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10 Things Brands Need to do to Own Their Digital Landscape

10 Things Brands Need to do to Own Their Digital Landscape

By Social

Having a professional business presence online isn’t optional anymore for most businesses, even if they rely heavily on referrals. A consistent, strong digital brand that clearly gets your purpose across while also presenting the business in the best way possible will help grow your sales and influence, no matter the industry.

Below are 10 areas to focus on to build up your digital branding landscape and make sure it’s useful and professional.

10 Things Brands Need to do to Own Their Digital LandscapeFix The Easy Stuff

If your brand already has a digital presence, it is easy to overlook what has already been done, thinking that it doesn’t need to monitored. However, changes over the years to logos, phone numbers, addresses, and even team members need to be updated online as soon as they happen. Your first priority should always be the goal of customers getting ahold of your company easily, so set reminders to check all profile information, contact forms, and lead generation sequences. Many times, updates in third-party tools (especially if they are using APIs) can lead to something breaking, and if those little things aren’t checked regularly, no one knows they happened.

Post Regularly

Even if your customers aren’t on social media in a business sense, they are likely using at least Facebook in a personal sense. According to Pew Research Center, 79 percent of all adults in the United States use Facebook. If you think your business won’t cater to social media, think of it as a yellow page listing that people may end up looking for online.

Post at least once a month (ideally, you’d want to post every day) so your last update isn’t something from years ago. For many users, even subconsciously, that is a sign that the business doesn’t care about their online presence. This could be a reflection of how they care about their customers.

In addition, there are targeted ad campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin that allow you to target audiences by age, interests, and location. Think past where your audience is at during business hours and look to where they may be spending their free time online.

Use Consistent Branding

Good branding is more important than ever for a digital presence, because that’s all your customers have to go by. A terrible, outdated logo could reflect negatively on a business, even if it’s not a true indication of quality. Look for graphic designers through networking groups or ask your colleagues or friends for referrals.

Many graphic designers charge $800-$3000 for a branding page with logo, color scheme, and a few other materials (like letterhead and business cards). This may be a significant investment for a business, but it is always well worth it when you find the right designer. Shop around until you find a designer that could work with you on updated branding that reflects your business well.

Go Beyond Blog Posts

Think regular blog posts are enough for your brand? For many industries, content marketing has gotten so competitive that regular 600-800 word blog posts just isn’t enough. Come up with a content strategy that offers a buzz piece, like a free ebook or online course, that you can build additional content around. Getting users to download your buzz piece can help you grow your email list, which in turn can produce more revenue. After all, according to eMarketer, email beats almost every other marketing tactic when it comes to return on investment (ROI).

Think of The Target Audience

Working inside a company may give you an unfair view into what you think customers actually want. Something that your team finds interesting may not be of interest at all to the actual target customer. Create personas that you can build content for, with their needs and interests in mind.

Link to Your Other Content

Many marketers are great about developing content, but when it comes to cross-promoting it with other things they have created, it falls flat. Make sure you are always linking to applicable related blog posts in content and always end your content with a call-to-action when it makes sense. After all, content should be created to turn traffic into revenue, and without enough knowledge or a push to engage, customers will simply leave a page without making any kind of purchase on your website.

Look to Where You Can Expand

Most brands feel safe using Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn, but if you find yourself stagnating on these platforms, consider where you could expand. This could mean trying new features of the platforms you already have a good following on, such as Facebook live video or Twitter polls. Or, it could mean checking out new platforms to grow your online community. Many brands still haven’t used Reddit or Snapchat to do campaigns or engage with customers. If your target demographic uses these platforms, consider trying them as well.

Have a Unique Voice

Online users of all ages and demographics are online enough to know when a brand is trying too hard. It can come off as callous, disingenuous, or just out of touch. This can often backfire tremendously. The meme How do you do, fellow kids? is now used by users as a way to call out brands that are trying to seem cool but don’t really belong.

Before engaging with your online community, make sure you know each specific platform’s slang, features, and use and you respect users’ time. Logging on to Reddit and recommending your line of bras for every woman with a bra question isn’t going to win you any new customers. Demonstrate value in a unique voice that acknowledges you are a brand without trying too hard.

