Surprisingly, there are many Singapore companies that don’t really care about their branding. In fact, many of them figure that as long as their business is ranking for their top keywords, branding doesn’t really matter. This may be true in some cases, but in most, branding could mean the difference between standing out from the competition or blending in with the rest of the crowd.
The truth is, there’s more to digital marketing success than rankings. When faced with choosing between you and the competition, the user will often click the site that offers the best branding experience. And that’s because they often associate a positive or negative emotion with it. So branding is essential, especially if you offer a high ticket service or product that requires a lot of consideration.
Companies that are Well-Branded Convert Better in the Search Results
Singapore businesses that have brands that are more established tend to see more organic traffic. Even if your company does a lot of advertising, without a strong brand presence, you’re going to inevitably miss out on a serious amount of visitors. Digital visibility is a must.
This isn’t to say that advertising is a waste of time. Sure, you want to maintain a great digital presence, but you still need to make sure that you’re spreading awareness about your business. In other words, you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
So What Is Branding?
When it comes to defining exactly what branding is, it can be very tricky. In fact, there are many marketers with a lot of experience and an infinite amount of formal education who misinterpret what this process is all about. They often miss out on the big picture altogether and assume that the steps that are taken to brand is actually the branding itself. For example, if you want to make sure that your company is well-branded, then there are several visual guidelines and standards that you must follow, but these guidelines and standards are just one element of branding.
Another element that marketers tend to mistake for branding is awareness. They assume that getting the word out about their business is the branding. But again, this is only a small portion of the process.
Many mistake testimonials and reviews as branding. However, this, like the other is only an element of branding. Sure, customer service is an essential part of establishing trust and credibility with your target audience, but it should not be mistaken for the actual process of branding itself.
So what exactly is branding? Put simply, branding is the process of creating an image for your business that helps to establish a consumer preference for your service or product. All of the previous elements that we have just discussed come together to create this experience.
The Value of Name Recognition
Whether we like it or not, name recognition plays a huge role in the buying decisions of consumers. Whether your company is large or small, whenever a consumer has to choose between several different options, they will likely choose the company that they are more familiar with. No matter their quality of service, they would rather work with the company that they have heard of before.
A great example of this is the technology industry. When computers were becoming more popular, there were many companies that offered quality products. However, when it came down to making the final purchasing decision many consumers went with the bigger names–those that they had seen before. Sure, some of the other companies may have offered cheaper and better products and services, but ultimately, they didn’t know anything about these companies.
In fact, many consumers were of the mindset that if you didn’t choose a company that had a lot of name recognition and something went wrong with your products, then it was the buyer’s own fault. Even if something went wrong with the larger brands then it wasn’t the fault of the buyer because the larger brand was likely known to provide solid solutions.
Things have changed over the last decade. Consumers are now starting to do more research and considering several other factors other than just the size of the company. However, name recognition still plays a significant role in the buyer’s journey, though it does vary depending on the industry. In order to compete, you need to make sure that your brand name is associated with reliability.
Why SEO Professionals Should Care About Branding
When it comes to advertising a new business and creating brand awareness, there are several methods that a Singapore company can use. This is especially the case when it comes to advertising offline. Things like billboards, radio and commercial ads can work wonders. However, what Singapore business owners eventually come to realise is that though effective, these methods can also be rather expensive. And that’s where SEO comes into the picture.
What SEO experts should realise is that the key to name recognition is often great branding. In fact, SEO agencies should get excited when they learn that their new client’s company has absolutely no brand recognition. This creates the perfect opportunity because you’re working with a clean slate. These companies often have limited budgets so SEO can help with recognition especially for services and products that are being researched by the consumer.
What SEO professionals need to do is focus on answering the questions that the consumers have. When you have all of the answers, this helps to build both trust and credibility. The more questions you answer, the more potential customers will see your name and realise that your products or services may be just what they are looking for.
Superior Ways of Using SEO to Increase Brand Awareness
Increasing brand awareness is one of the most important responsibilities of brand managers and marketers. If you want to increase the awareness of our business brand, you should consider investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to a MarketingDive survey, 82% of marketers believe SEO is increasing becoming popular due to more businesses embracing its potent ability to foster growth.
As you already know, the secret to building strong brand awareness is to expose your brand to your target audience regularly. Consumers learn about the products or services of your business due to your efforts to promote your brand. Constantly exposing your business to consumers while impressing them with great experiences will make them trust your brand more and increase their loyalty, thus boosting your business performance.
