As a business owner or entrepreneur, you should know the value of building a brand around your business. A formidable brand presence is key to your business’s sustainability and long-term success. How your customers perceive your brand and what potential customers think about your brand goes a long way in determining whether your business will continue to receive support from them or not. This is especially true for online businesses.
To build a formidable online brand, your focus should be to make your brand come across as a relatable, authentic, recognizable, and approachable entity. Your potential customers should be able to identify your online brand and get familiar with it almost unconsciously.
Once your brand, brand message, and core offerings are etched in your users’ minds, your business will be perceived with greater credibility, which will translate to better patronage and even word of mouth marketing.
The only question that remains to be answered is, how do you build a formidable online brand presence for your business? Well, that’s what we’re going to help you answer.
4 Essential Tips for Digital Business Transformation
Choose the right domain name
The first step in building a strong online presence is to select a brandable online identity. Apart from being an information centre, your website doubles up as your business’s virtual office. A clunky domain name that is hard to remember and challenging to type or read will not help you build a credible brand. Think about it; your domain name will be plastered everywhere, from social media ads to email signatures to visiting cards to offline ads.
Suppose your domain name is one that doesn’t match your brand name or one that has hyphens, misspellings, special characters, or numbers. In that case, people will question your business’s authenticity and reliability. If the name of your choice is not available on traditional domain extensions like .com or net, consider adopting new domain extensions like .icu, .cyou, or .bond. These new domain extensions add a great degree of relevance and meaning.
For instance, a finance business called The Corporate Bond can use www.corporate.bond instead of www.thecorporate-bondcompanyonline.com as its domain name. The former is short, simple, and easy to remember, thereby making it easier to build a brand.
Start a blog
Starting a blog is a great way to build authenticity and reputation in your niche. By frequently publishing high-quality content around value-driven topics, your business will be able to build traction among end-users as a resource centre. It is a known fact that content marketing helps with SEO, and SEO is one of the best long-term brand-building avenues.
Study the market and all the feedback from your existing customers or your competitors’ customers to understand what questions and topics are going unanswered. This will help you plan topics for your blogs.
Blogs on ‘How-To,’ ‘Tips and Tricks,’ ‘Examples or Templates,’ ‘X Steps,’ etc. make for topic categories that do well. Be sure to include relevant examples and avoid using technical jargon. Keep it simple, so everyone understands what you are writing about.
Once your blog starts ranking for specific keywords, your website will be flooded with relevant traffic, which will brand you as an authority in your niche. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush for keyword research and topic identification.
Harness the Power of Social Media Marketing
Social media is a very potent marketing and powerful brand-building avenue for online businesses. Start by identifying which platforms suit your business best, then set out to build a strong presence on those platforms.
For instance, your eCommerce business should have a strong presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. While it’s wise to be omnipresent, it’s best to have an account on all platforms but focus on staying active only on relevant ones.
Regularly publish high-quality content and be sure to engage with your followers. Reply to all comments and messages with poise and dignity even when people leave complaints or negative words. When new users come across your replies to other followers’ comments, they will take a shine to your brand.
Furthermore, it always helps to run user-focused contests that involve your followers and users to participate. Don’t forget to include video content. According to Cisco, 82% of internet traffic would go to video content by 2021. Start a YouTube channel and start producing great videos.
These simple social media strategies will strengthen your bond with users and help build a positive reputation online.
Invest in influencer marketing
Influencers are individuals who enjoy a massive fan following of people who are relevant to your business. By collaborating with notable influencers, your business has the unique opportunity to transform into a formidable brand almost instantaneously. While partnering with influencers can be a costly affair, there are several ways to get them to feature your brand or product.
You can start by interacting with them on social media. Engage with them by liking, commenting, and retweeting their posts. Get them to notice you, and if your brand catches their eye, they will feature you. Another way is to send them a free sample of your product or service subscription to get them to talk about you on their channel.
You can also collaborate with micro-influencers using the same tactics mentioned above as they are also looking for unique products and opportunities to further their presence. The advantage of partnering with micro-influencers is that the cost will be way lesser, and as they grow and invest in their brand, your brand will get exposure too.
Final Thoughts
These simple tips will help you transform your online business into a formidable online brand if done right. The right domain name will enhance memorability and brandability, while starting a blog will help you build authority. Similarly, social media marketing will help you engage and interact with end-users, while influencer marketing will bolster your brand in new relevant users’ minds.
Take the first step. Register the perfect domain name today!
Eshan is a Senior Marketing Specialist at ShortDot, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .icu, .bond, and .cyou. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
