Targeting – Your advertising should appeal to the demographic where you place your ads. Consistent messaging that conveys your the values of your product or service is key to driving recognition or recall for when they’re in a buying mode. Creating top of mind awareness with consistency and repetition can build equity. It’s surprising how often people will think one ad will suffice for all. This isn’t print. You can rotate different creative and run with your best performers.
Social Media – Engage with your audience. It all sounds easy, but it mostly falls apart in a week or three. While starting with good intentions, other duties call. Most companies don’t have the luxury of hiring a dedicated social media specialist to manage these things, so it usually gets added to the list of tasks an employee needs to do. The best way to manage it is scheduling a block of time at least once or twice a week. Find the medium that suits you, but also look at where your customers are. It’s also recommended to grab your brand name as a username for the bigger sites like youtube, facebook, twitter, flickr, technorati, ning, delicious, yelp, scribd, and others.
Reputation Management – Staying on top of what you rank for and the conversations around your brand allows you to stay a step ahead, and possibly avoid putting out fires later. If you were to google your brand name, do any of the top ten listings have negative impact? Are you monitoring the dialogue around your brand in social media? If you see negative results in the top 10 listings when searching for your brand, you’ll want to address it before too many customers come across it.
Search Marketing - If you run an affiliate program and pay for leads, you might consider taking over bids on your brand name in Google Adwords. Why pay more for leads if you own the trademark to your brand name? Run your own campaign for those searching your brand to retain control.
Search Engine Optimization – Companies searching for your brand name obviously know of you already, but what about the ones searching for the products or services your offer? These are targeted prospects, often in buying mode. Many companies make the mistake of not including SEO in their marketing strategy. The game has changed, and those that are late will have to work twice as hard to catch up, probably more. Displaying in search engine results for phrases your customers are looking for is an excellent way to build credibility for your brand. Being synonymous with a phrase strengthens that top of mind awareness and would be comparable to branding on steroids. If you’re a customer and searching for a phrase, research shows 42% click the first listing, and 74% of the results clicked are in the top 5 positions. In a recent study, SEO shows to provide the best ROI over all other forms of online marketing.
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online branding 