Businesses have become aware of the importance of dedicating their efforts to SEO marketing leading to stiff competition. Therefore, you have to become innovative to stay ahead of your competitors. Gone are the days when digital marketers would stuff their landing pages with their brand’s name. Instead, you will need an intelligent SEO strategy these days for both local and worldwide visibility.
Search engine algorithms have become more innovative, more sophisticated, and much more user-focused as technology advances. As a result, brands are now competing for a spot in the global market, which is quite a challenge. However, SEO may help your brand stand out from the crowd since we have already seen the results.
Before we look at using SEO to increase brand awareness, it is crucial to understand it.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization entails systematically customizing your website’s content so that it appears higher and frequently in the searches of internet users. SEO boosts your ranking by generating more clicks from the search engine results page.
This process starts with selecting keywords linked to the brand you wish to optimize for, thus enhancing your website’s content appropriately. SEO tactics and strategies to promote your branding efforts include content optimization, link building, keyword ranking improvements, listing maintenance, blog posting, and social media presence. Email marketing is also one of the tactics.
The following four steps make up the majority of your SEO planning process.
Get Ready
In this step, you have to understand your business and identify the goals you want to achieve. Set up analytical tools and build an achievable timeline.
Review and Analysis
Review technical setups and identify the weaknesses. It would help if you also analyzed the available trends and opportunities. Ensure your analysis is comprehensive and competitive.
Plan and Implement
Based on your results, develop your SEO strategy. Look out for both immediate and long-term opportunities and apply the optimization to every channel.
Measure, Report, and Optimize
Based on the data collected, measure your results. You should also pay close attention to reports and trends. Finally, make a checklist of recommended practices and Keep testing and learning.
Why Is SEO Important in Promoting Brand Awareness?
More than 70% of users will click on one of the top five choices on their search engine results. Therefore, if you have a blog, an online shop, or a website, their rankings on google can impact your branding efforts’ success. In addition, these top slots are associated with a high level of trust.
If you want your digital marketing efforts to be a success, you should consider SEO. It will make you stay ahead of your competition, leading to increased chances of your business success. Consumers tend to evaluate the image of your brand based on a variety of factors. Findability is one of them.
How To Use SEO to Increase Brand Awareness
Even though SEO helps increase the awareness of your brand, there are several ways to use it to ensure it is a success. You may find yourself wondering how to use it to make it effective. To avoid making mistakes, you may seek help from the MediaOne marketing company. Here are some of the ways you can use it to increase the success of your business.
1. Link Building
In today’s digital marketing world, establishing links from other websites to your own has become successful. Google analyzes links to determine what information on your site is relevant to the search and its worth.
When the bot scans your site, it will be guided by an effective internal connecting system. For example, what are the connections between each page, and which page on your website is more important? Then, the bot explores these links to display pages and decides why they are significant to the search result.
Ways To Acquire Links
Link building is one of the complex tasks in search engine optimization. However, if you manage to crack it, you will be ahead of your competitors by far.
Broken link building, infographic creation, and active participation in social media groups are all effective ways to establish strong links.
When you gain a lot of traction on sites like Reddit, your brand recognition will skyrocket, and backlinks will automatically follow. So both branding and SEO benefit naturally.
Why Is Link Building important in increasing brand awareness?
Search engines use links to find new websites and determine where a web page should appear in their results. Therefore, your ranking is influenced by the number of external links connecting to your page. If many external links point to your website, you will gain a bigger audience, thus promoting your business.
2. Use Optimized Key Phrases
If you plan your keywords well, SEO will become a success. Keywords matter to both users and search engines. These keywords tell search engines that you have relevant information to communicate.
Optimized keywords are ideal for your brand to attract quality traffic to your website. Before people search for information online, they already know what they want. If they find the keyword fast, they may land on your page.
You can find these keywords by studying your industry extensively and researching what your competitors have to offer. You can also assess the traffic potential by evaluating the popularity of key phrases, giving you a more realistic picture of the digital market.
When searching for these keywords, you should look for keywords in line with your business objectives.
3. Deliver Quality and Optimized Content to Your Audience
Content marketing is one of the effective ways to spread the word about your business brand. Combining SEO with branding using content marketing will produce tremendous results.
Many people do not visit online pages to search for your page specifically. They instead type keywords related to the product or service they want. Therefore, you must optimize your content to incorporate the keywords and phrases that your target audience and industry use to guarantee that your business stands out among your rivals.
Content that has been optimized generates more data and leads. Therefore, one of the most important factors is that your content is updated and of good quality. Furthermore, your content must also be the kind of content your target audience is searching for during the awareness stage.
