SEO

Plenty of you think your digital brand strategy is efficient. Yet, could you deliver a report if I were to ask for your ROI?

Many of you slapped together the strategy based around marketing trends and what you’ve learned from big industry blogs. For that, I’d say congratulations since you’re at least implementing a digital brand strategy.

However, if you stopped there, you have a long way to go.

There’s always room for improvement with the brand strategy. Small tweaks can lead to considerable returns. The hard work of building one is already over… now it’s time to make it better.

A Starting Point for the Digital Brand Strategy

Your intentions of building a strong brand fell into satisfying these three elements:

• Reducing customer loss
• Premium pricing
• Retaining customers

Considering that “loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase” (White House Office of Consumer Affairs) it makes absolute sense to roll out a plethora of branding strategies.

At this time you’re likely using:

• Social media
• Content
• Online groups
• Ads

You may have even begun to push a bit of this work onto a digital consultant to find opportunities in its implementation and improvement. Overall, it’s working because you’re creating traffic & engagement that’s creating leads & sales.

But there could be so much more…

Taking Digital Brand Strategy to the Next Level

I think you could agree that a lot of businesses do not know where to take their digital brand strategy outside of the basics. They’re afraid of the investment despite seeing the returns.

They’re slow to adopt the digital trends.

It’s the same clash as when digital consultants were trying to get businesses something as simple as a website!

Don’t Lag. Do This Instead.

Those that didn’t jump at the opportunity are now bleeding out or long since erased from our memories. Digital branding is the new website of the 2010’s.

What would I recommend for taking the leap and improving it?

1. Define a Purpose

The strategy in play now likely has you trying everything and hoping that something will stick. Behind it all is a lack of focus and purpose.

Entrepreneur would tell you that a focus on branding would include:

1. Creating emotion/rationality
2. Making it believable
3. Having relevance
4. Keeping it simple

I agree with these but to take this a step further I’d include: testing.

What you define as your brand is often wildly different than what the public perceives. Improve this intersection through A/B testing. The information gathered through testing will help align goals and strategies.

2. Focus on Mobile

Shift all efforts toward the mobile offering once you’ve defined your purpose.

M-Commerce (mobile commerce) is on track to reach 45% of the e-commerce market by 2020 according to Business Insider. 59% of adults are spending their online time through mobile.

Convinced yet?

Going mobile is simple:

• Adapt the existing site to a mobile-friendly design
• Create and implement an app with freelance help
• Use one-page, mobile-ready landing pages in campaigns

Services like Zinadoo, goMobi, and HandHeld are easy to satisfy this need.

Having a mobile-first mindset will also dictate your investment into social media and other online platforms. This will improve your efforts with digital branding to create a seamless experience across all channels.

3. Remove the Barriers

Keep it simple, stupid. (K.I.S.S.)

Removing barriers:

• Reduces bounce rate
• Increases engagement
• Improves sales

Attention spans are dwindling and although strategies like email and blogging prove effective you must adapt and embrace new methods.

Try these, instead, to keep it simple and direct:

• Short or live video
• One-page designs
• Clean, intuitive layout
• High-quality media
• Simple fonts
• Bullet points vs essays

People prefer simplicity over complicated decisions. This makes its way into the digital branding by removing distractions and creating a focus. It funnels people into recognizing the brand while associating joy to the experience.

4. Be Yourself

People follow brands for many reasons but a defining factor is the personality.

It’s the reason why Dollar Shave Club went from unknown to a billion dollar valuation. All over a viral ad that had spunk and personality.

Create a difference outside of pricing and features by injecting the digital branding with personality:

• Share personal stories
• Highlight big accomplishments
• Talk how you actually talk
• Put a face in front

Do this and people will see more than a logo. They see a person to get behind.

5. Be Helpful

Don’t just plunk a link to a product or service thinking you’re doing someone on social media a favor when they’re asking for advice or suggestions.

Get in there, show some personality, and be helpful to the user.

The extra moments you take to create a quality engagement triumphs over vapid, hit-and-run comments.

It allows your brand to share their expertise which helps convert the recipient. It also reveals your authenticity to the public (due to the openness of social) which generates attention and could deliver leads.

All-in-all, provide the type of help you’d expect from a reputable company. Yet, do so through your accounts and on the platforms your customers use.

There’s a Difference in Marketing and Branding

A lot of people I talk to seem to mix up marketing with branding. They feel that since they’re pushing content, engaging on social, and testing ads that they’re getting their brand out there.

Wrong.

It’s about creating a connection with Web users and turning them into fiercely loyal followers. The type willing to pay a premium and will do so repeatedly.

The eureka moment will happen when you shift this mindset.

What You Need to Do. Right Now.

I’d begin by asking the right questions when talking with a digital consultant. This way you’re landing on the individual (or team) that can take your digital brand strategy beyond the basics.

Then I’d get in touch with me to compare the differences.

