Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

Branding Online - Why Marketers Need SEO

In an interview entitled Common Mistakes of Marketing Creatives and CEOs, Keith Reinhard (Chairman Emeritus of DDB) explains…

“When I was growing up in the industry, let me entertain you, let me make you smile, I’m very versatile, it was one way.”

Advertising was this way for decades, and what may have worked for the last 40 years clearly isn’t as effective these days. A shift like this comes as no surprise. Whether its advertising or just about anything, things change.
Reinhard goes on to describe the way things work now by suggesting…

“Now it’s we’re better together”.

This is a great point as the emergence of social media has had such an impact on brands, possibly one of the largest in recent times. Consumers are tired of being told and now look within their networks or trusted resources or contacts for more impartial views and recommendations.

An interesting point also brought up in the video mentions how when a CEO is really involved with the brand, the brand endures, has integrity, and can sustain the revolving doors of marketing directors.  A great point as with each change in marketing leadership comes someone that scraps direction and previously built equity.

One of the best definitions of a brand I’ve heard was provided during this interview…

A brand is who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.
One person that has maintained these types of values is Steve jobs of Apple. Over the course of the last 20 years Apple as a brand has probably never strayed far. But one example of branding confusion that comes to mind is McDonald’s. It seems with each new agency they hire (every 2-3 years) there is a different direction in the messaging. For example, they make burgers, they make them fast, and their affordable. But over the years they’ve introduced pizza, ribs, and even salads.

Online branding will take marketing to new heights with the speed at which you can connect with consumers. With social media, search marketing, and Internet advertising a brand can literally grow at sonic speeds compared with the past.

Marketers still seem to overlook the potential of SEO and how it can drive measureable revenue to their online business, yet have adopted to the virtues of social media rather quickly.

Perhaps it’s the inability of the average marketer to truly understand the benefits of how SEO and online branding belong together and how it can help their bottom line.

With paid search marketing results (PPC) accounting for roughly 20% of the clicks in typical search results, that leaves a lot of cash on the table in terms of customer acquisition.

For SEO’s, the following isn’t new information, but it might be of interest to marketers which are less familiar with the practice.
If you try the Google Keyword Tool you can get some insight to the potential of SEO and appearing in natural search results. Depending on the phrase, you can increase your visibility by thousands and more with a properly executed SEO strategy that pushes your site into the top 10 results.

It’s important to note that SEO is similar to branding in one sense. It’s a process and requires a fair amount of time to achieve those top ranking results. Realistic expectations depending on your industry to rise to the top can range from 6 months to several years. One of the keys to increased success in this venture is the quality of your content or offering. By focusing on this aspect, marketers stand to gain advocates, which will assist in the link building process by blogging, tweeting, or linking to your site for you.

You might be thinking tweeting falls under social media, but it’s the content they tweet that should be part of your SEO strategy. Sometimes referred to as link bait, it’s about the creation of quality content that will help to get those links.

Content creation and planning sometimes falls on the shoulders of an SEO, as does PR and many other tasks.  It’s always wise to have an SEO involved in the process but not necessarily depend solely on them to create this sort of material.

The role of SEO is about optimizing a site (for starters), but more important, is to improve the online visibility of said website so that it will rank for phrases that you’re targeting for your business.

When you think about it, there isn’t anything much better than your site showing up in the top listings when a potential customer is in the buying mode and looking for a product or service like one you might offer.


There is more likelihood of them inquiring or purchasing versus presenting banner ads all over. Most web users have banner blindness. Can you recall 3 banners you’ve seen in the last week? Most are lucky to be able to name one they had seen.

There probably isn’t a better way to position your brand online than showing up in the top search results. In the long run, your brand will become synonymous with the phrases you’ve targeted and displaying in those results also provides credibility to your brand’s product or service.

You should note that when you appear in those results, the url in first position will get about 42% of the clicks, while second gets 12%, third gets 9%, and it starts to drop sharply with each position after. And being on page two is like not being found at all.

You can see the entire interview mentioned above here.

Tags: internet branding, Internet Marketing, online branding, SEO

Digital Marketing

The old rules of digital marketing have changed. Past performance measures of ROI differ to that of “traditional” digital media. Recent research shows that consumers can be up to 40 percent more likely to purchase a product if they have liased with that brand in a social space.

Consumers do their fair share of online research before making a lot of purchases, and online branding has a big influence when a potential customer searches a phrase and find you in the top 5 natural listings. Of course paid listings are fine, but almost 80 percent of the clicks go to natural listings. Which is why a lot of people prefer search marketing and Internet advertising over SEO. You can turn on your campaigns quick, and track them easily.

But when it comes to your best online marketing ROI, there’s no comparison to SEO. The only downfall is the initial time and investment up front. But you might look at as an investment in your online branding.

Another area of Digital Marketing that’s difficult to forecast a return on can be social media. It seems this really depends on whether Social Media is the right fit for your business, but it’s more than just Twitter and Facebook. Although if you’re new to it all you might have trouble telling. But it’s fairly important that online branding includes a social media strategy, as well as developing your presence within relevant circles such as participating in the right forums and commenting on blogs.

