Branding Strategies
Any individual or internet marketing agency who provides digital marketing solutions will talk to you about developing branding strategies. Most of us have a vague idea of what a “branding strategy” is, but on the other hand, maybe we should think about this a little.
Every person, place and thing has a “brand,” a collection of ideas and images that come to mind when we hear it mentioned. Among animals, we know that lions are branded as brave and fierce, owls are wise, eagles are noble and soaring, and foxes are cunning and tricky. You can probably think of a person who shares one of these “brands.”
In the commercial world, some businesses or professional practices strike us as “very professional,” “cheap,” “expensive,” “sloppy,” or “exclusive.” The brands, “Walmart” and “Rolex” are both very successful, even though they evoke very different concepts and ideas. Both have identified a market niche and developed a very effective plan to compete in that place. They both have effective branding strategies, long term schemes to associate themselves with certain customers, clients, needs and expectations.
Doing nothing is a common branding strategy for some small businesses, service providers or professional practices. They do not ever sit down and think about the market they want to serve, how to do it, or how to reach out to those customers, clients or patrons. The first step in building branding strategies is to ask yourself where you want your business or professional practice to go. You do not need the help of an internet marketing agency or professional search engine optimization service to do this. You know your business or profession far better than they do!
To keep this article brief, we are going to assume that you have already done (or will do) this. If you are an attorney, you must decide on an area of the law, domestic, family, criminal, corporate, etc. If you have entered the carpet cleaning business, do you want to concentrate on small, residential jobs or on commercial customers? You may have decided on a highly-specialized niche, say marketing financial services to seniors.
That is the direction you want to go, and now you should develop that long-term plan to identify, reach out to and connect with the individuals who need your product or service. This is the time when a professional internet marketing agency, one with expert local SEO services can help you reach your goals. For a small, local business or a professional practice, these local search engine optimization services are invaluable. A professional internet marketing agency has the resources needed to identify the target audience for your branding strategies. A firm like Axiom Administrative Services can isolate that group, tell you what Facebook pages or YouTube channels they frequent, target them with direct mail advertising and social media posts.
A lot of branding strategy development must fall to the business or professional persons themselves. They must decide that they are aiming to be the dentist for seniors, the overnight carpet miracle workers or the legal tax expert. After that, the services of an expert internet marketing agency like Axiom can be invaluable. If you are struggling to find digital marketing solutions that work and branding strategies that make your business stand out, turn to Axiom.
Your business deserves more than a cheap web design, and Axiom is more than an internet marketing agency. Axiom Administrative Services has the professional skill and small business SEO skills needed to get your web presence the ranking it deserves. Our business marketing team can combine traditional marketing tools like direct mail advertising with local SEO services to build your branding strategy. Please visit Axiom’s small business services page or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
The CRITICAL Importance of Visual Content
There is one trend in the internet world that overwhelms all the others. That trend is visual content. The creative people who devise branding strategies, professional SEO services and even logo design services are all keenly aware of the growing dominance of visual content in both social media and the wider internet. The Pew Research Center reported recently that, in 2017, more adults used YouTube.com (an entirely visual site) than visited Facebook.
All effective digital marketing solutions must now take this into account. Advertising pros have long known that, compared to written or sound-only material, visual presentations are more engaging, remembered longer and more likely to produce action. Visuals significantly increase the engagement of an audience because they quickly capture attention; visuals can tap into the conscious and unconscious emotions of an audience much faster than printed or spoken words.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that people remember much more of what they see than what they merely read or hear. One market study found that Facebook posts with images drive 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. If you want to engage people on social media, or on the wider internet, you must show them visuals that can tell a story and build your branding strategy.
Good digital marketing solutions will grab the attention of an audience and effectively engage them in that branding strategy. When you start the process of building a website or developing a branding strategy, start working on your visuals before the launch. Creating a photo or video of someone using your product or service makes it easier for people to imagine themselves doing so. The term, “engaging visuals,” can include still images, screenshots, graphs, videos, memes and GIFs or even a copyrighted logo from a professional logo design service.
All of this is sound advice, but there is a problem; if you are a small business operator, service provider or professional practitioner, how are you going to find the right visuals to convey your message. If fact, have you thought carefully about what your message (your branding strategy) should be or what digital marketing solutions you will employ? The internet is full of visual images for sale or, in some cases, free.
