Advertising, Digital, Marketing & Strategy, Media Buying

Digital Branding and Your Company’s Online Footprint

By: Paula Yakubik

In my role as a marketing consultant for MassMedia, I meet with a lot of company executives who think they are ready to go to market with a paid advertising campaign to generate leads and grow their business.

It’s at this point that I get excited because it’s my passion to build brands and help clients move the needle and increase their revenue.

However, once I start assessing their current digital presence, my excitement turns to trepidation because I’ve found the client is nowhere ready to proceed with a paid advertising campaign. In fact, I would be doing a disservice if I let him or her go to market, as the client would lose money and would not receive any leads. Not really the win-win relationship I would be looking to create.

As a result, I’m forced to break the unfortunate news and recommend that the client take a step back to audit, analyze and improve its online digital footprint and brand. This imperative step helps to ensure that massive ad dollars are not wasted on a paid campaign.

Before any paid advertising campaign is launched, plan to audit your:

  • Website
  • Campaign landing pages
  • Online company listings (Google, Bing, Yelp, etc.)
  • Social media channels

Cleaning up your brand online is vital to the success of any digital marketing campaign, and the audit will check to see if the brand and messaging are positioned correctly. This may begin by making sure your messaging is promoting your business’s unique selling points and recognizing the customer’s pain points. You’ll also want to review and analyze the competition to ensure you are uniquely positioned.

Additionally, you will want to make certain the appropriate measures are in place for engagement and conversion. The worst possible scenario would be the messaging works, but the engagement and moving the customer through the buyer’s journey falls flat or even worse, fails.

Finally, it’s important to see that a cohesive brand identity for the business is appearing across all digital platforms. If the potential customer visits various online channels, then you will want to ensure the brand delivers the same experience.

Remember, your company will waste time and money if you don’t audit your company’s online footprint before launching a paid campaign.

This pre-campaign work can typically take anywhere from 30-90 days. It’s a lot of upfront work, but it pays off when it comes time to launch a digital campaign. So, save time and money and be assured your company’s digital footprint is accurate, cohesive and well-positioned before kicking off a campaign.

If you are considering running paid advertising, consider asking your marketing consultant to conduct the audit well in advance of your preferred campaign start date.

Paula Yakubik is the founder of MassMedia. She can be reached at paula@massmediacc.com or (702) 332-3617

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