example and others wither and die, poor Jeeves no one asks him anything anymore.

The answer to a certain degree is time. It’s a major factor for brands like Coca Cola, Harley Davidson & unfortunately Apple (I’m Android, sorry not sorry) are instantly recognizable to billions of people worldwide.

You may now be asking yourself at this point, how do I turn my business into one of these brands? It may sound simple but the first part is starting, every journey starts with a single step and after the shocking year we’ve had now is the perfect time to start this process.

So how can digital marketing help you in an online world?
Most marketplaces are getting more competitive online and with major online distributors such as Amazon & Ebay being in almost everything it makes it harder for other businesses to be noticed. Therefore the more recognisable your brand is, the better chance you have of getting the sale. With that said here are some things that I think will help your business grow its brand presence online. As a disclaimer, this is not a definitive list just some techniques and strategies that I have seen work during my time in digital marketing.

So where should you start?
Remarketing or Retargeting:
The easiest way to start pushing your brand out there. Using Google Ads, you can show image ads of your products/brand to people who have directly engaged with your business already across the Google Display Network.  A key important factor for remarketing & retargeting is getting the creative right so that the advert the user views has a similar theme and experience to the landing page they will engage with. 

Email Re-Engagement:
By building up a subscribers list to newsletters, blogs or past customers; you could offer them a deal on certain products or simply make them aware of the latest and greatest things your business can do for them.

Wider Display on the Google Display Network:
Using mixtures & combinations of things such as In-Market Audiences, Similar To Audiences, Placements & Demographics you will have a large number of ways to target the right type of people. This is where we really start delving into online branding because it puts you in front of people early and starts forming trust so that when entering the market they already have an awareness of your business. When they see your name, click and land on your page they’ll be greeted by the same core USP’s & logo building trust and connection with you much quicker as a result.

One thing I should mention about the last point and all the following points is that knowing your target audience is vital. Researching & understanding this critical to any upper-funnel branding activities and having this information firmly in place & understood should be top of the priority list before starting.

Video Advertising:
All Youtube advertising is run through Google Ads. If you’ve done your research you’ll have a very strong idea of who and what to target and if you’re already operating using a wider display you will have live data to analyse and hone in on exactly how you can want to advertise to your type of people. The big thing with Video Advertising is that high-quality content is key and it is much easier to create high-quality content with a lesser cost associated via images and using wider display rather than video. So strategically it is much more cost-effective for you as a business to start with the wider display than video so when you are ready to invest that money, you have a much better chance of putting it to good use.

One side note, although Video Ads must be extremely high quality, content is brilliant for re-engagement which is very important when it comes to video advertising. Pointless spending money growing a subscriber base and starting to gain traction to not re-engage those users. This means the cost of the re-engagement content then isn’t as high on an ongoing basis and you can be as creative as you want, within reason!

Social Media:
Social media is rife with people & businesses looking to stand out so doing something unique, cutting edge & relevant in my opinion comes down to your creativity! If the creative is strong people will respond, getting in front of the right people in the right way is also very helpful but good creative is the magic stuff for me.

Now that I have discussed different online branding techniques, this brings me onto the most important point. The path to purchase can be extremely convoluted these days with potential customers being able to engage with businesses in so many ways, the further up the purchase funnel you go the higher the probability that it will not result in an immediate sale. The way we evaluate the value of these campaigns cannot just be black & white, spend vs revenue viewpoint, this should be judged from your classic PPC campaigns. It’s about getting the potential customers aware of you either long before or just before they start to look seriously at purchasing with the aim of aiding the conversion rate & time of purchase to sale.

How to evaluate the effectiveness of branding campaigns online?
Look at all of the ways people purchase through business, mainly your website but also potentially offline orders like phone calls for example if they make up a large percentage of your businesses revenue currently. Look at things like how many touchpoints customers have throughout the buying cycle, site-wide conversion rates & CPA, look at your average order value, look at assisted conversions, look at multi-channel funnel revenue data & importantly do it over a prolonged period like 6-12 months minimum; these campaigns will become more effective over time and do take time to start working. Regular testing of messages should be done, so the message does not lose its effectiveness or become annoying & actually becoming detrimental to your brand.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it let us know & most importantly let’s have a great 2021!

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