An excellent website and active social media channels might have been enough to differentiate your brand from the competition two decades ago but not anymore. Unless you are engaging in something nefarious or quasi-legal, your customers fully expect your brand to have both. None of this should be shocking, and your social media channels are hopefully posting away with happy customers perusing your site. With those handled, the focus should now be on increasing your brand’s visibility online to help you stand out from your competitors and find more customers. How do you do that? Read on to discover how.
PICK YOUR TARGETS
A big part of effectively increasing your brand’s visibility online is reaching the right people. That is hard to do if you don’t deeply understand who your customers are. It might sound basic, but it is surprising how many brands think they know who their customers are without backing it up with data. Operating on hunches and hypotheses simply doesn’t work here. Dig into your data and build profiles showing your customers’ ages, interests, demographic characteristics and more. If you don’t have enough information to do that, the time is now to capture as much first-party data as possible. Check out our blog post on the value of first-party data and how to capture it.
SEO FTW
SEO is critical in helping people find your brand, website and content. Without a proper SEO strategy, all can remain hidden in the dark and unvisited corners of the internet. How to develop an SEO strategy goes beyond the scope of this article as it is an involved and lengthy process. But this article from CRM software company HubSpot is a great place to start. The most important thing to remember about SEO is that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. Getting results from SEO takes time, dedication, effort and the right strategy. Once in place, though, SEO is a powerful tool to get your brand noticed online and grow sales. And it builds upon itself, continually delivering results. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help to a well-respected SEO team if developing a strategy is outside of your comfort zone.
START BLOGGING
Backing up your SEO efforts should be a well-thought-out content strategy. And a critical part of your content plan that shouldn’t be overlooked is a blog on your brand’s website. Without one, your website only gets visits from people that already know your brand or through advertising. But a blog taps into the power of SEO and people constantly searching for information online. With the right SEO efforts and content, potential customers find your blog articles bringing them to your site. Well-written, useful and informative articles keep populating search engine results and keep customers returning. Those articles help position your brand as a trustworthy product and industry expert too. More people discovering your brand organically and authentically also drive sales. Just remember that, like SEO, content is a long-term strategy and not something that brings instant results. Check out this article on all the benefits blog content can bring to your brand.
BREAK OUT THE CAMERAS
Creating videos is another vital aspect of a content strategy. A staggering 122 million people are on YouTube every day, consuming more than a billion hours of videos daily. According to data from Pew Research, YouTube is the most dominant online platform in the United States, with 81% of Americans using it. It is also the world’s second-largest search engine, processing over 3 billion monthly searches. Tapping into those impressive numbers is an obvious way to increase your brand’s online presence. But, like blog posts, it is quality content and not quantity that delivers results. Whether a blog or a video, the end user has to find it informative, useful and authentic. The less a video or blog is, the fewer views or reads it will get. Check out our blog post on why brand journalism and content marketing matter and the benefits both bring to your brand.
PAY TO PLAY
The old days of waiting for your brand’s social media posts to go viral are over. Sure, it might still happen occasionally, but it is as viable a social media strategy as planning one’s retirement around winning the lottery. The harsh reality is that any post without a spend behind it isn’t going to get much traction or visibility. You can blame it on Zuckerberg needing money for the metaverse, but the vast majority of your posts should be boosted. The good news isn’t you don’t have to spend a ton of money to get results. This article on how to create a social media budget is a great place to start to get an idea of how much to spend. Make sure to also interact with any comments on your posts and respond to DMs to engage with your engagement.
SPREADING INFLUENCE
Teaming with influencers is also a great way to increase your brand’s online visibility, but the key is to partner with the right ones. Huge influencers with massive followings might be tempting, but they usually don’t deliver tangible results. Many have lost their credibility by overly promoting products they know nothing about. Micro-influencers might have significantly smaller followings, but they are seen as more authentic and knowledgeable in their respective fields with highly engaged followers. They are a better choice for exposing your brand and products to the right audience. And more recently, many influencers are looking to start their own brands, creating further possibilities for forging long-term partnerships. Check out our post here on how to capitalize on this recent trend.
PRODUCT REVIEWS
Products reviews on your website are great for boosting sales and adding credibility. But they go beyond sales numbers by helping with SEO. User-generated content places higher in SEO rankings, and product reviews provide lots of it. Search engines also want to see that your site is active, and reviews do that with a steady stream of fresh content. Reviewers can even act as a small army of link builders and keyword writers without even knowing it. And reviews are seen as valuable and informational content, making them more likely to attract consumers to your site when they populate search results. This article gives even more reasons why on-site product reviews are a must-have.
DON’T CHEAT AND WE ARE HERE TO HELP
Whatever you do, do not engage in black hat-style activities such as buying followers or employing questionable firms that promise to increase your SEO and online visibility instantly. They don’t work and do long-term damage instead. If any of the above is beyond your brand’s capabilities, employing experts is a better option. At Kahn Media, we are a full-service integrated marketing agency with writers, photographers and videographers that can handle all your content generation needs. We are also adept at working with the right influencers, managing social media and crafting digital marketing campaigns. Reach out to us to see how we can boost your brand’s visibility online.
