Everyone in business nowdays knows that you have to be online to have serious earnings potential and stay competitive in the marketplace because the vast majority of consumers are online and many go online to seek out their future purchases or compare prices on items. Thus having a recognizable online brand identity and specific marketing is essential for a successful product sales campaign. Developing a brand strategy for online business is similar to developing one for regular marketing purposes, you simply have to redefine some elements and take your mission and goal of expansion and credibility further.
1. Define product demographics
Who will be interested in your product and want to purchase it? What kind of person is the brand made for? Set some clear demographics so you know who you'll be marketing to and have some sort of concept of what you might do to spark their interest or catch their attention.
2. Tune into demographics' online portals
Once your target group has been identified you'll need to figure out where they are online and what they're into that will allow you to reach them. If you're marketing to 30-50 year old women you may be looking into parenting forums, working woman websites and mom savings blogs as this group seems to spend a great deal of their time online in these arenas. Hire people to blog and post on these sites to start discussions and talk about your products. This will give you an unbiased look at what the average view of your product is and how you can improve the brand or further strengthen its presence online. These online portals are also where you'll later be advertising and pushing the brand identity later on so it's nice to establish a presence early on even if it's an invisible one that you simply use as a reference.
3. Create some demos
Make a couple examples of your brand identity items including an online logo, slogan, overall look and marketing campaign. You need to have more than one option so that if one proves to be unsuccessful in the beginning you have another to turn to later on. Or you can give consumers the option of choosing what they like in a poll, competition or survey of some sort.
4. Ask customers
Once you have a potential online brand strategy in place you can have a test run with your target consumers. This can be done a number of ways; through a survey, a free trial, incentive and reward programs or even a competition. Have a consumers come up with your brand identity for you through the guise of a competition in which the winner gets a cash prize or other large prize. Surveys can track what consumers think of your current brand identity and provide helpful feedback on what works or does not work with your current design. This can be a voluntary survey however those with rewards or incentives yield higher numbers of people filling them out and giving more detailed answers.
5. Track results
Once you have a brand strategy in place you need to track the results to see if it's working at whatever the goal of the strategy was. If the brand is new then the strategy is likely to increase awareness among the public and interest among the target demographic base. If the brand is more established the goal may be to increase the earnings by a specific percentage over a designated length of time. Watch the number of hits you get on ads, on your website, polls and so on. See if one market does better than another and after finding out why decide how to rearrange your marketing campaign funds and adjust your brand strategy accordingly.
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