Brand promotion on the Internet

Brand promotion on the Internet will allow you to win the competition in the future and intercept the majority of consumers. People remember the promoted companies in the first place, so they have an advantage. In this article, you will learn how to develop a strategy and promote a brand.

A bit of theory

Before you think about promotion, you need to remember 2 key concepts:

• brand - the image of the company, made up of a complex of ideas, emotions, value characteristics and distinguishes one organization from others;

• branding is a process that includes the creation and promotion of a brand in the market.

Why do you need brand promotion?

Trademark development should not be forgotten, because promotion has a number of advantages:

• recognition - consumers know about the company and what you can buy in it;

• high profit - the product becomes more expensive, but demand does not decrease;

• loyalty - customers are more willing to go to the store and are more likely to spend money from a well-known seller;

• audience retention - people become regular customers and, most likely, will not go to competitors.

In addition, it is easier for popular companies to find qualified employees, since it is more prestigious to work in them. If you are interested in us business directory database free, follow the link to find out more.

Stages of brand promotion

Before promoting a brand on the Internet, you need to create a name, formulate a USP, develop a corporate identity and positioning. If one of the required elements is missing, it is pointless to come up with a strategy, because the effectiveness of advertising will be much lower.

Step 1. Define goals 

At the preparatory stage, it is necessary to think over the goals of promotion so as not to waste money and time. Examples of marketing tasks:

• increasing brand awareness;

• expanding the customer base;

• formation of a positive image.

It is recommended to select no more than 3-4 goals within one promotional campaign. 

Step 2. Assessing the current state of the brand

At this stage, a professional analyst is needed who will evaluate the current positions for specific promotion goals. If an organization wants to create an image, it is necessary to determine how the target audience treats it now.

The following services should be used for evaluation:

• Brand Lift company Google;

• Google Trends;

• Babkee and others

Step 3. Create a consumer profile

Different methods of promoting a company's brand on the Internet become effective when targeted at a specific group of consumers, for example: families with children, bachelors. To learn more about street directory, follow the link.

Marketers use the following criteria to evaluate target audience:

• floor;

• age;

• income level;

• City of residence;

• habits, interests;

• the presence of children.

Step 4. Develop a brand promotion strategy

Marketers use 4 basic tactics to promote a company's brand. They should be used in combination to influence the consumer through different channels.

Content Marketing

The main goal of content marketing is to gain consumer trust with the help of expert and useful articles on the official website and partner sites. The latter include online magazines, news publications, thematic portals. Texts do not aim to sell something, but they imply that our product is better suited to solving a specific problem. 

Experts in the company

If an organization has strong programmers, marketers, car mechanics, their skills and expertise need to be put on display. They can give interviews to journalists, publish articles on VC, Habr, communicate with the audience on thematic forums, and participate in conferences.

Thanks to this, customers will come to you, being sure that Ivan Ivanovich or Antonina Pavlovna will definitely solve this problem. You will create a personal brand of the best employees that will work for the corporate image.

Notable Partners

Partnering with large corporations, sports teams and manufacturers that are well-known will allow you to intercept part of the target audience from another company. For this:

• integrate into services, create collaborations;

• sponsor joint conferences, sports events.

Promotion in social networks

This strategy, which is partly included in the above, since content marketing, the creation of personal brands of employees can and should be carried out in social networks. To do this, they create an official group of the organization, communicate with the audience in thematic publics and post useful articles in promoted partner groups.

Step 5. Determine the budget and find tools

When you choose methods to improve the brand on the Internet, you need to allocate money, identify promotional tools and find performers (if the company does not have suitable employees).

Creating a budget

Promotion is a lengthy process that can take 2 or more years. Because of this, it is important to write down expenses in detail so as not to spend funds in the first few months and not inflate the budget. We recommend prescribing it for 10-12 months. You also need to take into account the possible price changes or the appearance of additional expenses and create a reserve bank for 10-20% of the entire budget. 

Choice of marketing tools

At this step, it is important to keep 3 factors in mind:

• portrait of CA;

• the size of the budget;

• goals.

