Have a great online brand is an important component of digital marketing, probably the most important component.

If you haven’t already noticed, the search marketplace is saturated for nearly every vertical you search for. Social media marketing takes an army and still your brand may fall along the wayside. So how on God’s great earth are you supposed to get noticed online by your target audience?

Here are five tips for getting your brand noticed and make your online branding efforts more successful this year.

1. Build a Highly Functioning Site
Your web presence needs to exist, today. Why? Today, almost everyone (or their assistants) goes online to research products and services before they contact the company. Today, its never been more important to make your site stand out so the consumers come back to you instead of your competitor. Your site’s functionality has to be flawless. Why? If it’s slow to load or too difficult to navigate, consumers will not wait - they'll leave and go on to the next search result. Get your house in order, make sure your content is capturing users' attention. Dig into data you have on your audience, learning what they want, and deliver it to them.

2. Don't Get Pushy
Nothing will turn a customer away than a sales pitch. The best thing you can do is to install faith and comparability within your potential customer. Why? To most consumers, you are a dime a dozen who are extremely wary of pushy sales tactics. Build a relationship with your target market, build up the trust, and then you'll inspire more confidence in them to consider your product before your competitors'. A great way to do this is through an online branding campaign aimed at providing your visitors with useful information that educates them about your industry. Instead of pushing your products or services, offer an insightful view of your industry as it stands now, where it might be heading, and how you positioned yourself to capitalize on the future shift.

3. Email Marketing (Still) Works
Again, it isn’t a secret that we own an email marketing service (emailContator.com). Why? Because email marketing still works, and it works great!

Let’s be real, no, not everyone in your target market is going to know to visit your website, so how on earth are you going to attract them there? The best way to do this is to build up a quality contact list and send out emails that entice them to visit your site. In our experience, online branding gets a boost when the emails include something timely, like a special sale, an industry change, or sneak peak at a new product.

Haven't heard of emailContactor.com before? You should really check it out!

4. Following Starbucks Lead
There is a reason so many people shell out big money at Starbucks. It has little to do with coffee they serve but more to do with the way the company positions itself in the public eye. Starbucks has a massive online branding presence through social media pages.

On the Starbucks Facebook platform, more than 27 million users follow Starbucks. Simply by offering a place where their consumers can become educated on a variety of their topics, Starbucks has created a platform that is more about the user than about their own company. By implimenting consumer polls they give their customers real-time feedback on trending topics. The most important thing to note here is Starbucks rarely ever mentions their products on this site instead on focusing on offering a central place of engagement to the consumer.

5. Have a Strong Online Branding Plan
Confused by the process of getting your brand noticed online? You aren't alone. There are millions of ways to go about it. The best way to safeguard yourself and your business from a lonely branding experience or worse, a terrible online branding reputation is to first have a plan. Not only a plan but a plan that is tailored specifically for you. If you need help with the plan we would love to help you figure that out, so feel free to contact us when you are comfortable.