Marijane Funess July 16, 2014 | 06:46:10
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7 Ways To Power Up Your Digital Brand Presentation

Is your brand presentation dull or fragmented? Are all cylinders firing? Here are some things to consider if you want to add power to the way your brand is presented online.

Do less. It sounds counterintuitive, but sometimes it pays to do fewer things very, very well. Start with end goals. Then do a deep dive into the needs of target customers. What are they looking for? What is the primal desire, burning need, or insomnia-producing problem that must be solved? Very few brands can focus on more than one or two implicit promises to customers.

If it’s not broken... Some feel the need to constantly update a website – changing the design or functionality based on “site envy” or simple boredom. Others dread the process and put it off to avoid looking at the larger issues of audience and relevance.  But ask yourself about the overall impact of piecemeal changes or upgrades. Will they attract more serious traffic? Better quality prospects? A more searchable brand image?

Tie changes to business goals. Having an awesome website and a great PR campaign, though highly desirable, do not make a strategy. Similarly, if a month goes by and time is spent updating small features instead of moving forward on larger goals, such as a refreshed positioning, or announcement of a new service, then a reset is in order. Changes in the brand presentation should support end goals.

Be consistent. It’s tempting to run a sale or discount a product or service when you’re in need of a quick revenue hit, but it’s equally easy to go down the wrong brand path in doing so. Determine who you are: a premium brand that never discounts, a discount brand that always discounts, or somewhere in between.

Put PR in the mix.  Well, we may be biased here. But earned media coverage can add credibility as well as visibility when it comes to a new product or service or simply a fresh point of view about an industry topic or issue. Third-party coverage can be more influential than paid advertising, or at the very least, a necessary complement.

Connect the dots. Email marketing, digital advertising, content marketing, and PR should ideally work in concert. Every customer touchpoint should reinforce your brand promise and move a prospect further down the funnel to conversion.

Don’t be a slave to analytics. It can be addictive to check your analytics dashboard every week or even daily, and to be thrown by  small ups and downs of traffic patterns. For an ecommerce company, of course, traffic is the business lifeblood, but for other types of businesses,a longer time period is needed to truly assess change.

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