A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything

New business owners, take heed! You are embarking on an adventure that may take you to unexpected places. The life of a business owner can be chaotic but it is, ultimately, satisfying when you can look at your body of work and see a job well done. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All good business ventures begin with an idea, one little spark of inspiration that leads down a road of discovery and invention. Chances are, if you have recognized an untapped product idea, that you have also recognized the need for properly branding your company online. You may have a great product, but the success of your business rests solely on the branding of your services. It is as simple as that.

Say, for example, that you specialize in Spokane carpet cleaning. What is there to differentiate your carpet cleaning business from any of the other number of like-minded ventures in the same geographical area? True, you may offer lower prices or higher quality services, but how are people going to know about them? Easy: through online company branding. The internet is a vast space and it is easy to get lost in the void, spending your resources in the vain attempt to magically conjure up new customers and create a glossy image of your company that attracts customers. But there is a science to the madness, and it all begins with coming up with an online branding strategy.

To return to our previous Spokane carpet cleaning example, what would be the most effective first steps in creating a positive online brand for this company? First, you must develop a snappy brand name that is easily recognized as yours, and only yours, and then protect it. Make sure that another company doesn’t take your brand name, or a similar name, and soil it with their poor services. Be original, be creative, and be protective, those are the first principles of safe, fool-proof online branding.

Next, you should determine just exactly how you want to develop and accentuate your online branding venture. There are a number of roads you can take, such as SEO services, PPC, or a whole host of social media options. Each is viable in its own way; it is simply up to you to determine what would work best for your company.

For the sake of example, say that all of this jargon, such as “PPC” and “SEO” sounds like a foreign language. If this is the case, it may be in your best interest to seek the assistance of a company properly trained in the art of PPC or SEO. Unfamiliarity with these skills is common and it takes years to produce the kinds of results that these services can provide. If in doubt, hire a company that can assist you; the monetary investment will be more than worth it once you see how these professionals can enhance your brand online.

The first step of branding your company online is to develop a brand name that is memorable and original. Then protect it with all your company’s power. A good product will draw in customers through word-of-mouth; and the intrinsic high quality of your services, with the aid of a properly placed online branding strategy, will yield incredible results that your business simply would not get any other way.

2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium

The proliferation of the internet has completely changed how our society exchanges information. What was once the realm of letters and paper is now the realm of e-mail and electronic documents. Just as the way of relaying information has evolved, so has the world of advertising. Billboards are now sidebar ads and the Yellow Pages are now Google Maps.

For many small businesses the internet has become a boon to their services, bringing them a whole host of new customers that they never would have seen in the years before the web. But, herein lays a problem. It is one thing to recognize the changing landscape of marketing and advertising, but a completely different thing to understand how this new mechanism works. Simply putting together a novice website and then letting is fester in cyber-anonymity is simply not enough. This is where a properly placed SEO campaign can assist your company in emerging from internet obscurity.

For example, you may be in the business of hiring truck drivers.  You may offer the highest quality truck driver hiring services available. Your track record may be sterling but no one will have any idea of your business’ quality if you don’t properly advertise it or if your name doesn’t appear in a simple web search. SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and these services accomplish exactly what the name implies: they help your website conform to the standards dictated by individual search engines. A properly launched and maintained SEO campaign can bring your name to the top of a web search, effectively bringing more traffic to your website. Think about it: when you search for a service, which web result do you usually click on? If you are like most people, the first page of results is usually as far as you get.

Let’s return to our previous example. If someone were to type “hiring truck drivers” into a search engine and you owned a company that specialized in this very service, you would want your company name to show up first. If you have correctly branded your company name online, enlisted effective SEO techniques, and followed up on your marketing campaign with solid services, then you would be in a prime place to reap the benefits of a very high ranking. All of these variables coming together and working in tandem would equate to a higher customer flow and increased sales.

A properly run SEO campaign can accentuate all the hard work you have put into your business by highlighting your products and putting your company name in front of more people than any other medium can afford. The results can truly be astounding: the investment worth every penny.

3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising

New methods of advertising, particularly web-based ones, may be confusing to someone not acquainted with the different mechanisms of the web or well-versed in how they work. Take, for example, the classic Yellow Pages advertisement. Every year you buy your ad space for a fixed amount of money. In these ads, the more space you buy, the higher the price. Things, however, have changed. The advent of the Internet has led to many exciting new ways of advertising that are more affordable and sensible than the old, antiquated methods that essentially equated size with relevance.