Marketers prescribe an approximate media plan and select the best tools. For example:

• corporate blog;

• email marketing;

• contextual and targeted advertising;

• work with opinion leaders;

• publication of expert texts on partner sites, etc.

This is a difficult step that not even every marketer can handle, because you need to have an idea about all the existing methods of brand promotion. 

Selection of contractors

Few organizations  have enough employees to implement a full-cycle promotional campaign. Because of this, we recommend assembling a team of freelancers or outsourcing some of the tasks to agencies specializing in promotion.

The main thing is to have a professional on staff who is able to adequately assess the quality of work of contractors and give an expert assessment.

Brand promotion tools

Let's briefly consider the main tools for brand promotion and creating a positive image of the organization. We advise you to include the maximum number of them in your strategy in order to reach as many users as possible and convert them into customers.

The site of the company

You can sell goods and services on third-party platforms, for example: marketplaces, social networks, through partner stores. However, to fully promote the brand, you need your own website, where a person learns about:

• company philosophy;

• the best employees;

• production features.

He immediately familiarizes himself with the cases and ascertains the professionalism of the team, which in the future will make the visitor come back to you and order a product/service.

Corporate blog

It may be on the site . In the blog, company employees publish expert articles, for example, on developing a data management system in a company or fixing a car engine. They also respond to comments and questions from readers. As a result, the visibility and number of mentions will increase.

Important! The blog should have a single style - the tone of communication, design, subject matter.

Email Marketing

This promotional tool accompanies others, because first you need to motivate a person to subscribe to email newsletters. When creating an order, you can offer the client to subscribe and tell on the blog that followers receive exclusive tips and articles.

The main thing is to send really useful emails on a weekly basis so that the user is waiting for them and wants to read them.

Contextual and targeted advertising

Google Ads is used to promote a brand and products on the Internet . Thanks to them, you can place ads on websites with the brand name, promotions, unique offers.

In order for promotional campaigns to be effective, you need to set up advertising campaigns in detail - create a portrait of the target audience, determine the optimal rate for publishing an ad. It is also worth preparing bright banners that will definitely attract the attention of the user.

Working with opinion leaders

Bloggers, popular designers, photographers are a great way to reach your target audience and create a positive image. If an idol says that the company can be trusted and uses its services himself, then his followers automatically become more loyal. 

Opinion leaders can influence people through:

• Video reviews;

• articles;

• social media posts, etc.

The only downside is the price.

Partner materials in the media

Native advertising is an unobtrusive way to influence the audience. It is perceived by readers not as advertising, but as one of the ways to solve a specific problem. 

Example: a user reads about ways to promote a brand on the Internet from an expert marketer, who we advise him to download one of the end-to-end analysis tools. In this case, the emphasis is on a specific service, positioned as the best.

Storytelling

It partially overlaps with other methods. Only in this case, not just articles are published, but stories from specific people, for example, your client. He tells:

• what was the problem;

• what he used to solve it;

• Why did you decide to use your company's product?

• what results have been achieved.

Unlike nonfiction articles, first person stories make the reader associate with the narrator. In addition, they address the specific pains of the target audience.

What mistakes should not be made?

Companies that want to save money or quickly achieve results make 4 common mistakes that reduce the effectiveness of promotion to zero:

• poor understanding of the target audience - if the portrait contains errors or gaps, it is problematic to come up with an offer that meets the desires of the consumer;

• irregular check of results - it is necessary to find out weekly the effectiveness of the strategy and individual promotion methods;

• uneven distribution of the budget;

• lack of testing before launching an advertising campaign.

Summarizing

Brand promotion on the Internet is a complex process that can provide a company with a stream of customers in the long run. Work out your marketing strategy in detail, create an image of the consumer and influence the target audience through different channels so that they remember the brand name and understand why they need to contact you.

Although you will have to spend a significant part of the budget on promotion, in the future the name will work for you, and the need for large-scale promotional campaigns will disappear.