Published in usinessasiaweekly.com

1. 18 Monday, January 24 / Sunday January 30, 2011
Technology BUSINESS ASIA
Building your brand through online marketing
Search works as a complimentary pull media
like paid and organic search. Search essen-
tially is pull media compared to offline ad-
vertising which I refer as push media.
Paid search offers the ability to control
your online brand visibility, customer inter-
action, messaging, and—all key elements in
brand building. It also offers great amount of
control when it comes to managing budgets
as well as reporting. Making real time Product &
changes in campaigns with real time data has Services
never been easy to access to marketers before.
So building the brand is one of the most Google Search
important objectives of any business but how
can businesses achieve this objective by com-
bining offline and online channels?
Start by building out a comprehensive
Hassan Imtiazi pay per click program with the targeted cam- The critical factors in search engine opti- brands and how brands used to interact with
W
paigns & keywords, which are relevant to misation are having relevant content, intelli- its users. Previously, brand owners were the
Three-Pronged Approach your business and which your customers
would search on to find information about
gent design, good and relevant links.
Considering that 39% of users believe that the
ones who dictated to the users but now
brands are in the hands of the consumer, any-
your company or products. websites appearing in the top search results one and everyone can discuss or post in the
ith the leaps and bounds made Next step is to build creative or ad copy are the leaders in their field, it’s important for form of review about products or services.
in internet and smart technol- to speak to your brand’s messaging, and keep businesses to show up in the top search re-
ogy marketing, the world feels it consistent with your offline messaging. For sults. In order to do this, you’ll need to create The most popular social
platforms
like a much smaller place. example O2 offer simplicity as one of their unique and valuable content on a continuous
However, most of advertisers don’t fully products and target this keyword on paid basis that will drive up your rankings and so-
know how to utilize these online and smart campaigns so that if someone sees an offline lidify your brand presence in the results. . Facebook
channels, platforms and resources which message and searches for simplicity they will You’ll also need to continue with your offline · Twitter
offer so much potential and opportunities to find the brand advert. brand messaging, focus on the benefits of · YouTube
get their message out. Another thing is to offer USP (unique sell- your brand versus your competition, and · LinkedIn
Unfortunately, Asians businesses in UK ing point); do you have something that is work on gaining valuable links from relevant · MySpace
due to limited budgets and lack of resourses uniquely different from your competitors? Do websites as external linking is a major part of · Blogs
are still far behind mainstream business you have a discount or an offer? Make sure to the success of an organic search campaign. · Delicious
when it comes to harnessing the potential of use that in your creative and landing pages. · Flickr
online marketing. Lastly, tap into the Display Network to Some tips · Hi5
Some examples even include big names reach the broadest network of customers by · Reddit
such as Tilda Rice and Elephant Atta – for being in front of them during their every day 1. Put unique HTML titles & META · Tagged
while they invest TV and newspaper adver- interaction with the web. But be careful while descriptions on all important pages As of January 2011[update]
tising, they appear to lag behind when it starting on Google display Network as this can 2. Optimise your meta and page content <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=
comes to online advertising. be tricky. Google adwords and Microsoft ad- 3. Generate sitemaps Facebook&action=edit> , Facebook has more
center are two major players in PPC marketing. 4. Start a link building program than 600 million active users. This has opened
Here are some interesting Your ultimate goal should be to bring 5. Submit your business address to Google new avenues for brands to interact with their
statistics:
these potential customers via paid search and Maps <http://www.capecodseo.com/how-to- user’s directly. If done well, people will be your
convert them into your loyal and regular cus- g e t- t op -ranking s -i n-g o o gl e-w it hou t - brand advocates. Participating in social media
1. According to IGE the value of online gro- tomers. Technically you should not be spend- investing-in-search-engine-optimization/> allows you to take creativity, unique content,
cery shopping by 2015 will be £ 9.5 billion. ing a lot of money each month for customer 6. Use a free keyword research tool and linking to the next level. So how do you
2. This £30.5 billion will be spent globally acquisition rather a good number of cus- <http://www.google.com/search?q=free+key- get involved in social media? Where do you
on advertising through search engine mar- tomers should come to your website as direct word+research+tools&sourceid=navclient- get involved? And how does it impact search?