How to update Content on Your Website
Updating entails more than just replacing outdated information in the article. It would be helpful to fix anything broken, such as broken links, obsolete graphics and data, and poor grammar.
To compete for Google’s selected snippets, make it longer, update the title, and include a table of contents. Remember to change the publication date as well. Both users and search engines will not pay attention to information from a long time ago.
Remember that content marketing and SEO can make your business rank at the top if used appropriately. If your content is top-notch, you will see results in no time.
4. Integrate Other Channels With SEO
76% of marketers confirmed that they use social media for a more comprehensive platform. People do not rely on keywords from Google only anymore. They are active on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Linked In, and other social media platforms.
Organic traffic is significant, but it is not simple to come by today’s internet marketing industry. Therefore, integrating another marketing channel may require extra effort. You may even need to spend money on sponsored campaigns to have your content viewed. Regardless, the benefits of such integrations are worth it.
Social media and SEO work effectively together to communicate to your target audience and increase brand awareness. One of the most effective methods to engage your audience, develop brand loyalty, and maintain your reputation is through social media.
Always make sure your social media channels are optimized to generate traffic and money back to your website. The data from keyword and competition research should be used to improve your social postings. To maximize your visibility, develop social material tied to hot issues, and analyze your target market using comments, likes, and shares.
If you decide to use social media to impact SEO for company brand exposure, you must be committed and exercise patience to get results. It is not advisable to publish content and then forget about it. You must create a community on your social media platforms and be available for them when they want assistance.
As organic reach declines, sponsored ads and like and follower campaigns are pretty beneficial in this situation. You may shift some of your marketing budgets to sponsored ads, where you can use target keywords and audiences to customize your campaign content. As a result, your posts will reach a wider audience, increasing brand awareness and, in most circumstances, drive traffic to your website.
5. Use Long-tail Keywords
New sites find it hard to surpass established websites in related short keyword phrases. However, they should not be too worried because they can seek advice from MediaOne marketing companies to help them identify less competitive keywords. Short tail keywords have a higher search volume, implying a higher level of competitiveness. However, their conversion rates are lower, which means they are more expensive.
Targeting long-tail keywords is a better option since they have fewer competitors and provide more leads. Ubersuggest is the ideal tool for finding long-tail keywords. This tool is easy to use, and it only takes a short time.
Long-tail keywords are more precise. They may have smaller search volumes, but they help steadily increase traffic to your site, leading to more excellent conversion rates in most cases. Moreover, Long-tail keywords help you stand out by enabling you to target a more motivated audience.
Remember, the consumer’s intentions while searching is the underlying reasoning behind keywords. Therefore, long-tail keywords make it possible to reach audiences that would have been difficult to get. These intentions can be summed up as follows.
Navigational
The goal is to get to a specific website, person, or brand. These are highly specialized, and the majority of them seek a particular subject.
Informational
These searches are looking for broader material and appear on several web pages.
Transactional
The goal is to get assistance in finishing tasks.
Commercial
This search is your typical, routine search before making a purchase.
6. Target Niche Audiences
Nowadays, businesses have more interactive activities with their customer base. They do not just talk and leave everything there. As a result, these customers can help you build your brand.
Small companies may utilize strategic keyword research to obtain an advantage over their competition and develop an overly focused brand for the big win by targeting a specific audience.
Targeting a specific audience can help you build your brand by focusing keywords on a particular niche. As a result, you will have a far better chance of attracting new consumers, interacting with existing ones, and effectively targeting your offers.
The fact is, focused brands are successful, and conducting proper keyword research can help you dominate your niche.
7. Creating Blogs
The importance of having a blog is growing. Blogs will help your new and existing consumers get more information about your brand, industry, and goods and services. It will also aid your SEO approach.
A good blog may help you improve your SEO rating, get more clicks from search engines, and convert those clicks into purchases.
For the blog post to be effective, it should have an appropriate mix of keywords in the total word count. It should also have relevant pictures and videos as well as links to and from your website.
Five Common Branding Mistakes Brands Make
As a business person, it is important to have a tool that communicates about your business. Having the branding tool means that you can connect with your audience. Connecting with your audience is the main aim of your business because it will help build your brand.
However, these tools may not communicate effectively sometimes. This scenario may be due to some branding mistakes made. These mistakes may or may not be intentional, making it hard for you to connect with your audience. Not being able to connect with your audience may crumble your business.
Below are some common branding mistakes made by businesses, how to fix them, and why you need to avoid them.
1. Meaningless Logo
Designing logos may be fun, but it can also be a lot of work. It involves a lot of thinking and brainstorming. Sure, you may create a beautiful design and call it a day, but an attractive logo alone does not fully communicate to your audience.