One of the most exciting and cost-effective means of advertising on the web is PPC. PPC stands for “pay per click.” This type of advertising does exactly what you would anticipate it would do. As a business owner you pay for your ad space only when it is clicked through on the host’s website. Say, for example, your business specializes in a very specific service, such as vacuum pump repair. A savvy business owner would place an ad for vacuum pump repair on a website that sells

vacuums. This kind of ad placement ensures you will get clicks from interested parties, bringing truly curious customers to your website and managing your advertising money smartly all at once.

In the world of PPC there are two models that are often followed: bid-based and flat-rate PPC. In a bid-based PPC campaign, you will be placed in direct competition with other similar service providers for advertising space. You will tell the host how much money you are willing to pay for the PPC campaign and the highest bidder is awarded the ad space. A flat-rate PPC campaign eschews the bidding format for a flat rate that is simply agreed upon between the host and the advertiser. Both formats are viable, it is simply a matter of determining your company’s specific needs and then tailoring the PPC campaign to those needs.

PPC is marketing in the new millennium. It is smart, effective, and it saves money. When coupled with an SEO campaign, it can truly transform your business. If you have been considering jumping into the online marketing domain, there really is no better way to get your feet wet. If you administer the advice given above, you will no doubt notice the positive uptick in traffic to your website in no time. And where there are more customers, there is increased revenue. And where there is increased revenue, there is a happy business owner!

4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising

Social media is taking over. Blatant and bold as that statement may sound, it is the truth. You can either hop on the bandwagon or stay behind and figure out how you are going to catch up once the dust settles. Don’t believe me? Simply type the word “blog” into any search engine and tell me how many hits pop up. Facebook currently has over 400 million (!) active users. Twitter, a relatively new player in the social media field, has over 75 million users. Simply looking at those numbers and denying the prevalence of social media is willful ignorance.

You, on the other hand, recognize the significance of social media, and understand how they can benefit your company. A snappy logo or updated blog can help your business like no other form of advertising can. Think about it: if you are searching for information about Boston restaurants and you come across a blog written by a chef in Boston who adds entries regularly, discussing the newest foodie trends in the city, chances are you will search out your restaurant and give them your hard-earned cash in exchange for food that you trust (based on what you read on their blog) will be good. As a business owner what could be simpler or more satisfying? You get to talk about your passion and advertise your services at the same time! As a customer, you get in-depth knowledge of a product or service before you try it out for yourself. If there ever was a textbook example of a win-win situation this is surely it.

Social media is also an advantageous route to take because one properly placed video, slogan, or commercial can spread like wildfire, turning into a much talked about meme overnight. If you can plant the seeds of your services or products on a social media website and then let the users of the website spread that idea then you have effectively marketed your product while at the same time saving yourself thousands of dollars in advertising money. This is every advertiser’s dream: a self-replicating ad campaign that is spread mainly through the mouth of the customer.

Advertising your business using social media is a no-brainer. Once you have learned about the techniques and seen the results you will become a believer because there really is nothing like sitting back and watching your idea spread throughout the Internet on a wave of positive inertia.

5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

As a business owner you have developed a unique branding image, cultivated that icon through SEO services or maybe a successful PPC campaign, and you have seen your client base increase significantly. The hard work is over, right? Unfortunately, your work has just begun. Maintaining your brand image is just as important, if not even more crucial, as developing it in the first place.

Remember when you were worried about differentiating your stress reliefservices from the rest of the businesses in your area? Remember the pressure that surrounded the search for a unique way to sell this stress relief service to the public? This was probably a hectic, stressful time for you as a business owner. But if you remember the stress, you must also remember the triumph of mounting a successful branding image and seeing the increased customer flow. The same thing must happen for you to maintain your positive branding image. You must decide how to keep your image fresh in the midst of changing technology and new businesses. What differentiated you from everyone before may be common now, forcing you to adapt and change as needed.

What you need to do as a business owner is to stop thinking about the branding of your company in a finite, linear way. Rather, think of the branding of your company as a series of progressive steps that can lead you closer to the actualized product or services in your mind. Perfection is never truly realized, but that doesn’t mean you can’t strive for it.

Refreshing your image is a process that will be purely dictated by your business and the services you offer. There is no guarantee besides this: to not consistently refresh your image will lead to certain death. There are so many young entrepreneurs unafraid to try new and fresh approaches to the service industry that if you don’t adapt you will surely get left behind. Maintaining your image may be a simple matter of updating your slogan or logo. It could also, on the other hand, be as drastic as completely revamping how you go about selling your product. Only you can truly determine what is best for your company.

Congratulations! You have successfully launched a campaign that has worked for your specific needs. Maintaining your company image is the next step in the evolution of your business. Simply put, this is the only way that you can stay relevant in the marketplace. But if you can weather the storm of trends and fads, emerging victorious through consistently high quality offerings, you will be in prime position to accept the crown of dominance in your professional field.