Hi, my name is Virginie Dorn, the CEO of Business Website Center located in California. Today we are going to be discussing online branding. The term ‘branding’ has been around for many, many years. You’re absolutely familiar with it. It is how people perceive you. With the internet having taken over the world, the online branding can be slightly different from your face-to-face branding, especially if you have a brick and mortar in a small town and now you are selling online. Your online branding might be totally different from what people see when they first walk into your retail store.

What is branding? Again, branding is the perception people have of you. What do they think when they think of your company name? Do they think high prices and high quality? Do they think cheap prices and low quality? Do they think high prices and low quality? What is their perception? And you can never assume what perspective customers are thinking of your brand. It is up to them to decide that. Again, you can have some control on how their perception is by establishing a good branding campaign. If it’s not clear right within the first few seconds exactly what you stand for or what your brand is, people are going to have their own perception. They’ll make up things. You want to make sure that you’re in control of your online branding. It’s not just your website, online branding carries over many different platforms; Facebook, Yelp for restaurants and other retail places. It could be Pinterest if you’ve highly visual type of businesses. Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it, this is all part of your online branding.

One thing you don’t want to do is having perhaps a bunch of employees and they all do something different. One may be handling your Yelp account, another one is doing Facebook, another one is doing Twitter, and they never come together and make sure they are all on the same page. So the online branding plan should be about making all of those platforms, including your website come together and being cohesive. When I discuss online branding with my customers I talk to them also about their email. Simple things, just like, how is your email signature? Is it inline with the type of online branding you’re trying to accomplish? Is it asking for a call to action? Is it too mellow? Is it too aggressive? When is the last time you took a look at your email and how you send things to your client? Your email name is it actually showing into your email address when people receive it? All of this is part of your online branding. It’s all interacting together and that’s what’s important, to once in a while sit down and see if you have a plan to make sure everything makes sense and then the online branding is clear and concise.

Then, three questions I like to ask my clients when they are thinking about online branding and trying to, again, work on their business and not in their business. The first question is who are their customers. Truly, who are they? Because based on the type of clients you deal with, there is a different of branding and message you want to communicate. If you tend to work with a lot of nurturer-type people because the type of service you provide, well you don’t want to be too aggressive. The online branding has to be in line with the type of customers you cater to.

The second question would be what are their expectation when making a purchase from you. Are they expecting fast service, quality service, affordability? What are they expecting? Because, again your branding has to be inline with their expectation. If it’s not, it is not going to speak to them and they’ll go to your competition.

The third question we have, is there one element of your business and is the most important to your clients? If you were to gather all of your clients in a conference room and give them a survey, and say, mention the top important element why you’re choosing us? Why are you choosing to do business with us? And then, you will see there will be a majority of the people that are going to say the same. Some people will be, “The high quality of your service is incredible. This is why I go to you.” That means money is not so much of an issue. They’re mainly interested in the quality of your product or service. Some people might be fast delivery based on what you’re doing. Yeah, I go to you, because you are the fastest. Maybe you are in the delivery business.

You do need to know the answer to those three questions. Again, who are your best customers? Number two, what are their expectations when buying from you? And number three, what is the top most important element when they do business with you? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, it’s very difficult to establish an effective online branding strategy for your business. Sometimes we… Especially the third question about the top element of your business, we send emails to all of your clients and it’s in the efforts to again, establish that online branding for you. And you will be surprised how many clients are more than happy to let you know why they choose you, what was their number one reason, and you develop your brand based on that top reason. If it worked for all those clients to select you compared to your competitors, it would work for all those other prospects that are out there looking for the best company to choose.

If you have any questions, give us a call, and again, don’t forget to think about your online branding and work on your business not in your business. Take care.