SEO, Social Media and Branding are buzzwords you’ll hear a lot about in the context of marketing your business. There’s tons of writing on these topics but today I’d like to share a few recent blog posts on these topics that I think are pretty good.
Branding: a hot branding buzzword is story telling. The idea is that telling a story about your brand makes it more relate-able and appealing. Adweek published a lofty and pithy article on this topic, but I actually think the post by Dosh Dosh on this subject is a little easier to digest and relate to for the small business owner. Read either or both but then give some thought to ways that you can leverage the story behind your brand to give your marketing a push.
Social Media: This is the bandwagon everyone wants to jump on and volumes have been written on the topic by internet marketing bloggers. This post from Search Engine Guide really hits the nail on the head though. Before you log into your Digg account again, have a look at this article.
SEO: There’s tons of reading material on there on how to get your website search engine optimized and there are many factors that go into SEO. While this article doesn’t cover them all, it does a nice job on a quick overview of some of the highlights that are involved with SEO.
Read any amazing online marketing articles lately? Let us know about them.
If you’re a small business owner, the concept of branding may be a somewhat nebulous thing. You might have your marketing strictly focused on your bottom line. Big companies care about this too, but their way of going about achieving their goals is a little different. They don’t expect to trace every sale back to the highway billboard sign you drive by every day, nor do they expect that the first time you see it you’ll make a purchase. The goal is to get their brand on your brain so that when you are in the market to buy what they’re selling, you’ll think of them.
What does this have to do with the small business owner? Last week I wrote a post about how to maximize your cost-per-click spending. While I am all for this highly traceable form of marketing, I am firmly against companies relying on it entirely. Cost-per-click marketing needs to be supplemented with branding efforts so that your company’s name can become familiar to your target demographic. This familiarity will bring your target demographic to shop with you rather than bothering to explore the web for your competitors. This type of marketing is what makes t-shirt companies like Palmer Cash and Noisebot premier destinations for t-shirt lovers. These two t-shirt companies have their names plastered all over pop culture websites like Perez Hilton and Cute Overload. Can consumers find better or cheaper t-shirts elsewhere? Probably. They choose these companies because they know them.
To maximize the effect of your branding campaign, be sure to really analyze your target customer demographic. Who buys from you and why? How can you reach these people in large numbers and in a cost effective manner? The more accurately you target your audience, the better your results will be.
A great way to research targeted branding opportunities is Google’s placement targeted ads. Two things I like to try are keyword suggestions and URL suggestions. Let’s say I want to run ads for a independent music record label. The first thing I might try is searching for the keyword phrase “indie rock.” This search will give me a list of URLs I can advertise on where this topic is discussed. I might also do a search for popular indie music website pitchforkmedia.com to see what URLs Google suggests that are similar to that site. My searches will yield a list of websites I can market my record label on that are visited by my target audience. Google accepts both impression-based bids and cost-per-click bids for these types of campaigns, so you can experiment to see what works for your needs.
If a branding campaign is too pricey for your budget, consider a co-branding venture with other companies that share your target customer demographic. A great example of this is ishopindie.com. This site enables small boutiques and artisans to all contribute to one large ad budget, and this budget advertises ishopindie.com. The companies contributing to the site’s budget all benefit from the marketing efforts because everyone who discovers ishopindie.com through its branding campaigns discovers the site’s member companies. When visitors to ishopindie.com have to buy birthday gifts or want to treat themselves, ishopindie.com comes to mind and the site’s member companies reap the benefits.