Although the performance measures aren’t clear cut, developing metrics beyond web traffic is a good start.

Social Media and Online Branding

Whether its social networking or social bookmarking, social media is creating a paradigm shift in the way we consume media. This is not a mere blip on the radar, but a tsunami of sorts. But don’t mistake social media as another advertising channel. Marketer’s need to realize its more about talking to, and not talking at.

By knowing your audience you can leverage this medium. Note that its not a trend and your marketing efforts should include social media for your online marketing or branding strategy. Consider watching the following video to get a better understanding of social media’s influence.

A prime example of social media acceptance is a site you may know of called Facebook (a social media favorite) with over 250 million uers. It sees more than 1.5 million pieces of content (Web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on its site daily. In fact, the way we interact and socialize has undergone surprising changes, with one out of eight couples married in the U.S. last year having met via social media. Although you might be surprised to learn that the fastest growing segment of Facebook are 55- to 65-year-old females.

About 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. With about 78% of consumers trusting peer recommendations, and only 14% trusting advertisements. Furthermore, 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands. Another interesting fact - 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video… on their phone .

Social media, bookmarking, and citizen journalism may jeopardize the future of print media. Its estimated that 98% of the largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news - the news finds us.

 If you’re serious about online branding and engaging with customers, you need to include social media in your strategy.

Tags: Advertising, online branding, Social Media

Social Media Business Strategies

Using social media tools can allow a business to connect and create conversations with their clients. Savvy companies have picked up on the opportunities and are already engaged. Throughout the customer life cycle a company can educate, support, pitch, introduce and more.

Social media is about conntecting people. Integratration of social media into your marketing strategy is no longer a question if whether if you should, but how you plan to do so. The possibilities are numerous, and your customers will show their appreciation through shorter sales cyles and increased business.

Usually customers are using social media tools before the companies are, so its important to participate, but also understand that you’re not in charge. Simply put, either let go or lose control.

Where does one start? Does your company have a blog? Depending on the nature of your business, you might have several experts within your company and want to have multiple blogs. If you have more than one division or product line you might be a candidate for multiple blogs.  Maybe your engineers are working on different aspects of the business that justify multiple blogs? An example of a company with multiple blogs is GMblogs which discusses everything from new products to events. This approach caters to specific interests and makes the blogs more interesting to read than lumping all related aut content into one blog.

Dell is another example, with 10 internal blogs and over 20 Twitter accounts, they’re maintaining relations and communication with consumers on a few levels. If your business can be segmented, without becoming overly fragmented, multiple blogs might be an option for you too.

In other cases, it can make sense to run forums. This is more of a direct conversation with your audience and can require a higher degree of maintenance. As would creating your own social network. But the return on a successfully create forum or social network provides a direction line of communication with your customer. Be forewarned that creating and maintaining a forum or social network is a demanding endeavour.

By personalizing the customer experience through interaction you involve your customers and give your company a face at the same time. And advantage of having multiple blogs is, when applicable, you’re delivering a more targeted message to the readers. It’s important to keep in mind not to be overly commercial in your conversation, yet still mention informative news. Being informative and resourceful is going to add stickiness and interest to your message, as opposed to using it as an advertising channel.

Studies now show that as much as 60% of consumers find advertising unappealing or irrelevant. We’re no longer living in a society where media can push messages at consumers. They’ll find what they want, when they want. Your brand can be part of that.

Another great example is when P&G developed beinggirl.com to put themselves at the center of the conversation. While its cheaper to sponsor a site than create and support one, the control and equity built are incomparable. The community P&G built surrounds issues of the target market and hold their attention.  Building a community isn’t for everyone, it can depend on your audience and topic. In the case of beinggirl the consumer is higher to participate and join in the conversation, and they would be at the beginning of the sales cycle. Determining their lifetime value it made sense to create the community. This chart from BusinessWeek illustrates contributors by age.

Examples cited might be Fortune 1000, the message is still the same. Brand awareness is more than advertising. Maintaining that top of mind awareness is no longer about repetition. We know that hasn’t worked for some time and consumers are tuning us out the message. Products and services of value are about making life easier, so it stands to reason the message ought to be following the same format. Provide value in your communications and consumers will notice, preach to them and you risk losing them.

Although mentioned previously, it’s worth restating; you can either be part of the conversation or watch the opportunities to speak with your customers pass you by.

Did You Know - Globalization And The Information Age

A revised version of the video Globalization and the Information Age.

It’s filled with fascinating trivia about the times we live in…

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 5th largest in the world.

There are 31 billion searches on Google every day.

Created by Karl Fisch. Modified by Scott McLeod.

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

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.

Tags: Advertising

Hello world!

I finally did it. I finally started a blog. And with the help of this list I’ll get things moving

1)Start list of stuff to do
2)