You may think I am crazy, but I have found that many marketersforget one of the most valuable tools when marketing online with SEO,PPC, or Social Media. What is this most valuable tool that you may beforgetting? The Brand! Don’t worry it’s not your fault, you eitherforgot or you were focused on beating your competition. No problem. Here are some items to help you get back on track for those of you thatare not using your brand to its fullest potential.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) -
I am constantly surprised when I find SEO efforts that do notinclude the brand. If it is your own company or a clients company, donot forget to use their brand within the SEO campaign. Most of the timethe brand will be right within the domain name, which makes ranking forthat brand very simple. But there are many cases that I have foundthat the company has totally disregarded their brand name within themeta tags, or even the content of their site pages.
To remedy this, simply add the brand name to the meta tags on thehome page and other related pages. Adding the brand name to thecontent somewhere on the home page would be to the companies benefit.Creating a separate page totally dedicated to the brand name explainingexactly what it is and what it means is even more beneficial forranking and informational purposes.
Most of the time, performing simple optimization techniques thateveryone knows will get your brand name ranked in all the major searchengines with little effort. You will be surprised at how many peopleactually search for your products and services by searching solely foryour brand.
PPC (Pay Per Click) -
This is where I believe most people are missing out on a lot oftargeted traffic. If you do not use your brand name within your PPCcampaign you are missing out on visitors that are more likely to buy,rather than someone just searching for one of your top keywords. Hereis an example of how you should add your brand to your PPC campaign:
Trust Guard
“Trust Guard”
[Trust Guard]
www.trust-guard.com
http://www.trust-guard.com
http://trust-guard.com
trust-guard.com
As you can see, I have used every possible way that someone couldcorrectly search for the Trust Guard brand name. Another idea would beto add common ways that people misspell your brand name to the keywordlist.
Social Media -
In social media your brand is extremely important. When people findyou on the various social sites, they need to be able to recognize youimmediately. A couple of ways to make sure that they recognize you andyour brand is by adding your brand name and brand image (most of thetime this would be the logo or personal photo/avatar or your productimage) in the profile areas of these social sites. Make sure that yourbrand name and image is within the content you post as well.
The main key with social media is being consistent over every socialsite, meaning you should add the same brand name and images to all thesocial sites that you are signed up with. Once your brand becomesrecognizable and you provide great content to the readers and groups onthese social sites you will find and increase in brand awareness andmore than likely a boost in sales.
Bringing It All Together -
I want to reiterate the word ‘consistency’. It is important that youare consistent with the way that you present your brand, whether usingSEO, PPC, Social Media or any other form of marketing. If you are notconsistent you will confuse people. If you confuse people you can losetrust. Keep it simple and provide great content and you are bound tosucceed.
