In a world where tools like Google Analytics let you track the conversion rate of each page of your website, and platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ad Words let you bid for leads and sales, it’s understandable that many marketers forget about the value of branding.
Branding is the oft-ignored side of digital marketing -- a strategy that produces real results over the course of months, years and decades instead of minutes, hours and days. It’s slow, traditional and long-term -- three characteristics that make it a digital outlier.
Branding is all too often neglected by digital marketers, largely because it’s easier to track the results and performance of a PPC or SEO campaign than a deliberate branding effort. This is unfortunate, since a strong brand is a powerful asset for any business.
OMNICHANNEL WORLD LOOK LIKE
Mobile web
Custom Content
Video
Blogs
Social media
ebooks
Infographics
Use Facebook and Twitter ads to promote content
Creating great content is a great way to strengthen and expand your brand presence, but it will produce few results if no-one can find it.
Platforms like Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads are invaluable tools for content promotion. Both allow you to reach a large, highly targeted audience of people likely to respond positively to your brand.
Banner advertising can still be effective, if it’s priced right
Over the last five years, rising CPM rates for display advertising have made it a less appealing channel for branding. Despite this, display (or banner) advertising can still be a highly effective way to expand your reach and improve your presence.
Think long-term, branding results are never immediate
Branding is like a wave - what begins as a small ripple grows into something much larger and more powerful as it picks up momentum. Pull the plug on your branding efforts too early and it will never reach its full potential.
Most branding campaigns produce very few results in their early stages, but grow into valuable marketing assets over time. It’s important to think long-term when you start developing a brand for your business, as results are never immediate.
Using Facebook Ads, you can target people who like similar products and companies to your own, helping you reach a highly responsive audience. Twitter’s ad platform even lets you target the audiences of specific brands and people:
prolific guest blogger
For brands with a clearly defined audience, guest blogging is one of the best ways to put your content (and company) in front of responsive, interested readers.
Keep your content and image consistent
Great branding relies on your message being consistent with your brand image. Red Bull uses video so effectively because the subject matter it focuses on -- extreme sports and pushing the limits of adventure -- match its brand image.
If a brand like Xerox created a YouTube channel and started releasing extreme sports videos, would it get the same results as Red Bull? Unlikely.
Focus 100% on branding, not conversions
Online, it’s extremely easy to track the exact response rate and profitability of an advertisement, right down to the top-performing placements and demographics. This makes it tempting to focus on conversion rate and short-term ROI as the barometer of a campaign’s effectiveness.
The end result of this is that many marketers launch social, search and display campaigns with branding in mind, only to compromise them by optimizing for direct response metrics like ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and conversion rate.
Branding is the oft-ignored side of digital marketing -- a strategy that produces real results over the course of months, years and decades instead of minutes, hours and days. It’s slow, traditional and long-term -- three characteristics that make it a digital outlier.
Branding is all too often neglected by digital marketers, largely because it’s easier to track the results and performance of a PPC or SEO campaign than a deliberate branding effort. This is unfortunate, since a strong brand is a powerful asset for any business.
OMNICHANNEL WORLD LOOK LIKE
Mobile web
Custom Content
Video
Blogs
Social media
ebooks
Infographics
Use Facebook and Twitter ads to promote content
Creating great content is a great way to strengthen and expand your brand presence, but it will produce few results if no-one can find it.
Platforms like Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads are invaluable tools for content promotion. Both allow you to reach a large, highly targeted audience of people likely to respond positively to your brand.
Banner advertising can still be effective, if it’s priced right
Over the last five years, rising CPM rates for display advertising have made it a less appealing channel for branding. Despite this, display (or banner) advertising can still be a highly effective way to expand your reach and improve your presence.
Think long-term, branding results are never immediate
Branding is like a wave - what begins as a small ripple grows into something much larger and more powerful as it picks up momentum. Pull the plug on your branding efforts too early and it will never reach its full potential.
Most branding campaigns produce very few results in their early stages, but grow into valuable marketing assets over time. It’s important to think long-term when you start developing a brand for your business, as results are never immediate.
Using Facebook Ads, you can target people who like similar products and companies to your own, helping you reach a highly responsive audience. Twitter’s ad platform even lets you target the audiences of specific brands and people:
prolific guest blogger
For brands with a clearly defined audience, guest blogging is one of the best ways to put your content (and company) in front of responsive, interested readers.
Keep your content and image consistent
Great branding relies on your message being consistent with your brand image. Red Bull uses video so effectively because the subject matter it focuses on -- extreme sports and pushing the limits of adventure -- match its brand image.
If a brand like Xerox created a YouTube channel and started releasing extreme sports videos, would it get the same results as Red Bull? Unlikely.
Focus 100% on branding, not conversions
Online, it’s extremely easy to track the exact response rate and profitability of an advertisement, right down to the top-performing placements and demographics. This makes it tempting to focus on conversion rate and short-term ROI as the barometer of a campaign’s effectiveness.
The end result of this is that many marketers launch social, search and display campaigns with branding in mind, only to compromise them by optimizing for direct response metrics like ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and conversion rate.
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