Building Brand Awareness

A good web site has the potential to sell products and promote your company’s image. Find out how to make the most of the Internet by creating a web site that builds brand awareness. To some, branding might not feel like a tangible aspect of running a business. It can’t be seen like a product on the shelf, or counted like a cash drawer at the end of the night. But, branding is the reason people pay three times more for a product at one store over another. Good branding is the product of a clear vision, and nobody knows more about vision than small business owners. But, with limited resources, creating a brand identity can be tricky. Fortunately, building brand awareness on the Internet doesn’t need to take a lot of money or resources.

Here are seven strategies to build your business brand:

Define the Vision
Before moving ahead with the web site, create a brand positioning statement. “This isn’t just, ‘What kind of web site do we want to be?’ This is ‘Who are we?’” says Harley Manning, vice president at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., a technology and market research firm that advises on the effects technology has on consumers and businesses. Good brand statements typically include the company’s mission, vision and values. “It’s succinct. It’s typically something that will fit on a page easily,” he says.

Build a Brand Worth Believing in
“Do you so believe in what you’re creating that you would trademark it?” says Andrea Fitch, president and CEO of RedCarpet Creations, Inc., and national president of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, both based out of Alexandria, Va. Really consider what kind of brand could represent the business through the next decade. “Don’t have a logo that in five years you’re going to be tired of and discard for another,” she says.

The Web Site is the Brand
“A web site is not just a communication medium,” Manning says. “It is actually a channel that must deliver on the promise.” Essentially, a web site should embody the promise that it makes to customers. If, for instance, a business claims to be innovative, the web site should look fresh and modern.

A Cohesive Experience between all Mediums
Before she launched her company’s new web site, Fitch made sure it would be an event that her potential clients would never forget. RedCarpet Creations mailed 4,000 silver tubes containing scrolls that looked like rolled-up carpet. Inside the scrolls was an announcement about the web site’s launch. Once online, the web site was an extension of the invitations because it followed through on the themes of red carpet imagery and references to visitors being treated like a VIP. Customers should easily be able to recognize the company’s brand, whether it is print, online or some other form of media, Manning says.

Don’t Sacrifice Creativity
Once the brand’s guidelines are established, creative choices must bring those attributes to life, Manning says. Don’t let the company’s brand become so dominating that there is no room for new thoughts and ideas. Brand should be the jumping-off point for interesting ideas, not the place where every new idea dead-ends. Fitch stresses that a sense of fun and whimsy will only enhance the likelihood that people will take an interest in the web site.

Don’t Sacrifice Delivery of Message
While a web site can be a significant tool for building brand awareness, clarity and functionality are paramount. “Just be careful not to let the communication about your brand get in the way of delivering your message,” Manning says. People should be able to understand how to navigate the site without knowing a thing about the company’s catch phrases. “You can’t frustrate and annoy people into liking your brand,” he says.

Most Important – Listen to Your Customers
They determine a brand’s true value. Pay attention to customer feedback about the site because, ultimately, it’s the customers’ opinion that counts. When it comes to building a brand, a company can incorporate everything from signature colors to catch phrases, but at the end of the day, it’s the consumer who decides what a brand is really worth. “It’s not what you say [about] yourself, it’s what others say of you,” Fitch says.

Quick wins for brand loyalty

Getting consumers to your website is one thing, and requires a special set of tools – SEO, SEM, networking and many other marketing strategies. Keeping them on your site and coming back is entirely different. One powerful method is to get your customers and site visitors interacting with you website and your brand. Not only does interaction help connect users to your company, but it also increases the time they spend on your site – good for branding and attracting potential advertisers.

Consumers want to interact with your brand. They want to feel a part of the process, that their voice and opinion matters to your company. While blog comments, forums and social networking tools are proven ways for consumers to interact, often times they are wary to participate due to forced registration, disclosure of personal information or simply the time needed to participate. But there are other ways to entice your visitors to interact that don’t require much of an effort from them, or you.

Polls: Polls are powerful. They provide a glimpse behind the curtain of the popular sentiment of a population and consumers use them. A quick click and they’re satisfied. It satisfies their curiosity and reinforces their views and opinions with the larger community. For the website owner, polls can provide a look into everything from the quality of your customer service to ideas for new products or upgrades to existing ones.

There are many free polling services out there and some paid that offer greater detail. Check out Vizu.com, JS-Kit and PollDaddy, recently aquired by Automattic who is behind the WordPress blogging platform and hosting service.

Video and Audio: Nothing is quite as engaging as a well-placed, well timed video. Embedded video is easy for consumers to view – a simple click and they are interacting with your website and your brand, either through your own video or from another source. YouTube is by far the largest library of embedded video options but there are others, including DailyMotion and MetaCafe. Podcasts and embedded audio files provide the same basic function and can be featured unobtrusively in a blog post or in a sidebar.

Photos: Simply adding a photo gallery or photos in your blog posts will get your visitors more involved with your site. Photos can be linked to other, related pages within your site or even to galleries on other sites, including social networking profiles. FlickrIn is a Web app that lets you display tiled photos from your chosen flickr gallery as a small badge that you can embed in your site’s sidebar.

Games: Who doesn’t like playing a good game every now and then? It’s especially interesting to the user if you can find a game that follows the theme of your brand. Sell sporting goods? There are plenty of sport-related games to choose from. Auto parts? Driving games abound. There are even political games, animal-themed games and puzzle games for your thinking audience. Sites like AddictingGames.com, MiniClip and FreeOnlineGames.com all have a vast collection of games that you can embed.

Tickers: This is especially useful in today’s economic environment. You can embed stock tickers, or even a widget with tickers and charts, like this one from Yahoo. But there’s more. Search online and you’ll find sports tickers, entertainment news and tickers that you can customize to include your personal message.

Horde your business’s domain names

Smart businesses don’t just own their company name as a “.com.” They purchase several variations or related names to drive additional traffic to their primary Web site. In fact, buying additional domains for your company can pay off in big dividends—here’s why.

1. It cuts marketing costs. A memorable, highly targeted and keyword-rich domain name from the secondary market gets more free, organic search engine traffic. As a result, you spend less money to build traffic than by purchasing often-costly keyword search buys or print advertising.

2. It builds your brand. Owning domains related to the products and services you offer sends a strong and consistent message to your customers that you are the leader in your space. A photographer, for example, could own domains related to cameras, weddings and portraits.

3. It cuts your competition. Owning several domains prevents lost traffic and allows you to cut short the reach of your competition.

4. It gives you global reach. Although the “dot com” is the most common—and valuable—extension, opportunities still exist to purchase variations, such as country-specific domains like .co.uk, .it, .de, .hk and so on. These have extensive recognition in their region and dramatically increase your global reach.

5. It builds a valuable portfolio of assets. Like fine wines, domain names appreciate in value over time, thanks to the navigation traffic they acquire from prominent search engine positioning. By acquiring and using multiple premium domain names, you create a number of well-known and recognized secondary brand triggers associated with your business.