If you have any doubt, do a search for an obscure term like, “Birthday Cat Memes, Images and Gifs.” You will almost certainly find a bunch of visual images suited to a birthday card for cats. If you do not know, a meme (in terms of digital marketing solutions or a branding strategy) is an image or video that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users.
But how do you go about resizing these images to fit your website or Facebook business page, what about copyright, what is the best image title for SEO link building or page ranking purposes? Most professionals, business owners or service providers do not know! But they should know that these tools and skills are absolutely essential to their success. If you are struggling to develop branding strategies and digital marketing solutions that work, it would pay you to turn to a professional internet marketing agency and search engine optimization company. Axiom Administrative Services has the professional skills needed to guide your web presence to the rankings it should have.
Axiom knows how to create, optimize and place visual content. Axiom can produce and embed video demonstrations or educational material in your website or social media platforms. Axiom is more than an internet marketing agency. Our local SEO services, small business SEO and individual digital marketing solutions are combined with traditional marketing techniques like printing and direct mail to achieve maximized results. Please visit us to find out how Axiom Administrative Services can fill your digital marketing needs. You can contact us by calling 800-888-6348.
Look for Branding Strategies
Chances are that you have seen several examples of branding strategies this week or even just today. If you have walked into a Target Store, a Walmart or a local supermarket, near the entrance there has probably been a display of merchandise packaged in a red or pinkish-red color. Of course, it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day and that color won’t let you forget it.
Beyond the Valentine’s Day display, some stores already have a section featuring emerald green hats, plates, plastic ware, beer glasses and other St. Patrick’s Day merchandise. So far as we know, April Fool’s Day does not have a branded color, but later in the year you will be seeing red, white and blue for July 4th, orange and black for Halloween and soon after, red and green for Christmas. All of these colors or color combinations have become “branded” to a particular holiday or event.
That is what branding strategies are about. Some visual, sound or other stimulus causes you to automatically think of a product, a service, a business or, in the case above, a calendar date. If you are new to internet marketing and still trying to find digital marketing solutions that work, developing one or more branding strategies is a good place to start. Axiom says “one or more branding strategies” because many or most internet marketers have more than one aspect to their business or service.
Branding strategies are essential because they quickly tell the potential customers or clients what you do and how you are different from your competition. Effective build credibility and trust, increase name recognition and even inspire employees. They can instantly bring to mind critical information that you want the customer to have: your services, your name, your location, your reputation for dependability. Your enterprise may already have a business logo, hopefully provided by a professional logo design service. Logos are central to all, so do not count on an amateur logo design service any more than you would count on cheap web design to be effective.
Effective branding strategies require several elements-
- Define exactly what your business, service or non-profit does.
- Define the geographic area your business or service can cover.
- Identify your target market. “Everybody” is not a good target for most businesses. Try to identify the group of people most likely to need your products or services.
- Get an effective Search Engine Optimization Strategy. You need at least the basic information about the local market that local SEO services Professional SEO services can be delivered by local SEO services providers like Axiom.
- Carefully consider your business name, logo and tagline. These are ways to communicate with customers or symbolize your service or product, so use a professional logo design service.
- Develop your website. Professional looking websites are essential to good branding strategies. Web searches, especially on mobile devices like smart phones, are the primary way people locate services, so do not go with cheap web design.
- Well-executed branding strategies make your brand message consistent across different media. Digital marketing solutions should be combined with appropriate use of traditional marketing techniques like direct mail marketing to build name recognition and strong connections with customers.
All of this sounds like good advice, but if you are running a small business, professional practice or non-profit, branding strategies and Search Engine Optimization techniques are probably not on your “to-do” list. If you are struggling to find digital marketing solutions that work and branding strategies that make your business stand out, turn to Axiom. Your business deserves more than a cheap web design, and Axiom is more than an internet marketing agency. Axiom Administrative Services has the professional skill and small business SEO skills needed to get your web presence the ranking it deserves.
Our business marketing team can combine traditional marketing tools like direct mail advertising with local SEO services to build your branding strategy. Please visit Axiom’s small business page or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
Share Your Knowledge
Making your business, service or professional practice more accessible and trusted is a key element in any branding strategy. A good logo design service, the best SEO services and even direct mail marketing by professionals can go a long way in promoting that branding strategy, but there is one more factor: you must be recognized as an expert in your field. This is true whether you are a patent attorney, a web designer or a plumber.