Use Media Purposely

Just like with blog posts mentioned above, it used to be enough to use basic stock photography for images in content and calling it good. While this is still better than content with no images, using bad stock photos that are cheesy or don’t make sense for the actual content (e.g. they are vague or misleading), can turn users off.  Try to create custom graphics for content using tools like Pablo by Buffer, Canva, PicMonkey, or Piktochart. Even just adding your logo and content title to images goes a long way (and is better for social media).

Think Digital First

Whenever you are building a new campaign or introducing a new product or service, think of your digital strategy first, because it has the largest potential to spread. Deciding budget for paid campaigns, graphics for the promotion, and messaging can help ensure the new offering has a consistent message. This is important because online is likely where customers of most businesses are going to find out about it.

 

When it comes to a better digital branding landscape, make sure all your company’s presence online is consistent, engaging, informative, and easy-to-navigate. Focus on what you’re best at but try new things to be innovative in your industry, when it makes sense. Being proactive about a better online presence will lead to more engagement and traffic from your target audience.

The importance of the new client relationship

By Customer Experience

So, hooray! You landed that new client! That is great news and I’m sure you anguished over what they thought about your proposal and how many hours of research and writing went into the strategy, but now all of that is over right? Wrong!

Not only is it not all over it’s only just begun. Here are 5 steps to a successful new client on-boarding program.

1) Revisit the proposal.

Not only revisit it, comb through all the strategy and every written word again and again. There is a good chance you haven’t looked it over since you sent it out which could have been weeks, if not months, ago. Remember your brilliance and research? Well if not, go find it again in that written masterpiece.

2) Build a working timeline.

Expectations. It can be a new client killer if they’re not matched between parties. It’s almost a “post-proposal” guide for your client on how your services will be delivered. Space out your deliverables so as not to overwhelm new clients in the first 60 days. Go and even draw out a calendar. This helps keep you honest and your client happy.

3) Be consistent.

New client relationships can be exciting but they also need to stay consistent throughout the campaign. If you meet with your client once a month and have weekly conference calls, keep that form. Do NOT change things up unexpectedly. Your level of service is important and your word and integrity are equally important. Be honest to yourself and your team. Lead with your actions and the rest of your team will follow suit and realize that this is good business practice.

4) Reporting.

It’s true there is a level of reporting involved. Shocker, I know. Maybe your client expects this, maybe they don’t, but it really doesn’t matter – you need to report on the success and failure of your efforts. If there is success, great. Tell the story with specific data points as to why this strategy worked. Showcase your Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

If there is a failure (which I must attest happens to everyone) it’s OK don’t get too flustered. Adapt. This is an opportunity to fix something. Come up with a plan of action to solve this dilemma and mitigate the problem quickly and efficiently.

If your campaign is a year or six months think about surveying your client once at mid cycle and again at the end about how they feel about your company and the program.

5) Send them some fun stuff!

Keep things creative with sending them a small gift and handwritten thank you with your logo on the gift somewhere. This leaves a lasting impression: that you really appreciate their business and that you care about the wellness of your client.

Now go out there and land your new client and build a long lasting great relationship. And remember the good work and planning too!

Why Mobile is critical.

By Digital Transformation, Mobile, UX

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Just a few things. It’s 2013!! Yes 2013 people and if you haven’t even looked at how mobile is changing and will forever change your marketing plan, then quite frankly you are operating at a disadvantage.

Mobile has been taking the world by storm. Mobile ad spending is this space has increased from 1 billion to just over 4 billion in 2012, and digital advertising has broken the 100 billion mark! Another great statistic that proves how valuable having a mobile strategy is that, 23.14% of web site visits in December 2012 came from mobile devices, an 84% increase over December 2011 and a 283% increase over January.

There are many ways to draw strategy from mobile; advertising, content, web and native apps, social. You may just want to make sure your web site is optimizing in a mobile browser and that all your email marketing programs are designed for mobile. The second screen experience is taking a backseat and our mobile devices are now riding shotgun in most cases.

Here is also a nice chart on what companies are using to increase their mobile value as brands.

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millermedia7 is a Top Mobile App Development Companies In New York