The pandemic has convinced businesses to digitize their activities. Many small businesses have even seized the opportunity to set up their first website! Building your digital brand can be challenging. Ultimately, with over a billion websites, it’s fair to say that the competition will affect your visibility. So, you’ll need to work hard to make sure your website gets noticed by your audience group. There can be no digital presence without a strong search engine optimization strategy. Your SEO strategy will need to include relevant and achievable keywords for your brand – beware of generic search terms that are highly competitive and lack targeting –, regular and informative content, and dull and irrelevant content. But there’s only so much you can achieve with web content. Building your digital brand begins offline! Here’s how:
Using merch to showcase the brand
For small businesses that only created a website during the pandemic, chances are that you never needed an online presence before. Therefore, now’s the best time to capitalize on your offline brand awareness to enhance brand visibility and online visits. A small shop, for instance, could consider an added merch item for loyal customers or big spenders. Useful items such as cell phone stands to promote your brand can be a neat addition to the brand strategy. They increase not only brand awareness but are also likely to boost the brand reputation. Trade shows and conferences are also a great platform to share meaningful merch items.
Be the expert they invite
Most SEO strategies include blog management, with the underlying thought that writing a blog will attract more visitors to the site. In reality, the competition for bloggers is harsh. It’s unlikely your blog article will get noticed. Instead, it can be a better idea to become a guest expert on popular platforms. As a rule of thumb, avoid becoming a guest blogger as it’s time-demanding for little results. On the other hand, becoming a guest on a podcast show will showcase the brand’s expertise and encourage people to find out more about your business.
Enhance your visibility
Local visibility can be a game-changer in a small community. Branded car wraps or local charity sponsoring can make a huge difference because they are memorable. Most people will not visit your website. But if you give them a reason to look your name up online, they are more likely to engage with your content. Therefore, making your brand visible in traffic with a whacky car wrapping design or as a sponsor for social cause charities will build up interest.
Use Big Data
Enhancing your visibility may also require big data. Today, there is a treasure trove of information available via the internet about customers, marketing campaigns, websites and products. If you can get an AI marketing company to help you leverage this data, you can often increase your brand’s visibility tremendously.
Today’s big data is nothing like it was ten years ago. Now, it is multi-channel and often open-source. This means that you can tap into it almost immediately, without having to go through the painful process of collecting data yourself.
Join meaningful projects
Don’t ask for change. Be the change you want to see.
Except that being the change is no easy task for small businesses. It can be expensive and out of their technical range. But a small business can join a common project with a partner or promote an existing project relevant to their audience group. You don’t have to be the change if you can’t afford it. But you can be the one who talks about the change.
Building a digital brand is a long and involved strategy. For small businesses that have just launched their first digital platforms, it’s the perfect excuse to leverage their existing offline reputation. You don’t have to separate your offline and online strategies. Chances are, the people who spot your brand offline will become your online customers.