You’ll discover the difference why brands like STIHL, Club Car, and FitLife Foods chose to work with me. I’m ready to help you in the same.

Almost 4 billion people use the Internet and roughly one-third use at least one social media platform.

With so many people going online and participating on social platforms, the Internet holds powerful potential for businesses—to get publicity for their brands and to advertise their product or service to prospective clients.

And, on top of that, the online playing field is level—anyone can tweet on Twitter, write and publish blog posts, and actively engage with their target audience.

The conundrum business owners find themselves in is the time needed to do these things, and what digital strategy to use.

This is where hiring a digital consultant becomes beneficial, as you can leverage their expertise in these fields, saving you time and increasing your return on investment (ROI).

We will go through these specific ways more in depth throughout this post.

1. Identify your target audience

A crucial aspect of a marketing strategy is identifying your target audience.

Qualified digital consultants will not just outline your target audience, but provide specific research on who they are and how they can be reached via a digital strategy.

They will leverage large-scale and small-scale quantitative surveys, create a buyer persona, diligently study your competitors, and study your current interaction between your target audience and the product or service you are providing.

Plus, it also helps to have an outsider’s perspective, as your view of your target audience may be based on assumptions versus hard fact. Consultants can then challenge these assumptions, potentially increasing your reach.

2. A digital consultant helps level the playing field

As mentioned in the beginning, the Internet is available to anyone and everyone, meaning that small business owners have the same available digital marketing opportunities as large corporations.

Consultants can leverage this by providing a sound digital marketing strategy to make the most of this opportunity.

3. More cost effective than traditional marketing

A digital consultant will help you earn a higher ROI through means such as content writing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertisement (PPC), and social media.

These stats show you how:

At least 62% of those who invest a minimum of six hours per week in social media marketing saw improvements in search engine rankings.

47% of buyers read three to five pieces of content on the seller’s website before contacting a sales representative.

And 90% say that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their business.

Using these statistics, it is evident that there are multiple digital avenues that individually increase a business’s positive ROI.

Since there are little to no initial costs in digital marketing versus traditional marketing, this is a more cost effective route, with the potential of gaining a greater return.

Utilizing a number of these strategies should help your business generate more revenue.

4. Digital consultants will help you reach mobile consumers

Mobile commerce makes up approximately 30% of all United States e-commerce sales.

That and nearly half (48%) of people begin their search engine research on a mobile phone.

This information tells us that mobile friendliness is critical to your marketing strategy.

Digital consultants can cater to your mobile consumers by making your site mobile friendly. This means increasing the image widths to 100%, using standard fonts, utilizing mobile plugins, and converting your site to a mobile responsive design.

5. Build and increase brand representation

Brand is everything.

Think of it this way, people will pay serious money on a cotton t-shirt with their preferred brand on it (Nike, Adidas…). They’re not paying for the shirt per se, but the brand.

A digital consultant will help your business increase brand representation by creating a strong and consistent social media presence, providing relevant, informative, and consistent blog posts to improve credibility, among a slew of other marketing strategies.

6. An integral SEO package that yields results

Since Google generates around 1 billion searches per month, creating an integral SEO strategy is necessary.

To show you how important this is, here is an example (utilizing real world statistics).

Roughly 96% of viewers who come to your website will not purchase the product or service that is offered.

On the bright side, this does mean that about 4% of viewers will.

Doing the math, if 100 people come to your business website, statistically four of them will purchase your product or service.

1,000 visitors means approximately 40 sales.

10,000 visitors, 400 sales.

100,000 visitors, 4,000 sales…

The more people who come to your website, the greater chance you have of increasing your sales.

An effective SEO strategy results in your website being ranked higher on Google, bringing in more potential customers to your site, and increasing the possibility of hitting (or exceeding) your sales goals.

A digital consultant can do this by leveraging your target audience by focusing and tracking keywords that pertain to them.

They can then embed these keywords in informative, niche-related content on a regular basis, creating more landing pages, hence more pages for search engines to index and rank.

In addition, he or she may edit and format your homepage and other web pages, embedding the focus keyword(s) in them.

7. Provides content marketing services

Digital consultants wear many different hats, copywriters and copy editors being one of them.

They may personally write your marketing content or assign it to a qualified team member.

Providing regular and relevant content is important: 64% of people think customer experience is more important than price.

Content can be in the form of a blog post, guest blog, and curated content, with content promotion following all of these.

It is recommended to utilize all three.

While curated content typically takes an hour to create, original content for guest blogging and your own blog can take up to eight to ten hours to produce.

With a company to run, this may interfere with other important day-to-day activities.

It may be best to hire a digital consultant and his or her team to do it for you.

That way you can direct your time towards other important matters, while still reaping the content marketing benefits.

Did this help? Let me know by providing a comment in the comment section.

Also, contact me should you have any questions or would like to use my expertise to boost your business.|!