How to maximise your brand value in an online-centric market

There’s no doubt that marketing has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Most businesses now have an online presence and making the best of digital assets such as website, app, social media and video are vital. 

One of the major changes in recent years is our access to data – we’re able to measure results of marketing campaigns, target customers better and have more control over who sees our advertising. 

While many businesses operate online via a website or app, it’s still a challenge to make the most of every opportunity and maximise brand value in today’s competitive environment. 

It may often seem like you’re juggling too many things at once, but putting in place a coherent strategy should give you a road map for raising the profile of your brand. 

Here we take a look at four strategic areas you should focus on if you want to be more successful with your marketing activities. 

1. Nail your tone of voice and be consistent across all platforms

To be consistent across different platforms you need to be confident about your brand and understand your audience and how they respond to it. Part of this involves your tone of voice, how you come across to your audience. 

This will depend on a lot of factors. It’s partly about the truth of your brand and the connection this has with your audience. It’s also about keeping this consistent when you are communicating on your website and talking to people on social media. 

If your brand voice changes from one channel to another, it will be difficult for your audience to connect and can mean you fail to fully engage. Examples for maintaining your tone of voice include:

• Speaking to your audience in a conversational way. 
• Keeping your language simple. 
• Simply being aware that what you have written, said on video or posted on social media can be misconstrued. Look at content from your audiences point of view. 

2. Perfect your UX to give your customers a good experience

User experience or UX is a vital part of online marketing. It’s not just about where you put your menus or structure your website, it includes all your marketing activity and how you bring everything together for the benefit of the user. 

• A great user experience will include being mobile-ready and having a site that downloads quickly. It’s also how easy your content is to read and, more importantly, how relevant it is. 
• Being more focused on the user experience, according to the research, and adopting a strategic approach to it can raise conversion rates by as much as 400%. 
• Businesses that adopt a UX design approach will see some immediate benefits. As a bare minimum, it means customers are able to find what they want easily and engage in the way they prefer. 
• We view more online content on our mobiles than we did just a few years ago and 66% of ecommerce time is now spent on smartphones. 

There are various ways that UX can be incorporated into your business web design. Some of it, like mobile readiness, are industry standards. Other factors may relate to your industry or sector and still more can be gleaned from directly asking your ideal customers what they are looking for. 

What also makes a big difference is measuring performance. Without the right metrics in place, you can’t make an informed decision on what is working and what isn’t for your valued customers. 

3. Invest in quality content and work with a content strategy

Are you providing the branded content that your audience is looking for? 

Quality content takes time and effort to put together. Whether it’s your main website content, blogs, social media posts or video, you need to have a strategy in place and the process for producing everything. 

Consistently creating quality content gives customers what they are looking for but it also establishes your credibility.

There is a challenge here, however, when you are looking at boosting brand value and maintaining consistency. 

If you have just one or two people producing content for your online presence, it’s relatively easy to maintain standards. 

If there 10, 20 or more people contributing content, it becomes increasingly challenging to keep things on track and maintain the desired consistency. This is where having a design and brand guidelines in place makes such a difference. You also need a central point where content can be judged and either posted, amended or discarded. 

Your content strategy is going to be the spine on which all your marketing hangs:

• You need to ask why each piece of content is being produced. 
• You should have an idea what you want it to achieve. For instance, you may like a blog post to rank highly for a particular keyword or create an infographic to improve sharing on social media. 
• You must have a process in place for measuring how your users engage with your content. 

Quality content isn’t just about what you create but where you display it. Your nice new marketing video may look great on your home page. But how about putting it on social media where more people are likely to see it? Content strategy development is about making the right choices. 

4. Be active and strategic on social media

Social media is probably the most powerful tool in your marketing armoury. It’s an area where businesses can quickly get into trouble with, however, especially if they don’t take a strategic approach. You have to be active on social media – posting regularly, engaging with other users and building your band of loyal followers. 

Engaging in social media isn’t about pushing your product and being selfish. It’s a two-way conversation and each platform has its own etiquette to follow. You need to learn what works on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the rest and, again, you have to work hard to maintain consistency and quality across each platform: 

• Don’t post for the sake of posting. Consider each piece of content carefully before adding it to your marketing communications.
• Set goals for your social media posts. 
• Research and learn what your audience is talking about. 
• Engage with your fans and followers and keep your sales talk to a minimum. 
• Use video and images in your posts to improve shares and likes. 

These are just four areas to focus on if you want to boost your brand value online and gather a loyal following. At Creative.onl, we have a friendly and experienced team of marketing professionals and graphic designers who can help you supercharge your business for a digital world. 

To discuss how we can help you with your business branding, contact us today.