Branding Your Small Business Online for Peanuts!
The chances of success for an online business, increases exponentially once the brand of the business is easily recognizable to prospective customers. A recognizable brand makes a website more attractive to potential partners, customers as well as advertisers.
Every contact your small business has with a customer is known as a ‘touch point’. These ‘touch points’ are great opportunities for you to exhibit the value promised by your business. What will be your ultimate goal for each contact opportunity? To mold each encounter in being a part of the ‘big picture’, where forming bonds with your customers is paramount. So therefore, your brand is all about the little details which appeal to your customer base.
Most small business owners erroneously assume that effective branding automatically requires huge wads of cash. Of course, if you are attempting to re-create the branding campaigns of some of the very large companies like JCPenney; you will definitely be required to shell out the bucks. But fortunately, there are other ways by which a small business can establish its presence on the World Wide Web.
Here are some tools which you can use to successfully brand your business online. You do not have to necessarily use them all, especially if you’re just in the beginning stages of your business, simply take it one step at a time…
1. SEO
This is an ideal tool which can be quite effective in branding your service, product or small business. It is ideal since you are not going after high volume words, the actual cost associated with using SEO for branding is very minimal. The basic idea is to ensure that your small business comes to the top of all results when someone searches for whatever it is that you are trying to brand. Your goal is to have your brand in a prominent position so that you can begin to capitalize on brand-name recognition.
A rather simple way of achieving this is to edit the title tags to include your brand name. However, it is still important to have your site optimized for non-branded keywords, as the more keywords you have that are able to land you on the first page, then the more opportunities you will have for brand recognition – which is your ultimate aim!
2. Blogs
Blogs establish your credibility and give you authority within your field, and best of all, search engines absolutely adore them. So, get started on a blog, and do regular maintenance to keep content fresh and relevant; and watch your search engine traffic soar to new heights.
3. PPC
To brand your small business using PPC (pay per click), buy cheap ads through Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Your aim is to appear on a search result page without spending too much money – you are not competing for top spot, neither are you aiming at getting a lot of clicks. You can run your ads on a multiplicity of low-volume search words; you just need an opportunity to get your brand name out there. Tons of little exposures certainly supersedes a few major exposures!
There really isn’t any business on the face of the earth which should not be actively working on creating a brand for itself, regardless of the size.
What is your favorite tool to brand your business online?
Related posts:
- Concept of Small Business Branding
- How to Brand Online
- Small Business Branding – Things to Consider
- Small Business Branding – You Can’t Avoid It
- Branding – Give Your Startup Business a Personality