keting for this year (ZenithOptmedia) visitors. Direct visitors refer to those who ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS176US231> Start with a clearly defined strategy for
3. Penetration of broadband in the UK is rel- type your URL directly or who have save your to find long-tail keyword ideas getting your brand out there. It should be
ativity high - more than 90%, which makes website address in their favorites. 7. Check your Google AdWords reports for high-level and fit with the objectives of your
perfect opportunity for online retailers profitable keyword referrals that you had not brand. Then figure out which pieces of social
4. UK consumers are probably early adopters Leverage from organic search been optimizing organically for media work for your brand and how best to
of technologies and trends after their US 8. Re-evaluate the landing pages of your worst interact. Should you be on Facebook? Should
counter parts Organic search gives the opportunity to drive performing PPC campaigns and ad groups you be on Twitter? Not every social medium
5. According to Comscore 2 billion people free web traffic or potential customers to your 9. Contribute to a discussion in an industry will be right for your brand, so how do you
conduct online searches every day worldwide website. To get your website on top of SERP’s related online forum figure out where to start and when to engage?
for different products or services (search engine result pages), especially on the Although companies have been spending First keep in mind that this is not just mar-
6. 67% of online search users are driven to top three positions, is very difficult for most of more budget on paid search, for long term sta- keting to consumers; instead, it’s actually inter-
search for information about a particular the website owners. Studies have showed that bility and benefits one can’t ignore the impor- acting with the community. Given that, you
company, product, service, or slogan by an almost 60% of the people check the first three tance of search engine optimization. There are need to get involved, and genuinely becoming a
offline channel results of their search and if they don’t find the number of free resources available like Alexa part of the community will go a long way to pro-
7. 88% of internet users visit search engines link they are looking for then they consider and Google analytics which can give you in- moting the integrity of your brand. In addition,
8. Being online is the 2nd most common sponsored links on the top and right hand side depth knowledge about your website for free. be mindful that social media affects search.
thing you do while watching TV – after eating of the page. Since the ranking formula or algo- You can see your website rankings given to At the end of the day, it’s your brand, and
(Thinkbox TV + Internet Better Together rithm developed by Google is secret, companies your website by Google, how your website per- your investment. And not only is it worth
May 2008) and agencies are spending huge budgets to be forms compared to your competitors and can protecting, it’s worth improving. A few com-
able to get first position on the search results. develop content program by carefully moni- panies like Starbucks have managed to get
So how can a small trader To help SEO professionals, Google sometimes toring keywords in analytics which drive traf- maximum benefits out of social media such
take benefit of these facts?
announces guidelines to follow which can have fic or sales to your website. Building content as ‘My Starbucks’. They have presence on
a positive impact on SEO results. around those keywords might be good idea. Facebook, Twitter, online YouTube channel,
Businesses have to have their online pres- The success of Google is its core func- LinkedIn and Flicker.
ence in the form of a website or on a social tionality i.e. providing relevant content to the Join the conversation in To summarize, online marketing is the
social media
network like Asian clothing retailer diyaon- searcher. If the search engine thinks that way forward for every business - not only
line.com. Secondly, the goal should promote your website content is relevant to the search does it provide efficiency but also trans-
your business (products & services) to the query then it will show your company in With the emergence of UGC sites (user gen- parency. Brands who embrace contemporary
world through online marketing. search results. In this way it can serve the erated content) like Wikipedia, face book and marketing strategies can expect to reap the
Online marketing is a mix of ingredients basic purpose of its business i.e. relevancy. review sites, there is a big shift in building benefits of online and smart technologies.