Branding Cures Several Marketing Headaches
Unfortunately, traditional marketing just doesn't work anymore, largely because of the power of branding. In this blog post, we're going to show you how branding is quickly taking over marketing and can be quite helpful for businesses everywhere. But first, let's get a little background on how branding came to play such an important role in the marketing world.
Branding is a form of advertising where your product or service isn't just named after a color or shape - it's expanded into something that has meaning for consumers and actively attracts them. This began as early as the mid-20th century with brands like Coca-Cola and later continued with brands like Nike "Just Do It".
This was largely counter to the traditional form of advertising which just tried to make consumers interested in a product by telling them what it did or how much it cost. This difference between branding and traditional marketing is best explained by those who study business and online communities:
"Branding is marketing. It's the most important aspect of your business. You don't sell products, you sell promises. Promises are more important than products." - Seth Godin "A brand is a relationship between a customer and an organization that offers products, services or experiences that consistently meet the expectations of the customer. Branding is a process of creating and sustaining this relationship." - Wikipedia
The promise that you make to your consumer is what makes branding so powerful, and it has now taken over traditional marketing. A brand can be used to differentiate your business from the competition and make consumers notice you. It can also be used to create a feeling in customers that makes them more likely to purchase your product or service. Think of branding as the first step in marketing because it is - even if customers never know the brand you have chosen for your product or service.
The evolution of brands and advertising has made it so that businesses must build a brand before they can launch any marketing campaigns. This is because you can't expect to make a business without consumers, and businesses can't succeed without customers. So, as we've said before, branding comes first in building your business then comes all other forms of marketing.
This is an important thing to consider if you decide to build a business online because your success will be largely determined by how well you can brand yourself and your business. People are more likely to buy from a brand because they trust it, and this is the end goal of branding!
The Role of the Internet in Branding
Building a brand online is quite different than building one off-line, but the fundamental principles behind brands remain the same. The power of branding on the internet has made marketing online so much easier than marketing off-line. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that the internet has given people an opportunity to build brands online with little effort.
"Google - What's in a Name?"
With the ability to build a brand online comes an ability to become discoverable by consumers. A consumer can look up a brand online, find out what product it sells, and then use their favorite search engine to find your business. There are millions of searches happening every minute that can lead consumers to your website, so if you want to be found by them you need to be discoverable.
Recent data from Google shows that search results are not as important when it comes to finding websites. Back in the early days of search engines, the first few results were more than enough to satisfy consumers, but this has since changed. Today, people rarely go beyond the first page of search results when it comes to anything online.
This means that if you're not found on Google's first page for a keyphrase that your brand uses, chances are nobody will be finding you. That's why it's so important to build a brand online, and this is where things get interesting. The internet makes building brands easier for businesses because it allows them to create websites where they can interact with their customers in an authentic way.
The Rise of Social Media and the Value of Branding
Back when people were building websites off the internet, they used the content on their site to build a brand. This has changed completely with social media though. Thanks to social media, you can now use your social presence to build your brand. With sites like Facebook and Twitter, you have a built-in audience that can help you build a large following for your business so that consumers will come to find you through search engines.
Nowadays, people are finding businesses faster and more frequently than ever before thanks to the roles that social media play in marketing. This has made it so that the internet is becoming a better place to build a brand online, and it also means that social media is more important than ever.
"Social media has forced traditional advertising to evolve." - Michael Brenner "The Internet empowers us all to be publishers, and with that comes an obligation to show the same care in what we publish that we expect others to show." - Tim O'Reilly
When you post on social media, people can share your posts with their friends and followers who may be interested in your business. This makes it so that you can quickly build a following before you even begin advertising your product or service. With the right strategies and techniques, you can increase your brand and start to build a following. However, it's important to note that social media is not completely free.
There are costs associated with building a following on Twitter or Facebook, and these costs are largely related to advertising. The more followers you have, the higher your ad revenue will be because they will be paying more attention to your brand than they would if they were only following you out of interest. This means that you need to be putting some money into advertising in order for this method of marketing to work for you!
This is where the importance of branding comes back into play because without a strong brand people won't even notice that you're providing them with something special.
Conclusion
Building a brand online is not as difficult as it may seem, but it does involve making a few strategic decisions. If you're willing to put some work into building your brand and becoming visible on social media, you can do it. Just make sure that you're considering all of the factors that go into branding! Not all them are related to social media, and some of them involve traditional marketing like creating a logo and writing an article.
It's easy to get lost in the world of marketing when you're trying to build an online business because there are so many options available to you.