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February 28, 2018 By Jody Raines 1 Comment

3 Key Tips For Internet Branding

Online branding agency, Jody RainesBranding is a business marketing campaign necessity.  Having a brand helps clients and prospects remember your company’s name and services and forms a comfortable association between your product and offer.  In an increasingly competitive market, utilizing branding techniques builds a dependable and trustworthy identity for your company, one that your customers and potential customers will rely upon when making a choice of product or service.

Understanding how to create a brand or identity utilizing Internet marketing strategy is important for businesses to compete in today’s new media marketplace.  While creating a website that proves well in the search engine rankings is great, it’s not the only mechanism or tool a marketer must have to build an effective marketing campaign that drives conversions.  Even the best seo will understand that if there is a disconnect between the keywords and the Internet presence,  you may have all the traffic to your site that you need, but conversions won’t happen.

I recently was asked to do SEO for a a company that was concerned because they are not getting sales.  An evaluation of the online assets revealed that the company’s website had good traffic, and they were ranking for keywords that were appropriate.  So, why weren’t they getting sales?  Frankly, it’s because the branding was a disconnect with the customer’s expectations.

If you are offering a product that is handcrafted and upscale, you should pick appropriate colors versus offering a product that’s popular and young.  With the handcrafted item, colors that are rich and luxurious like ivory and burgundy and sage would be appropriate.  With a youthful, popularly priced product, go for the brights.  In either case, the message and the look and feel should match to create a powerful brand message.
Here are 3 key aspects to branding in today’s marketing:

  1. Branding your website is the important first step. Understanding who your customer is and what their preferences are is important to identifying how to brand your website.  Especially if your color palette is inconsistent with customer expectations, you’ll find out pretty quickly that you’ve made a mistake.   Not only is color critical, it’s also important to create a user interface that reflects what your customer is searching for more than what you feel you want to present to the customer.  Having a website that’s all about “us” versus all about “you” is a common mistake. however having a unique graphic design, graphic logo, color theme and a smart targeted message will differentiate your company from the competition.
  2. Branding your Social Media is key to business engagement.  Recognizing your brand when connecting with social media reinforces your company message and identity.  Just having a Twitter account with the default icon is enough to inspire a lack of trust by potential customers.  You should brand all of your social media accounts to match the look and feel of your website consistently.  Facebook business pages, Google+ business pages and your Twitter profile are all part of a cultivated business brand that inspires trust and conveys branded messaging that is mutually reinforcing.  Utilizing social media also enables you to identify customer issues and react to them quickly – creating a rapport between you and your customers that wasn’t achievable before social media became a popular marketing tool.
  3. Branding your business blog is important for developing credibility and authority.  The difference between a blog and static pages on the website is that the blog is a great way to position yourself as a thought leader and build content dynamically for your website.  The blog is used to answer questions and pose helpful ideas as opposed to selling your product or service.  Branding your blog to complement your website is an important approach to creating a brand identity.  Branding your company blog helps to establish your your business’ reputation as a valuable source of information.

Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, your marketing strategy is important, and now with the power of Internet marketing, it’s critical that all components work in unison to build brand recognition.  What is your branding strategy?  Have you identified who your customer is and what their persona is?  How do you know that your marketing is working together to create a powerful brand?  Is it?

Filed Under: Keyword Phrases, Marketing Metrics, Product Branding, Product Marketing, Website Credibility, Website Design, Website Optimization Tagged With: Jody Raines, Online Branding, Social Media Branding, Website Branding

February 6, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

Fly Eagles? Fly Dogs! How Social Media Changed A Mascot

The Eagles WON the Super Bowl.  Social Media is abuzz with burning questions regarding the team mascot:  Is it a bird?  Is it a German Shepherd? Or a is it a Belgian Malinois?

Belgian Malinois

Ruger, a Belgian Malinois, pondering his resemblance to the Eagles Underdog

Some fans may have been puzzled that the Eagles, whose mascot, by the way IS an Eagle, were wearing dog masks.  Most of the masks were a shepherd type dog with dark muzzle, but some creative types posted their masks of other breeds as their spirit moved them!

