Wondering why branding is such a big buzzword in the current business marketing world? Have you ever been to an amazing restaurant, had a fabulous meal, been wowed by the décor and atmosphere, and then returned home to find an ad for the restaurant in your mailbox with cheesy coupons printed on dull paper? Branding is the match up of advertising and product and service delivery, making it possible to give customers a taste of your business before they even see your products or experience your services.
A good branding plan takes your best selling points and crafts them into an effective advertising campaign. All of your marketing materials–even down to your logo, colors, ads, and commercials–should reflect the tone, flavor, and experience of your business. A dull advertisement or listing does not inspire mouths to water or people to get into the car to drive to a new establishment. You have to portray what kind of experience the customer can expect–whether that be sophisticated, earthy, delicious, or decadent–and make the customer want to have that experience.
You might protest, think marketing materials are so expensive! You’re afraid to spend money on ads that truly tantalize, so you hope the cheap flyer and the dull listing will bring you customers. But you’re missing out on the opportunities so many current businesses are using as they portray their products and services on interactive websites and attention-grabbing banner ads.
The current business marketing scene is focused on socia media, interactive websites, and customized ads. People expect to experience your business before they even encounter your salespeople, product, or services. Customers want to feel like they know suppliers, and you can grant that wish by making your marketing materials unique and interesting. They want to be inspired by the photos on your website. They want to feel they chose your company for a specific reason, such as the fact that you are earth-friendly, or funny, or extraordinary. When you invest time and money into branding your company, you provide that satisfaction to customers even before they receive your products or services.
You need to know how to draw readers to your website – and this goes for any time of website at all, regardless of whether it is for business or just for fun. After all, there is not much of a point in running a website if it has no readers – and it is not very likely that readers will simply “happen upon” a site! No matter what kind of site you run, the principles for getting the word out there are the same; and of course, you have to make sure you get the word out there!
If you want to draw readers to your website, the first step will be designing your website so that it is appealing. Your goal will be to create a place where readers not only want to visit, but where they want to “hang out” and never leave! In order to create this, you need to either know what you are doing, or you need to hire someone who knows what they are doing!
Your next step will be putting content on the site that will be both appealing and useful to readers. Even for a business website, “useful information” is not enough to keep readers around; the information must also be presented in an appealing manner! You will need a fair amount of content built up before you can start to draw readers; this means that you should not worry about readers early on. Your early focus should be on taking each day to add as much content as you can, and in this way the site will be ready when readers come.
After you have built an appealing website and have loaded it with content, you will be ready to start attracting readers. The best way for you to start attracting new readers will be to make sure the content on your website encourages early readers to share with others. These ways to encourage early readers to spread the word can be anything from funny anecdotes to funny videos to contests for which people have to visit the site in order to enter. Eventually, your website will start to grow and grow as all your readers spread the word for you, and you will be able to kick back and enjoy the growth, with your only responsibility being to keep adding more and more content!
An area of the internet that is very well developed right now is social media. The majority of people who consistently go on the internet also use social media sites. Of the sites they use the most popular are Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and Facebook. New opportunities are afforded through these websites and business owners everywhere are realizing them. Dave Evans wrote Social Media Marketing The Next Generation of Business Engagement in order to help businesses maximize these opportunities.
Evans seeks to help people that work in different business arenas take the necessary steps for their business to apply social technology. He details how to implement a variety of tools that ensure higher levels of customer engagement. There are initial waves of social media marketing that have been completed and learning from them is how this is done. The knowledge gained is then used to determine the best way to move forward.
Many businesses use social media marketing today in order to build loyalty through these sites with not only their customers, but also their partners. Long term benefits will be realized from this loyalty. The book also details how this loyalty moves throughout the company. A company should not use social media just in their marketing department and no other areas. Valuable information from these sites can be gained by the customer service, product development, and HR departments.
Other marketing books fail to take a look that is as in depth as the one Dave Evans does. There is topical information that is available on these sites and many books will simply glance over this material. In place of this common approach Evans helps his readers to understand how the many different areas of their business can benefit from these sites. Social marketing is rather new to business operations, but even given this there is plenty of groundwork developed to get some type of social marketing into a business plan. Getting left behind on the newest business trends is the easiest way for a business to fail over the long term.
A tough challenge to meet is to be found on the internet. It seems as though this arena is constantly changing. The best way to start your business on the path to online success is to follow the advice of an expert. Drawing from their internet marketing expertise, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah have written Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. Succeeding in the internet environment shouldn’t be a problem as long as you follow their advice.
The traditional methods of marketing are better known as outbound marketing methods. These methods involve getting your message out to customers. These methods usually include outbound calling, commercials, and mass mailing. In the recent past these types of techniques worked much better than they currently do. These techniques are very well known and most consumers know how to tune them out.
A different arena is what has been created for marketing. The book details the newer techniques that are being used and they are referred to as inbound marketing. Instead of going to the consumer with your marketing, the customers will come to your marketing. The key to doing this is to make your marketing available for them to find, making your marketing much less forward than before.
There are many different ways to do this. Search engines are the most popular since this is where most consumers go when they want a product. Blogs are very popular as well since a very specific audience can be targeted. And recently social networks have entered the discussion since customers can follow your business. The book gives attention to these techniques in many chapters.
As consumers change you must change the way you present your business to them. You will fall behind the pack if you continue to use old inefficient methods of marketing. Listen to experts like Shah and Halligan who willingly offer their expertise on the subject. Learn about inbound marketing by picking up their book soon and reading through it.
