The importance of online branding cannot be underestimated in today’s world. The way in which we attract customers is changing fast, from ‘push’ to ‘pull’ tactics. Customers are more likely to search for businesses, products and services online than through any other method and sites such as social media networks enable businesses to promote an ‘opt-in’ form of advertising, establishing a strong online presence and letting the customers come to them. Without that strong online presence, the chances are that very few new customers will appear on the horizon. Dorian Hedy Mekni is the founder and owner of two websites focusing on the creation and application of creative and innovative online branding and marketing in order to drive business forward. With Urban Amman, Dorian focuses on turning small businesses into well-known profitable ventures and helping larger or more established companies reshape their marketing for further success. Through the Urban Amman website, Dorian discusses ways in which successful online branding can change your business from small fry to a big fish. You can connect with Dorian Hedy Mekni by accessing his LinkedIn profile or visiting the official website.
Recognition and Differentiation
Unless you have been lucky enough to come up with a product or service nobody else has ever thought of before, chances are there are already hundreds of other businesses out there offering similar products. Even if your idea is unique there will likely be competitors following in your wake soon enough. A strong online brand differentiates you from the competition and makes it easy for customers to form an attachment. It also makes it easier for customers to find you in a busy online world. There are approximately 500 million new tweets and 4.75 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook in every 24 hours – if you don’t stand out from the crowd you are practically invisible. With an engaging website and presence on social networks and with a recognisable brand and logo that customers can instantly recognise, you become far more prominent.
Building Trust and Credibility
Brand loyalty has long been recognised as a highly important aspect of creating a successful business. With the push rather than pull form of marketing that the internet enables, customers are able to opt-in by liking, sharing or following a brand or even becoming friends with the brand. This empowers the customer and makes them feel important, which in turn endears them further to your brand. Where a business has limited online presence or does not put sufficient time and energy into maintaining social media accounts and engaging with their customer base, they will quickly find that customer base diminishing. Branding works on one level as a form of great customer service. If customers have positive associations with your brand they are more likely to return to it again and again, just as in a shop where the cashier remembers your name and your favourite products.
Reduced Marketing Costs
Online branding and engagement with social media is a highly cost-effective way to get knowledge about your products and services out there. The main cost for any business is time – once the brand is out there the business needs to keep coming up with fresh, original content to engage the customer and maintain a continuous dialogue. The internet expands your reach without the need to relocate, making it easier to move from local to regional and even global without a significant increase in costs. With a strong online presence almost everyone in the world has access to your company.
Memory and Emotional Attachment
A strong, simple and easy to recognise brand makes your company easy to remember. The more customers remember you the more they form the emotional attachment to a brand that creates loyalty. A good brand is easy to pick out from the crowd and easy to remember. It should also tap into the emotional side of the customer in a relevant way – creating a brand personality that people can relate to. Once your brand has made an emotional impact on a customer, that customer will remember it forever. This also makes it more likely that your brand will be recommended to others.
Online branding is all about increasing your visibility in order to gain trust and credibility, value, edge on the competition, confidence and even expert status. Creating and promoting a strong, easy to remember brand differentiates you from the competition and creates customer loyalty, increases recommendations and lets consumers form an emotional attachment, all while steadily decreasing your spend on advertising and marketing. Branding has changed and developed with the advent of the internet and any business without an online brand is being left behind. Businesses can still employ many of the same tactics as before using online tools, yet have a whole new opportunity to truly engage with customers as well.
Dorian Hedy Mekni 