You have a brand, a logo, a product, a website. Now what?
How do you get people to recognise, trust and remember them?
I tried to devise a non-exhaustive list of the different aspects for you to consider. In this post, I’m going to focus on visibility, trust and repetition, but not the aspects of creating a brand (values, audience).
Visibility : meet the eyeballs.
Imagine yourself moving around a city and stopping at a café. You’ll encounter a variety of visuals in the process: storefront windows, posters on the walls, a logo on a car. It’s the same for online users navigating the web. They’re likely alternating between scanning websites and scrolling through social media.
Each of these offers different visibility opportunities for businesses to be discovered.
Where can you be noticed online?
- Paid Display advertising : You can become visible on an image banner on a website in the same way you can in the physical world through a poster on the street or an ad in the newspaper.
- Search Engine Optimisation : Your product or service appears in the results when a user searches for your product or service. By carefully curating the used in your web copy, your product can achieve a higher rank in search results than similar products.
- Search Engine Marketing : You can pay to appear at the top of the search results.
- Social media : Your product or service can appear between posts from the user’s friends.
- Google Shopping : Your product or service can be listed alongside similar products.
- Video Display marketing : You can arrange to run an ad for your product or service before a Youtube video in the same way ads are run before the movie when you go to the cinema.
Trust : Make them trust your brand
Let’s face it: the world is full of scams and bad products. Users know this, and their first impulse is often to mistrust anything they don’t know. You need to prove your company is trustable. That it’s not all marketing promises.
How?
- Testimonials : If you’re like most people, when you book a room on Airbnb, you usually read the reviews. Same goes for most of the products you order online. Having users sharing their positive experiences of your product is super important. Showing your Google rating or your Trustpilot review can help users build confidence in your product or service.
- Authenticity & transparency : If you try to appear as something you’re not, people will often notice. Users usually have well-developed “bullshit” detectors. They will sense it if you’re fake. Make sure any statements you make about your brand are believable. It also helps if they’re backed up in the testimonials or other user feedback.
- Consistency in the message : If what you say about your brand is different every week, people won’t trust you. Stay consistent with your message and prices.
Connection: Build a relationship with your audience
In today’s competitive market, building a genuine connection with your audience is essential. It’s not just about selling a product; it’s about creating a bond that fosters loyalty.
How ?
- Storytelling : Share compelling stories that resonate with your audience. Whether it’s the journey of your brand or customer success stories, storytelling humanises your brand and makes it relatable.
- Brand Values : Clearly define and communicate your brand values. What does your brand stand for? What principles guide your actions? By aligning your brand with values that your audience cares about, you create a sense of shared purpose. This not only attracts like-minded customers, it also fosters a deeper, more meaningful connection with them.
Repetition: Be seen more than once.
Various studies have tried to pinpoint the exact number of times someone needs to see a brand to remember it. Turns out, they need to see it more than once… The exact number is up for debate, but as long as your audience can find you more than once, it’s also not very important.
How do you do this?
- Regular posting on social media: Reminding your fans of your presence is one way to familiarise them with your brand. But you need to repeat this exercise often for it to make a difference. Just like CrossFit.
- Retargeting: Retargeting allows you to show your brand and product to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your content. It’s usually one of the most effective types of digital marketing campaigns.
- Email marketing: This is the holy grail of digital channels. If you manage to get a customer onto your email marketing list, it shows they trust you. Then you can remind them of your presence and new products directly on a regular basis.
There are more ways of building your brand, but I feel these are some of the fundamentals.
How are you addressing these with your brand?