Tips for Growing a Positive Corporate Brand Identity Online
Convincing people to care about a faceless corporation can be challenging. That’s why developing a positive corporate brand identity online is crucial.
A good corporate brand identity lets you connect with your audience in a new way. Your audience will stop thinking of you as “just another local business” They’ll start connecting your brand with positive things – like the funny tweet they saw last week from your social media marketing specialist.
Today, we’re highlighting some of the best strategies brands are using to grow a positive corporate brand identity online today.
Consistency Across Platforms
One of the first rules of brand identity is to maintain consistency across all platforms. Whether you’re advertising on TV or social media, you want to enforce the same brand identity.
It can be confusing for customers when a company has different branding on different platforms. If your website has different branding than your storefront or television commercials, then website visitors might think it’s a competitor’s site.
A successful brand needs to offer consistent communication and a consistent experience to customers across multiple types of media, including:
- Your storefront or office
- Print, signage, and packaging
- Website design and online advertising
- Content marketing and social media
- Sales and customer service
Don’t confuse customers. Make sure your website, social media, and storefront/office branding are all on the same page.
Research Competing Brands Within your Niche
It can be overwhelming to sit down and create a brand building strategy. There are so many different ways to tackle the problem. There are so many different platforms to target.
One of the best places to start is by researching competing brands within your niche. Check what your competitors are doing. What unique things are your competitors doing with their social media accounts? Who are your competitors targeting with their online advertising campaigns? Are competitors creating a brand that’s professional? Or are they going for a more fun and entertaining brand identity?
Check which competitors are most successful in your space. Adopt some of their best practices while mixing in your own unique brand identity.
Avoid Repeating the Same Message Over and Over Again
Here’s another common pitfall for small and medium-sized businesses building brand identity online: they tend to repeat the same message over and over again.
Maybe they found the perfect slogan. Maybe they’re particularly proud of a certain quality of their product.
It’s important to repeat the core values of your brand to clients. However, it’s also important to avoid repeating the same message in the same way over and over again. It makes your brand look like a one-trick pony.
Don’t Try to Mimic Chains or Big Corporations If You’re an SMB
Too many small and medium-sized businesses try too hard to develop an effective brand identity: they try to mimic the brands of big corporations or chains.
Typically, larger corporations have the ability to hire a dedicated social media marketing team. Many small businesses are lucky to dedicate 30 minutes a day to social media.
Instead of mimicking the identity of bigger brands, spend time developing your own unique identity. Otherwise, customers will see your brand as just a smaller, more expensive version of the larger competitor.
Today’s consumers are moving away from big brands. There’s a growing push for smaller, local businesses. If you’re a small business, you may not be able to compete with your nationwide competitors on price, but you can certainly compete with them on customer service. Emphasize that.
Balance your Online Media Mix
Another common pitfall of building brand identity online is emphasizing too much of one platform. You might consistently build your brand identity on Twitter, for example, while ignoring good web design or Instagram marketing.
Mix up your brand development across different media. At the same time, remember our lesson from above: keep your brand consistent across different platforms.
Different types of customers use different methods of communication. Some customers spend a lot of time on social media, for example, while others don’t use it at all. By mixing up your brand identity management across platforms, you can reinforce your positive brand identity to as many users as possible.
Network Online and Offline
“Networking” is obviously crucial for any business. Today, many people ignore networking when building their brand online. This is a problem.
When building your brand, online and offline networking is crucial.
Online networking can be as simple as tagging a partner in a tweet or Instagram post. Or, you could reach out to a partner in the space for a guest blog post.
As you build positive connections with different groups in your industry, your brand identity will grow over time. Networking online and offline is crucial to positive brand identity development online.
Overall, Remember that Building a Brand Takes Time
There are lots of things on the internet you can build overnight. You can build a website overnight, for example. You can write a blog post.
One thing you can’t do on the internet overnight, however, is build a brand. It takes time to build a brand. At the beginning, your social media account’s activity might be seen by just 4 or 5 real people. Over time, however, as your brand grows, success will come.
Contact Renew Marketing today to discover how we can use proven brand building techniques to increase your small or medium-sized business’s online presence.