There are several ways to gain this recognition; testimonials from past clients or customers and examples of completed work have always played a part in branding strategies. Sharing expert or professional knowledge has been more limited because most people had no way to do it. If you were a famous attorney or doctor, you might publish a book, but this was beyond the means of most people. Today, thanks to AXIOM, it is not!
There are several compelling reasons to share your knowledge with existing or potential clients or customers. Among them are-
- It establishes and builds your reputation as an authority. Instead of telling people that you are an expert, show them by example.
- It expands the scope of your service, product or professional practice. By sharing your knowledge in a specific area, you lead the customer or client to trust you with other matters.
Digital marketing solutions provide you with an avenue to share what you know while using branding strategies that establish you as a leader. Your newsletter can include information about your product or service that serves to educate the reader. Professional practices like physicians, dentists, chiropractors, attorneys, CPAs and others can make especially good use of news letters to share their knowledge about complicated subjects. Read about how AXIOM can help produce a newsletter by clicking, Have You Considered a Newsletter for Your Clients?
If a regular newsletter is too much time and effort, consider sharing your knowledge on social media like Facebook or YouTube. Show people how to install a shower head that does not drip, how to fill out a W-9 form or to register a car in the state of Florida. No matter what business or profession you are in, you almost certainly have some kind of special knowledge that will be of interest to potential clients or customers.
If you have never done this, AXIOM can show you how easy it is to incorporate social media into your branding strategy and digital marketing solutions. You can see some examples of AXIOM’s work on social media by clicking A Click is Worth a Thousand Words.
Axiom can develop digital marketing solutions and coordinate services like small business SEO and direct mail marketing campaigns. Start now by thinking about your needs and then contact Axiom Administrative Services by clicking the link, Axiom Administrative Services or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
Your Logo, Your Visual Brand
How much have you thought about your business logo? A lasting brand impression may very well start with that logo, and it should be an essential part of your branding strategy. Think about the familiar logos you probably see every day on the internet. You know them well, don’t you?
You immediately recognize the Facebook or Apple logos. Company logos that look sharp and professional stick in the minds of customers and potential customers too. They do a lot of the marketing for 
you! If you see a truck with the Amazon logo, you know that Amazon is delivering any one of thousands of products that you can order from its website. Nothing else needs to be said.
AXIOM does many, many things including direct mail advertising, small business SEO, local SEO services and developing digital marketing solutions. However, nothing is more important to branding strategies than a well-designed logo. Our logo design service is one of AXIOM’s most valuable activities. It can make a huge difference to your business, so contact us to discover how. You can contact Axiom Administrative Services by clicking the link or call Axiom at 800-888-6348.
How to get your website noticed by smartphone users
Recently, we came across an amazing statistic. According to Flurry Analytics, a company that specializes in analyzing consumer interactions with mobile applications, the average American now spends five hours a day using his or her smartphone. This estimate sounds a little high to us, but no one can deny the incredible rise of smartphone use. According to Flurry, the average American now spends more time with their smartphone than watching TV.
In the daily lives of many Americans, ‘apps’ have now replaced stations or channels. This has huge importance for all advertisers, including local businesses or service providers. It means that big-budget, professionally produced video ads are less likely to be viewed then an amateur YouTube video that goes viral. As Flurry puts it, “Apps have grown more popular than watching TV — something that speaks to users’ interest in apps for more than just utility.”
The key to getting your small business or professional practice noticed by smartphone users is a compelling visual presentation. A static website must still be the foundation of your branding strategy, and you must still have a sound SEO strategy. That is the place users go when they are seeking basic information like a business’ phone number or map directions.
However, Flurry also reports that U.S. users are spending huge amounts of time in social media, messaging and media and entertainment applications. Facebook, the leader in smartphone time, holds a 19 percent share of the smartphone usage clock. Facebook is more than a site for looking at baby pictures or videos of your last party. It is also where users go to shop for shoes; they can see 3, 4 or 20 different styles on actual feet. It is where they go to see how a CPA would use QuickBooks to help their small business or to watch a walking tour of a house for sale.
In short, audio and visual presentations are the best way to draw attention to your small business, professional practice or service business. Axiom Administrative Services can provide professional help in producing these video presentations, placing them on Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat (the new and rising social media), and linking them to your other internet marketing vehicles. Social media plus video equals a more memorable, compelling result. See how by clicking on AXIOM VIDEO IN FACEBOOK.
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