Online Branding Blog – reactorr.com

Marketing With A Beat

SouthWest airlines has been known for doing things their own special way for some time, which customers have come to love them for. When you do things differently, or empower your people to do so, you’re giving your brand a voice. This is the next best thing to a personality, and when done to the approval of customers, will often give you a competitive edge just by being preferred or more likeable.

Here’s a great video (I won’t give it away, you’ll have to watch) that demonstrates a brand shining through its employees. After the flight, how many people do you think told someone of their experience?

To Twitter Or Not

Twitter is an interesting idea, but it has a few down sides. First, you’re building your brand on someone else’s site. It’s important to leverage social tools, but keep in mind that you’re also giving up the potential link equity in doing so. Also. you’re inside a network, so it kind of hinders the potential in another way too.

Don’t get me wrong, in some cases Twitter makes a lot of sense. But I think that the effort, even though its micro blogging, is better put to use on your own blog. You can plug Twitter into it so it picks up the feed, and start following a few and commenting to a few directly. It’s really about roi and time management, which will really depend on who you are and how you use it. While that’s kind of a generalized statement, its a question of balance really. Some people will spend countless hours on it, and are addicted. Just ask John Mayer about it.

How you use Twitter is also up for debate. Some companies are using it to maintain communications with customers and open the channels a little bit.

There are some great examples of how to micro blog in 160 characters or less. But there are even more examples of how not to Twitter. Which is probably why I find this animated short so amusing…

Brand Management with Social Media

Despite your best efforts, and what you might think, your brand is managed by consumers. But before you get defensive, because I’m sure you’ve done a great job so far, allow me to explain.

Regardless of whether your brand has an online presence in the form of a website, it exists in the mind of the consumer and their conversations whether online or offline are going to shape your brand.

These conversations have been taking place without your knowledge for some time, and you can use an assortment of online tools to monitor those conversations. Besides just Googling for answers, there are several other ways to tap into the conversation.

Start with Twitter to get things rolling. Twitter is referred to as microblogging, and depending who starts the conversation it can spread within this community like wild fire.

Also be sure to use Google alerts, which you can setup as it happens, once a day, and once a week for notification.

You can also listen to what’s happening within the blogosphere by checking Technorati and a Google blog search for others signs of buzz or fires that need your attention.

Also keep in mind that your site analytics can provide some insight too. You might notice traffic from a long phrase or something unique to your brand.

How Can Smart Marketers Include SEO?

Marketing budgets are including the web a lot more these days, but what is there to consider if you want to include SEO in the marketing mix?

• If you’re building a website or planning to build a quick-response PR strategy in place, SEO should be part of the plan from day one.
• By understanding search behaviour and assessing what people are searching for, where they’re searching for it, they will enable brands to reach the biggest potential customer base
• Use SEO to increase the efficiency of other media touchpoints – 80 percent of internet journeys start with a search
• Use SEO to make your Pay Per Click campaigns work harder – take a holistic view of search activity across the board
• Make sure your paid search campaigns are working effectively with your SEO
• Cultivating online brand advocates, and then identify and include them in press and communications schedules. Having your brand advocates synched with your communications will prove invaluable if bad news were to strike

Google Profile Pages

A new feature from Google are profile pages, which have been around a bit, but now you can get a more legible url like http://www.google.com/profiles/marknic

You can also add links to your profile page, so if you already have an account (and who doesn’t) you might as well make good use of it.

Advertising Is Dead… Again!

Unless you have a superbowl budget or award winning creative, your ads probably aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

A few years back a book called “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”  discussed how advertising’s ineffectiveness can no longer be overlooked. There used to be a saying that for an ad to work, a viewer or consumer should see that message at least 7 times. Then it was 12, followed by 20, and I’ve even heard it repeated as “if a consumer doesn’t see your ad at least 30 times they don’t see it at all”. Oh really? After anything even close 10 times, I’m changing channels or tuning out this repititious drivel.

So how does a marketer reach a consumer these days? A savvy marketer is going to go where consumers are to put their message in front of them. But isn’t that just advertising again?

The key is value. Give something people want, and make it accessible. Providing value in your offering is going to do much more than advertising. You can’t ignore that advertising is great for raising awareness, but on the web there is this thing called “bounce rate”, which refers to people that visit your site and click the back button. That’s wasted advertising dollars if your bounce rate is high. But a truly decent value proposition has many advantages. Consumers become your marketers, spreading the word for you. How this is done will have to wait for another time.