A powerful logo supports and promotes your company’s fundamental identity and mission. It will also help build brand trust
Why You Should Avoid This Mistake
If your logo is not well designed, it will not convey your business’s right information to your target audience. If customers do not understand the aim of your business well, you may lose both existing and potential customers.
How To Fix
Suppose you are struggling to come up with a logo that communicates effectively about your business. Look for information online on how to come up with a logo that will boost your business and the mistakes to avoid when designing a logo. You seek advice from a professional logo designer.
2. Being Inconsistent
Consistency is essential in promoting your brand performance. An inconsistent image of your brand may cause harm to your business. Using different colour schemes on other platforms or switching logos often are examples of inconsistency.
Why You Should Avoid This Mistake
Failure to portray your company uniformly will negatively impact your brand. The problem of having an inconsistent brand identity is that your customers will be confused and start doubting your business’s eligibility.
Customers doubting your business is something you don’t want to happen to your brand identity.
How To Fix
If you want to stay consistent in your brand image, consider creating style guidelines for your brand. Style guidelines is a document that specifies how to combine different parts into a coherent system.
If you are using different forms of marketing like social media, email marketing, websites, newsletters, and media artwork, gather them and check if they have uniform brand images. You can also use an independent third-party partner, such as a MediaOne marketing company or consultancy firm. They will give you an unbiased view.
3. Not Checking for Logo Originality
Sometimes, it is good to draw inspiration from other brands. However, for you to stay ahead of your competition, your logo should be original. It should resemble the logos of other businesses that are already in the market.
Why You Should Avoid This Mistake
As a business, the main aim of promoting your brand image is to stay ahead of your competition. If you design a logo similar to other companies already in the market, you will confuse your clients. They may not know which one is your business, and they may end up buying from your competition, thus affecting your sales.
At times, your business may suffer the risk of being sued for copyright infringement. Being sued is the last thing you would want in your business because lawsuits waste resources and time. The suits may also make your branding efforts go to waste.
How To Fix
To avoid this situation, you should conduct proper research to see any business with a similar logo. You can run the study using google reverse search for images. If you find a logo similar to yours, adjust it until it looks original.
Alternatively, you may opt to visit business directory websites to search for other similar businesses in the industry you want to major in. It is a good idea to keep an eye on your direct and local competition as a precaution.
4. Not Having a Target Audience
Not everyone can pay attention to your business. Every person has different needs, and so they may not necessarily be the right audience for your business. To appeal to your target audience, you must first determine who you want to reach and then modify how to communicate and present yourself. Always ensure you pick elements that will attract them.
Why You Should Avoid This Mistake
If you do not have a target audience in mind, you do not have the right information about them. Therefore, you may not be able to deliver the message effectively. Therefore, these buyers may feel isolated, and they may choose not to buy from your business.
How To Fix
Begin by determining your target audience’s demographics, such as age, gender, and educational level. If you follow that, you may develop a buyer personality which is a fictionalized version of them. Moreover, it will assist you in identifying common ground and determining how to communicate your message effectively.
You can also opt to conduct market research. Market research helps you to identify the needs, desires, and potential changes of your target audience. It explores their passions, likes, and dislikes.
You may also undertake surveys to obtain more relevant information. The surveys are ideal for businesses that are having trouble locating a certain piece of information.
5. Clunky website
Good brand identity includes having a well-designed website. The website should also have relevant information that effectively communicates about your business. It should also be designed to make it easy for people to navigate and locate the information they want easily. In addition, the website should also be responsive.
Why you Should Avoid This Mistake
Nowadays, people are very busy and do not have time to waste trying to search for information from your website. If your website is poorly organized or keeps buffering, the high chances are that they will leave the site and go to one that is easy to navigate. Therefore, you will lose potential clients.
How To Fix
When designing a website, ensure you make something that is user-friendly. To be successful in this digital marketing space, consider hiring a professional web designer to assist you.
Ultimate Guide to A Smooth Rebranding Process in 2021
Indeed, SEO should be one of the primary pillars of your branding strategies. However, as your business grows, you may have to redesign your website to meet the demand and needs of the customers. A website redesign is also your chance to get to the top of search engine results pages and reach new customers.
Picture this, who doesn’t love to experience a new thing now and then? The new website needs to be optimised to comply with Google and other search engines’ best practices. That said, there are certain steps that you need to take to have a successful rebranding process after the website redesign.
