Brand equity doesn’t mean the same thing it did 50 years ago, or even 25. In the old days, before the information revolution came around to turn the marketing world on its end, it was common for companies to establish names for themselves through traditional advertising channels. That isn’t the case anymore.
How did McDonald’s become McDonald’s? What turned Coca-Cola into Coca-Cola? There were no easy shortcuts. For the most part, these brands became worldwide symbols by building up their name recognition, piece by piece, through conventional advertising. Print media, TV, radio and other traditional outlets all gave these companies ad space to promote themselves and gradually become world titans.
Are you looking to achieve this same feat today? You probably won’t want to do it by putting ads in magazines. That may be one small component of your overall strategy, sure, but marketing your business today means much more than old-school ads. More people find their brands today via search engines than newspapers. If you really want to have an innovative approach to branding your business, you need to make sure that web and mobile users find your company compelling when they encounter it online.
Producing quality content
If you want to establish brand equity by promoting your business online, you must be able to produce quality content that will engage consumers. This means going beyond obvious ideas like slideshows and Top 10 lists. According to Business 2 Community, you should be willing to take a stand on an actual issue and present thought-provoking arguments.
Marketing guru Justice Mitchell also recommends that you cross-fertilize your content, connecting posts to other posts and linking to as much content as possible. You want to grab people’s interests and keep it.
“Link to your own content and link to others,” Mitchell recommends. “It’s great for SEO and it helps people stumble into other great thinking. Lastly, it gives the audience a sense of how your mind works by seeing what you link to. Think of it as glomming brand equity with every link.”
You can even mix it up by using content in a variety of forms – some straightforward text articles, some videos, some infographics and more. By presenting people with a variety of ways to learn about your brand, you’ll be able to pull in as many demographics as possible.
Paid strategies
Producing good content is a strategy that anyone can try – as long as you’ve got some spare time and a little bit of creativity, it’s easy to get started. If you have a little bit of money to spend, you can go even farther.
According to Search Engine Land, there are several paid strategies that are also very effective in helping you drum up additional brand equity. For example, you can pay for ad extensions on other sites and mobile apps in order to generate extra exposure for your brand.
You can also spend some dough to raise your position in search engine results. Sites like Google and Bing often let you bid on your position in “sponsored results” lists at the top of search pages. Search Engine Land notes that 59 percent of people who click on sponsored results choose the very first one. Are you willing to pay for that top spot? Your investment might pay off many times over.
You’re always working toward better marketing online, but paying for your brand exposure is a surefire way to get more. More keywords, more clicks, more return visits. You’re looking to win people over long-term, and a proactive focus on brand exposure is a solid first step.
How do you bring attention to your brand?
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