Online Marketing Blog

Mari Smith exemplifies personal brand through social content

Building personal brand online is easier than ever. It’s also underrated and misunderstood by many companies trying make sense of where personal and brand social media engagement fit in the marketing and communications mix.

For myself, blogging, speaking and becoming an author have been less about becoming a “brandividual” than to serve as a proxy to the consulting that TopRank Online Marketing offers.  This approach has served us well, resulting in creating awareness internationally and keeping customer acquisition costs extremely low.

Alternatively, many companies focus solely on brand promotion without any real people behind those social media interactions.  This generic brand approach often finds social content efforts lacking. Engagement tends to be low, attention spent by the community superficial and the momentum of community growth is elusive.

Is your internet marketing strategy putting customers to sleep?

Compared to B2B companies, businesses that serve consumer audiences are typically focused on a much shorter sales cycle due to the cost and nature of the purchase.  They are searching for a one stop sale.  B2C companies typically target a single decision maker or customer segment instead of multiple decision makers and influencers.  As a result, the approach and internet marketing tactics mix needs to be more relevant to the consumer vs. the business buying experience.

The Holiday season gives B2C marketers plenty of reasons to improve their focus on best practices in internet marketing. Competition is tough for online buyers, so what should B2C marketers keep in mind with their Internet marketing strategy? Here are 5 essential tips for B2C marketers to get more sales online:

Many business owners and managers are perplexed by the social web. The effect of customer participation with social media on brands is undeniable. The effect of employee participation with social media can be a bit of a quandary.  The range of acceptance for social web activity runs the gamut from IT blocking all internet connections to sites like Twitter and Facebook to the expectation that every employee spend work and personal time as social media brand ambassadors.

Being social on the web isn’t natural for everyone and certainly not for every company. Once people and companies “get it” and develop processes, listening programs and overall strategy, social media policies tend to lighten up and move towards being productive vs limiting.

Taglines are perhaps the most underrated and underused elements of personal and business blogs, yet they serve a huge function.

The social web has conditioned us to move through content-based sites quickly, and if we reach a site with an unclear thesis we’re likely to click to the next thing.  You also can’t count on visitors to read your “about” page.  In a world that increasingly moves at 140 characters or less, having a hook such as a clever tagline can make all the difference.

Taglines are your brand’s elevator pitch and help people get a quick snapshot of who you are. It’s your opportunity to be descriptive, catchy, memorable and create a unique brand for your blog.  They also present a great opportunity for keyword inclusion, but not at the sacrifice of stickiness.  Ideally you can combine something catchy and SEO friendly.

Companies large and small spend significant proportions of their revenue on branding efforts as well as those things that influence customer perception of brand like product development, support and customer service.

While there is debate about who “owns” a brand, the company or it’s customers, partners and employees, it can be agreed that there is tremendous value and equity in a company’s brand. Something of value is worth protecting especially when it contributes to the livelihood of all the employees of the company and their families.

In the past week I’ve presented on online reputation management both for Public Relations and and Direct Marketing audiences and it’s reminded me of how important it is to protect a brand whether it’s new or established.

“For the first time in the history of calculating the ROI of marketing expenditures, influence behaviors and patterns of the volume achievable only on the social web begin to offset the overall cost of marketing,” quotes the new book “The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World” by Resource Interactive’s President Kelly Mooney and Innovation Consultant Dr. Nita Rollins.

While not appearing on page one, this idea is certainly one of the most important, and likely most sought after skim through takeaways marketers (both on the client and agency side) will seek when first hunting for the knowledge contained within this book.

Just as with Leverage Your Brand Lovers, the “Branding and Search” session gave the SMX West audience much to think about.

Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Specialist at Discover Financial, reinforced the need to understand your brand as it relates to SEO/SEM.

Brand Recognition: Do searchers recognize your brand?
–ex. McDonalds’ arches are recognized worldwide

Brand Perception: Do searchers know what you do?
–ex. Discover Financial doesn’t just offer credit cards, but they offer a slew of other financial services

Brand Loyalty: Are searchers loyal to your brand?
–ex. Google and its VERY loyal followers

Brand Affinity: Are searchers aspiring to be part of your brand and culture?
–ex. Mercedes and the status associated with the brand

Note from Editor: TopRank Account Manager, Jolina Pettice recently attended the ad:tech conference in Chicago. Along with her formidable knowledge gathering and networking duties, Jolina is sharing notes and observations on a few of the sessions. Enjoy!

The second keynote speech at ad tech Chicago included a panel of leading marketing folks discussing how to build great brands in the digital age.

The panelists, including those below, shared their insight on building brands such as YouTube.com, Ponitac Sunfire, McDonalds and its recent collaboration with Shrek and the like:
Marc Landsberg, President, Arc Worldwide
Suzie Reider, Head of Advertising Sales, YouTube.com
Tor Myhren, Executive Creative Director, Executive VP, Leo Burnett Detroit
Robert Leverone, VP, Television, Dow Jones

An overarching theme of ad:tech this week was how to engage prospects and consumer in conversation with company and/or client brands.

The Branding and Search session started out with Barbara Coll moderating and the following cast of characters: Ron Belanger from Yahoo! Search Marketing, Jonathan Mendez from OTTO Digital, Chris Copeland from Outrider Search Marketing, Mike Margolin from Targeted Marketing, RPA and Jenny Howell American Honda Motor Co. who did not speak, but was the topic of Mark Margolin’s presentation.

Just before this session started I ran into a prominent search marketer and we talked about some of the common questions related to search and branding. How do you sell clients on search marketing for branding purposes? Also, how do you best measure it? These questions and more were answered by the panel.