Rebranding is not easy, even for renowned businesses with thousands if not millions of customers. For example, 44% of Uber customers were unsure whether it was the same company when it changed the logo.
Knowing the risks associated with rebranding will help you avoid common pitfalls. Nonetheless, what needs to be done must be done to ensure that your brand remains relevant and in the hearts of the target customers after changing your website.
Here are eight common reasons why businesses opt to rebrand.
- Entry to a new location to expand clientele reach
- Market repositioning to target new groups of customers
- Change in the company philosophy – values, mission, and vision
- Acquisition and merges
- Boredom
- To resolve persistent internal issues that affect profitability
- New managers want to make an impact
- To salvage drop in sales and competitiveness
All of them are viable reasons, but you must keep in mind the SEO aspect. If not, your business ranking and visibility online will be compromised. You may have to come up with new enterprise SEO strategies to continue dominating the market.
Before discussing the specific steps, you should take to reposition and rebrand, it is important first to decide whether your business will do just fine with a partial rebrand instead of a total rebrand. More importantly, determine the target market you are hoping to attract after changing the current business model.
Difference Between Partial and Total Rebrand
First, the more renowned and established your brand is, the more you have to lose during and after the rebranding process. It is wise to consider a partial rebrand if your brand is mature to retain the customer loyalty and market dominance you have accrued over the years.
Concisely, a partial rebrand should be a minor adjustment to change the visual brand identity to match the new markets and offerings -not a complete change of identity.
On the other hand, a total rebrand means changing all aspects of the company, including its values, vision, and mission. This option is best suited for acquisitions, product overhauls, foundational shifts, and acquisitions.
The main difference between the two is that a total rebrand is a 100% makeover, while a partial rebrand is a quick touch-up.
Take time to consider the opportunities and downsides of each option before proceeding. Let us now look at the five steps you should take for a smooth rebranding process.
-
Remap Your Audience and Marketing
After researching and analysing data collected from different focus groups, you realised that something is off. Your customers or competitors aren’t the ones you thought they were initially. Maybe a new competitor or a segment of customers you did not envision would interact with your products/services.
Consider the customers who are buying from you and come up with laser-focused marketing campaigns and offers for them. Compare the initial target market with the current one to know the differences and what you should do to dominate the new markets.
While there, carry out new keyword research to know the new phrases you should be targeting in your SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimisation) strategies. Changing your SEO strategies will help increase your brand’s visibility to new customers and enhance your competitiveness.
-
Revamp the Brand’s Philosophy
When rebranding, you not only need to finetune your SEO strategies but also the brand’s philosophy. Here are three questions that you should ask yourself to get it right.
- What are we doing?
- Who are we doing it for?
- Why are we doing it?
While you may be tempted to retain the original philosophy, changing it will catapult your business to the next level of success. New services, products, priorities, and stakeholders can change what once seemed right for the company.
Vision
Simply put, the brand’s vision is its North Star for every step you understand. Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding of the vision before proceeding. Do it quickly and communicate it to the employees and all parties involved to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Note that the new vision will affect how certain processes are done and the hiring process, digital marketing, SEO, and website redesign.
Mission
The vision is your what, while the mission is your how. You may still be headed in the same direction, but your way of getting to the destination has changed. Concisely, the mission is your company’s blueprint. Changing it means that you also need to change the messaging to match the vision.
More often than not, you will need to develop new content marketing strategies to connect with your customers better.
Values
Values are the why. Why are you working or doing email marketing or any other process? Why are you so focused on the mission and vision of the company?
As you will soon realise, with business growth comes changes in the founding values. As you rebrand, consider either coming up with new values or tweaking the existing ones. The goal is to ensure they resonate with the new company vision and mission.
Brand Voice
Changing the company’s values, mission, and vision means that you also need to change the brand’s voice. As mentioned earlier, you will have to restructure your content marketing strategy to match the desired voice, tone, and vocabulary. Otherwise, the target customers will be confused when they come across a blog or service page that does not match the new brand.
-
Consider Renaming the Company
You opted for a total rebrand, and so the company name has to go. This is one of the challenges you have to deal with, as it could easily cost your existing brand recognition. Organic traffic from search engines may also dip.
We recommend you have a backup plan or recovery plan as part of the post-rebrand strategy to prevent your ranking, organic traffic, and sales from dipping too much.
If the current name still fits well with the new brand, it is best to keep it to avoid the expensive process of recovery. Here are a few ideas to point you in the right direction.