Creepy German Shepherd

The CreepyParty German Shepherd Mask

The “underdogs” motif may not be officially Sanctioned, however they are proving popular with fans.  What’s more fun than a graphic of a fierce dog/man who’s “gotta eat”, “gotta be trusted” or who can fly?  Variations of the dog/bird/man can be found and purchased on street corners, on popular websites like Amazon, EBay and Etsy.  Variants of the Eagles logo with a dog head are also popular.

Whether they are officially licensed or not (mostly not) the burning question in my mind is whether this dog tracks it’s lineage to the German Shepherd dog, a very popular and recognized breed, or whether it’s the Belgian Shepherd or Belgian Malinois, a breed that has gained popularity and favor with law enforcement and which has been glamorized recently in movies and television shows.

Underdog Eagles Logo

The official Eagles rendition does not even look like a German Shepherd OR a Malinois.

It’s easy to be confused or to mistake one for another.  In fact, there are many crosses that are being touted as one or the other, but it takes an astute observer of the breed standard to discern which breed is predominant.

So I did a scientific analysis of the “underdog” mask.  By scientific, I mean that I asked my friends who are dog breeders and have been involved with the breeds for many years what type of dog the mask represents.   My Belgian Malinois friends all say the mask is a “really bad German Shepherd”.   With this in mind, I asked my German Shepherd breeding friends, and their collective response was “We are not sure”.

So, considering that most people would not recognize a Belgian Malinois, and most would certainly recognize a German Shepherd or Shepherd Mix,  I am going to concur with the masses, that this must be a German Shepherd.

Interesting side note, the mask, which was produced originally by a Chinese Company who had NO idea about the impending popularity, was sold out in one day on Amazon.  All 230 of the CreepyParty “German Shepherd” masks were sold out in one morning.   The owners of the company, Jason Lee had no idea what happened, and to his amazement, discovered that the sell out was due to the Eagles win over Atlanta in the playoffs, and two Eagles players, Lane Johnson and Chris Long, celebrated by donning the masks and embracing the role of “underdogs”.  The rest was a social media firestorm, and adoption of the German Shepherd mask as a rallying cry to Eagles Fans everywhere.

So, don’t despair, Eagles fans… we are NOT losing an Eagle, we are gaining a German Shepherd as a mascot.

Congratulations #Eagles!  #FlyDogs#Fly

Filed Under: Fun Stuff, Product Branding, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: Eagles Underdog, Social media, Social Media Branding

Internet Marketing Insights

Online Branding

How To Develop An Online Brand

June 22, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

When it comes to being discovered online, the one part of your online presence that you “own” is your website.  Your website should be the cornerstone of your online strategy – the information contained is the beacon that customers can find when they look for you or your services. But, your website is only a […]

Jody Raines Blogger

Should You DIY Your Website? Tips For Better User Experience And Design

February 26, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

A friend recently posted on Facebook that her new ‘business website’ has launched. She proudly asked for all of her friends to come and visit and share what they thought. The well-meaning friends who complimented her on the site fueled her enthusiastic response that she created the site herself using a free service. She then […]

Redesigning The Home Page? 8 Common Website Mistakes To Avoid

May 13, 2014 By Jody Raines 2 Comments

Redesigning the Website Homepage can result in greatly improved conversions when done well.  The first trick is finding a website designer who understands inbound marketing.    The process should begin with an evaluation of your existing online marketing campaign as well as your website to ensure that all  components work together in an effective and […]

Linkedin Fail

Social Media Fail: Are You Using Linkedin Wrong?

February 21, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

If you had a dollar for every mistake that someone made using social media, you’d be a very wealthy person! In the meantime, the catalyst for this post was an email that I received from someone I am not well acquainted with, but who asked to connect with me on Linkedin. The letter began with, […]

Social Media And Social Networking: Best Practices And Big Mistakes For LinkedIn

July 17, 2018 By Jody Raines Leave a Comment

Social media, especially LinkedIn, are networking tools which, when applied correctly, can potentially grow your business exponentially.  Utilizing social media channels correctly shouldn’t be difficult, yet for some reason, the people who use all social media channels to blast out the same message, will continue to barrage the wrong people with the wrong messaging.  What […]

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