Building Online Brands #ecomchat – Key Points

This week’s #EcomChat was on the topic of Building Online Brands, looking at how small businesses can and should go about creating their brand presence.

There was a lot of cross over in comments this week and Dan summarised the key points neatly, with a few additions from James:

1. Define your brand – a very big part of this online is about voice, so you need to know what your voice is, what is sounds like etc.
2. Make sure your customer service is excellent when you’re on the way up & that you’re proactively listening.
3. Amplify positive customer experiences and fix negative experiences.
4. Use ‘money’ channels like PPC & AdWords for video for quick, predictable reach.
5. Produce as much great ‘on-brand’ content as possible for SEO & social.
6. Make sure your email & social channels *do* keep drip-dripping your overall story to customers – keep your values & key services front of mind.
7. If in doubt, build ‘brand’ into other areas, rather than spending time on it specifically & spreading yourself too thin.n
8. Find influencers and use them to support you e.g. bloggers.
9. Don’t lose sight of what your customers want the brand to be – it’s easy for small business owners to become obsessed with their own brand vision but essential you take customers with you on the journey.

There were a few examples provided for businesses that have successfully built brands online, either through unique approaches or clever use of content and marketing:

• Onedollarshaveclub
• Orabrush
• Accessories Online
• Wiggy Wigglers

Thanks to the following for contributing comments and suggestions:

@Jamie_Farrelly
@aattias
@BrightDM
@JocelynKirby
@CraigWSoftCat
@DanielJTruman
@hitreach
@ChinaShopBull
@trbaldwin
@gcharlton
@cocketman
@montsecano
@koozai
@georgeioannou
@markbolitho
@bdmbenmer

And don’t forgot to send us suggestions for future topics via Twitter.

Cheers, James & Dan.