- Come up with a new old
- Use your creativity to use an old word in a new way
- Change the spelling of the word
- Use different languages to spice up the new name
- Use a location
- Create an acronym
- Consider adding a suffix or prefix
The above ideas will help you retain a given portion of the old image not to lose the recognition you have worked hard to build. For instance, by changing the spelling, the customers will know you are still the same service provider they have been doing business with in the past.
If you decide to add a location to the name, make sure that it’s an area that you operate it. Ideally, it would be best to choose a place that most of your business comes from, but be careful not to neglect other small market areas.
It is also good to involve different departments and even third parties who are not part of the in-house team more insights before making the final decision. Involving all departments will ensure everyone is on the same page and make the rebranding process even smoother.
Unlike SEO and other digital marketing strategies such as social media marketing, where you can do A/B tests with the name, you cannot experiment. This is because you cannot afford to change the name every couple of weeks or months.
-
Change the Brand’s Slogan
A good slogan should capture the attention of the target audience. It should be memorable and in line with the brand’s vision, mission, and purpose. All three facets of your brand should be represented in the slogan.
Unlike the business name, redefining the slogan is a bit easy on your digital marketing efforts. However, you still have to take the time to consider the ramifications of the slogan to avoid sending the wrong message.
It’s best to leave this task to the digital marketing team to understand the target customers better. The personnel know which tone and style to use to convey the intended message to the customers.
Ask yourself why the old slogan does not match the new brand. Well, it is easy to feel resentful about your slogan after hearing it so many times in boardrooms, conferences, and other places. Remember that it’s that repetition that cements your position in the market as an authority. You may have a negative perspective of it, but the customers love it and recognise and even refer your brand to their acquittances. Remember, word of mouth is still one of the most powerful forms of marketing in the current highly digitised world of business.
If you are still on the fence and not sure whether the slogan will deliver the expected results, create focus groups and have an open discussion about it. Here are a few starting points for inspiration.
- Make a claim
- Be metaphorical
- Compliment clients
- Offer instructions
- Spice it up with poetic language
-
Work on Your Brand Identity
Rebranding means that your brand needs to have a new identity. This is where you have to restructure your SEO and content marketing strategy to get a higher cutting edge. Tangible elements that have been in play since the brand’s inception need to be revamped or replaced with new ones.
Before replacing them, consider their strengths and weaknesses. Some of them, such as the slogan, can stay or be reworded to match the new identity. Because the website and product label have new colours, you also have to change the logo.
Hire a professional to redesign it using new colours and a theme that matches the brand. One of the common mistakes companies make is using too much symbolism in the logo. That doesn’t work; simplicity is the key to success when creating a new logo.
The logo is worth nothing if the customers cannot remember and recognise it when browsing the web or shopping at the local store. Be bold to create a lasting impact on the customers. Don’t just do the bare minimum; dare to be different by going for something that stands out from the crowd.
The beauty of rebranding is that you already have an old logo you have tried to do business with for several months or even years. You know the styles and shapes that work or are not suitable for the channels you use to market your business. Use that experience to make the logo as adaptable as possible.
Finally, avoid losing too much brand recognition when redesigning the new logo. One sure way of achieving this goal is by retaining parts of the old logo that worked well. This hack will create a sense of continuity and originality.
Here is a video to give you more ideas on how to avoid common rebranding pitfalls.
Post-Covid Rebranding and SEO Hacks to Generate More Sales in Singapore
By now, you already know what branding is, its relevance to businesses, and how to complement it with search engine optimisation. It is imperative to keep in mind all the factors and strategies discussed to get value for the money you invest.
For now, let us shift gears and look at post-covid rebranding and SEO hacks to enable you to generate more sales in Singapore. It’s no secret that Covid-19 significantly impacted both offline and online businesses in Singapore.
Most of them were forced to lay off some of the employees, while those who couldn’t adapt fast to the changes had no option but to close shop.
Branding is one of the essential pillars of your Singapore online business. It helps the target customers recognise your brand on search engine results pages, ads, social media, and other platforms.
The harsh effects of Covid-19 had a significant impact on the number of sales brands generated online. Consumer habits changed for three primary reasons, namely value, convenience, and availability. The rebranding will help you to attract new customers and create a unique aura in the market.
Like digital marketing and SEO, you need to make calculated decisions to avoid costly mistakes down the road. Every decision that you make should be based on accurate market data. Therefore, take the time to carry out extensive market research to know the current needs and expectations of the customers.
Here are steps on how to do rebranding post Covid-19 to generate more sales in Singapore.
-
Evaluate the “Assumed” Strength of the Brand
We choose to use the word “Assumed” because the current status of the business is not a true reflection of its ability and potential. The harsh effects of the coronavirus changed the processes and how customers perceive the products and services.
