Many entrepreneurs are looking for ways to take their business online. Building your brand online from scratch is no easy task. The Internet is a great place to grow your business and expose your brand to as many people as you can. We understand how overwhelming it could be, especially for new business owners.
In this blog post, we will reveal the 5 easy steps used by Exabytes to build/grow our brand online. Let assume you already have the essentials ready: company logo, products/services etc. Perhaps we should do another post on the checklist for creating a new brand? Let us know if you need this info from us.
“PROVEN TECHNIQUES USED BY EXABYTES TO GROW ITS BUSINESS ONLINE”
Simple Steps #1 – Leverage on Your Market & Competitors
To start growing your brand, you must start with research and more research. Offline/Online works differently; what works offline might not work online. One easy and most useful trick is: when your competitors are there, you must be there too. Less sales is ok, as long as it creates brand awareness and bring visitors to your website, or bring in some sales and enquiries.
Imagine you are the owner of a hardware shop. You will need to appear on some hardware discussion forums, groups and make good use of certain keywords for people to reach your website when searching for a particular hardware product on Google search. It can boost your online branding, and slowly generate sales to your business. This brings potential customers from different locations who search for the products or services you offer.
Simple Steps #2 – Strong Online Identity
When it comes to building a brand online, your Domain Name and your company brand can never be separated as they are always interrelated with each other in this Internet era. You need your company domain name for branding, and branding is part of the big marketing efforts that you can do for your business regardless of what you’re selling.
Owning a domain that represents your BRAND is a great investment to your business. For basic requirements, you need to have your own domain, website and also professional email addresses that carry your brand name. Some might not have enough resources to build their websites / eCommerce stores yet, but securing your brand a.k.a. domain is a must!
Avoid Identity Theft and Loss
Securing your domain name/online identity is like securing your company brand name, and preventing somebody from using it for some unethical activities.
Grabbing your domain name is also a great investment; you can even save more when you get your domain name as early as possible. Don’t let someone grab it before you, and then sell it back to you for a much higher price. Grab while you can.
It can be confusing which domain extension to choose, and perhaps you have no idea how to build a website and setup your own professional email. Read more: How to choose a domain name?
Once you get all this set and ready, move on to the next step.
Simple Steps #3 – Start Your Social Media Content and Updates
It’s great that you already have a website. Nowadays, with so many social media platforms out there, if you focus on all of them at once, it can be very time consuming, and does not offer you the return you want.
Choose and focus on 1-2 social media marketing platforms to engage with your customers/potential customers. How to choose? Understand your target audience (which social media platform they often appear on), observe your competitors (which platform they choose), or by trial and error. The social media platforms that allow you to interact and engage with your customers/ potential customers are great for your brand, which can eventually lead to sales in the future.
When building a social media following, remember the number of followers is not everything. Make sure you really attend to their enquiries, assist them and engage as much as possible. This leaves a good brand impression to them.
One of the ways to decide the content topic is based on your customers’ interest or preference. You can probably carry out a survey to see which topic they are interested in and eager to get information from you.
Simple Steps #4 – Build Your Online Identity and Audience
Brand Consistency
Your brand tone, color and voice should be consistent across all platforms even on social media. That way your audience can easily recognize your brand and it can stand out after a number of impression. This can trigger your potential customers who are still doing research as to whom to buy from to finally buy from you.
Your Brand Name – Easy to Spell & Remember
Your brand name and slogan must roll off the tongue easily. If it need someone to find out how exactly it is spelt, then you haven’t done a great job. When your potential customers come to your site looking for something, if your brand name and slogan is easy to spell and remember, it increases the chances of them re-visiting your website to make a purchase.
Align & Synchronize Your Brand Identity
Once you have a functional website in place, you need to align and synchronize your brand identity. Get started with marketing activities to establish trust with your audience or potential customers. You can start from building your email list or build a following on social media. No matter what marketing activities or publicities you do, remember your brand tone, color and voice should always be consistent and aligned across all platforms. This helps to create a better and long lasting impression in your customers’ mind, make them remember you and come back for more.
Simple Steps #5 – Create and Grow your Mailing list
Start with what you have on hands. If you have 100 or just 10 customers, it’s ok to start with that. Include auto signup when they purchase your products or add an Opt-in email address field on your blog (wherever places frequently seen by your visitors). Once they opt-in, make sure you don’t spam them via email.
To collect new leads, you can place a signup form to collect their email address and drive traffic to that page. Once you have the list ready, plan your email marketing campaigns. You can use popular email marketing platforms such as Exabytes EBuzzzz Email Marketing or MailChimp to manage your list and campaigns.
That pretty much sums up what you have to do to grow your brand online. Please leave a comment below and let us know if are practicing any of the method we mentioned above? If you need any help, feel free to reach us at [email protected] or talk to us via website Live Chat. We are always here to help.