Based on these facts, you should assess the assumed strength of your brand to know the steps that you should take to reverse the downward trend. Your assessment should be qualitative, quantitative, and social media.
Evaluate your brand’s current popularity across multiple social media platforms to know if you need to rewire the social media campaigns. Look at the website’s competitiveness and ranking in SERPs to decide whether to use the existing SEO strategies or create new ones.
In the end, you will have a clear perspective of your brand, its strengths, weaknesses, and potential. All this information will help you make the right decisions and budget accordingly.
-
Listen to The Target Customers/Clientele Base
Without the clients, your business would be non-existent. You wouldn’t meet the daily and monthly expenses such as paying salaries and seeking online advertising services.
As you plan to start rebranding your company, listen to your target customers or clientele base. One of the mistakes we have seen brands make is ignoring the needs of the current customers. They perceive them as loyal customers who cannot ditch them for competitors.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Savvy customers have plenty of options and won’t hesitate to leave if they feel you are ignoring their interests. So, as you develop plans to change your brand name, logo, vision, mission, and other instrumental aspects of your brand, listen to the current and potential customers.
More importantly, consider the new market dynamics and do a competition analysis to get a clear perspective on adapting your brand to the new online business landscape.
-
Identify What Needs to Be Changed
First, not all aspects of your business need to be changed. More often than not, companies end up losing a fraction of their customer base and revenue after rebranding. Experts advise entrepreneurs to rebrand only if it is necessary for the business to remain relevant in the market.
That said, not everything about your brand needs to change. For example, you can decide to retain the current name, vision, mission, and values. Create a fresh logo but borrow some aspects from the previous one so that customers can easily recognise you.
Concisely, identify the areas that should be changed and those that should be retained. This critical step will help maintain your market standing and brand recognition even as you transition to a new brand.
-
Set Specific Objectives
Rebranding is not a process that you should do regularly. Thus, it is crucial to create a comprehensive rebranding strategy to create a brand that will remain relevant in the market for many years to come.
Remember, rebranding is not cheap. You will spend thousands of dollars on it, and so repeating the same process several times per year will compromise the brand’s sustainability.
Avoid such inconveniences by setting specific objectives and goals for the rebranding strategy. Consult widely and involve all the departments to ensure everyone is on the same page when you start the process.
-
Decide Whether to Redesign the Website
In most cases, rebranding entails changing the outlook of the website to match the new features of the brand. Hire a professional web design company to create a new website. Make sure that you explain to the team everything to end up with the best design possible.
Several months after the launch of the new site, embark on carrying out A/B tests to know the performance of the pages, ads, CTA buttons, and all other vital sections of the site. Take a closer look at the sales funnel to understand which steps customers take before converting. The review will help you pinpoint areas that should be improved to make the shopping process smooth and seamless.
-
Plan for Stability and Agility
Stability and agility are critical to the success of your online business. As mentioned earlier, rebranding is a process you can do several times per year or every couple of years. It should be a permanent, not a temporary process tailored to resolve temporary hurdles in the market.
Make sure that when making any decision, you consider both the short-term and long-term impact of the change on the brand and its customers. Consider the needs of the existing customers and the expectations of potential customers you intend to attract with the new brand.
-
Plan for the Relaunch
Once everything is set, proceed to plan for the relaunch. Use social media platforms to popularise the event. The platforms will help you distribute ads to a larger audience than offline marketing methods such as print media.
Ideally, it would be best to promote the relaunch event at least two weeks before the big day. Broadcast it online by going live to engage with the customers. Send out emails and links that clients can click on to watch the event as it unfolds in real-time.
The goal is to convey information about the new brand, its goals, objectives, logo, and mission to as many customers as possible to regain your position at the pinnacle of your industry. Give them incentives to shop at the rebranded store by offering discounts and bonuses on specific products.
Everyone loves coupons, so rest assured most of them will take advantage of them to save money. However, make sure that the discount or coupons make sense to the audience and don’t hurt your bottom line. They should not undervalue your products but help you generate sales and compete with the competitors effectively.
Post Covid-19 SEO Hacks to Generate More Sales in Singapore
Covid-19 resulted in lockdowns not only in Singapore but across the globe. Consumers had no option but to shop online more often than driving to brick-and-mortar stores. The harsh reality of the pandemic, however, resulted in some companies getting disoriented.
Some stopped doing daily, weekly, and monthly SEO processes due to the impact of the pandemic on their mental health and overall perception of life. All is not lost though, here are SEO hacks to help you bounce back to a high ranking and profitability.
Be Consistent
SEO is a long-term investment in your business. During the pandemic, you must remain consistent on how you optimise on-page and off-page content. Even though you cannot launch mega SEO campaigns, it’s the little effort you make that will help your business stand tall amid the changes in the market.
Invest in Long-Form Content
Life has slowed down for most customers who didn’t have time to research topics extensively. They now have ample time to do that and compare the options available before shopping. In addition, they are more likely to spend time profoundly researching topics instead of scrolling through social media fees for testimonials from other people.
Based on this fact, it is recommendable to invest in long-form content. Most of the results on the first page of Google are at least 1890 words long. Google gives a high preference to such content since its more comprehensive than short-form articles.
Searchers can find all the information they want in one piece, thereby saving time that would have been spent skimming through multiple websites for the same information.
Google is determined to provide the best user experience. Work with it to improve your site ranking by writing comprehensive articles that are long and packed with accurate data. Be sure to include links to authority sites that discuss the same topic to increase its chances of getting ranked highly. Consequently, scout for backlinks to get recognised as an authority on the subject by the search engine.
Focus on Local SEO
With most people working from home, small businesses that operate in specific geographic locations are enjoying new streams of customers. This is because most people feel more comfortable doing business with local companies that are easily accessible and convenient.
Therefore, you should focus more on local SEO strategies to connect with the local customers. For example, if you don’t have a Google My Business account, register today to get your business on the local map.
If you have a GMB account but changed the hours of operating or the physical address, make sure that you update your profile to reflect that. Also, get your brand listed on other websites such as Yelp to increase its visibility.
Remind clients to leave a review after purchasing your product to build credibility and portfolio. Don’t just respond to the positive reviews; use the negative reviews to show customers that you care and want them to get value for money from your product or service. Offer solutions to the disgruntled customers instead of responding to them offensively, even if you feel their review is biased and false.
Strike a Balance Between Long-Term and Short-Term Goals
Coronavirus pandemic is temporary – it will eventually end, but the impact on businesses and lives of billions of people is long-term. In the context of search engine optimisation in Singapore, we recommend striking a balance between long-term and short-term goals.
Short-Term SEO Goals
These are SEO goals that you plan to achieve within the next couple of weeks or months. The efforts include publishing Covid-19 themed content, updating listings, and ensuring the content is optimised for local keywords/search terms.
Long-Term SEO Goals
These are goals you intend to achieve in the next several months or years. The SEO efforts or processes you should embark on include creating content that answers frequently asked questions currently and post-pandemic. It would be best to continue working on the SEO strategies you relied on before the pandemic to get leads – if they are still viable.
Create Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is content that is not seasonal. That is, the content will remain relevant for many months and years to come after Covid-19. The main difference between this form of content and the trending content is that it accumulates organic traffic over time, increasing your SEO equity.
Check the content your competitors are publishing and develop better content to outrank or take their positions in SERPs. As you do that, make sure that you abide by Google’s recommended SEO and content creation practices to avoid penalties.
Like other content on the website, make sure that this is optimised using high-value keywords especially the question-based keywords.
Update Performing and Non-Performing Content
Now is the best time to update the highly performing articles or blog posts to prevent competitors from taking your position in SERPs. Add new research report or even a recent interview featuring a renowned expert. The new content will breathe life to the article and ensure it continues to rank well and meet the expectations of the target audience.
On the other hand, the non-performing content should be re-optimised and rewritten to resonate with the searchers’ intent. Do extensive research to know why they aren’t performing as expected then identify topics that can increase their visibility and performance.
The Takeaway
SEO should be part of your branding and rebranding efforts. Keep in mind all the above tips and hacks to avoid losing your stand in the market, and the search engine results pages. Be sure to inform the customers through your social media pages and other channels such as email marketing of the change to continue dominating the market.
Promoting brand awareness is crucial to your business. It will ensure you stay ahead of your competition, thus boosting your business performance. However, sometimes you may make mistakes when branding your business. That does not mean that your business will not perform since these mistakes can be corrected.
The key to good branding is to garner as much name recognition as possible. Sure, consumers are doing a lot of research before making their final purchases these days, but name recognition is still a huge factor. People are more comfortable with buying from a company that they are used to seeing. So when you think about the perfect SEO marketing strategy, don’t just focus on the technical side, you need to create an experience. Answer people’s questions so that they realise your products and services are the answer.
MediaOne Marketing takes pride in having a team of professional digital marketers and SEO experts who can work together to ensure the rebranding process goes on without any hinges. Get in touch with us today for more details.