Are you tired of boring, dry brand presentations that put your audience to sleep? Well, it’s time to shake things up and bring your brand story to life with slideshows! In today’s fast-paced world, attention spans are shorter than ever, and it’s more important than ever to connect with your audience in a meaningful way. Slideshows offer a solution, serving as the ideal means for crafting a brand narrative that appeals both visually and emotionally.

Picture this – you’re sitting in a meeting room, staring at a whiteboard with a bunch of bullet points. Yawn. But what if, instead of a boring presentation, you were treated to a slideshow that brought your brand story to life through captivating images, thoughtful design, and a clear, concise message? That’s the kind of brand presentation that will keep your audience engaged and leave a lasting impression.

It’s time to bid farewell to dull and text-heavy presentations. Embrace the potential of slideshows to convey your brand story in a captivating manner. Whether you’re an experienced marketer or an entrepreneur seeking to establish your brand, this article provides the guidance you need to create a slideshow that resonates with your audience and makes you stand out. Get set to narrate your brand story in a fresh and innovative manner!

What is a Brand Story?

“What is a Brand Story?” you may ask. A brand story is a narrative that conveys the values, personality, and unique qualities of a brand. It’s not just about what a brand does, but why they do it and what makes them different from its competitors. A strong brand story helps to build a connection with your audience and differentiate your brand in the market.

Think of it like a good old-fashioned fairytale. Just as a fairytale has a hero, a journey, and a happy ending, a brand story has a protagonist (your brand), a mission, and a purpose. By telling your brand story, you give your audience a glimpse into the soul of your business and help them understand why you exist and what sets you apart.

So, what makes a great brand story? A brand story should be authentic, relatable, and consistent across all touchpoints. It should also evoke emotion, and offer a unique perspective on the world. Remember, your brand story isn’t just about selling products or services, it’s about building a relationship with your audience. So, let’s get creative, have some fun, and start crafting that brand story!

Why Slideshows are a Great Tool for Telling Your Story

Slideshows are a fantastic tool for telling your brand story, and for good reason! First of all, slideshows are visually engaging. They allow you to showcase images and graphics that bring your story to life and capture the attention of your audience. With a photo slideshow maker, you can easily create stunning presentations that communicate your brand’s message in an impactful way.

Another reason slideshows are great for telling your story is that they allow you to break down complex information into digestible chunks. No one wants to sit through a 60-slide presentation filled with dense text and bullet points. But with a well-designed slideshow, you can simplify your message and present it in a way that’s easy to understand and remember.

Finally, slideshows are an effective way to evoke emotions and build a connection with your audience. Whether you’re trying to make them laugh, cry, or simply nod along in agreement, slideshows allow you to tap into your audience’s emotions and create a memorable experience. So, whether you’re using a simple photo slideshow maker or a more advanced presentation tool, slideshows are a powerful tool for telling your brand story and connecting with your audience.

Steps for Creating an Engaging Slideshow for Your Brand

Are you ready to create an engaging slideshow for your brand? Great! Here are the steps you need to follow to create a slideshow that will connect with your audience and tell your brand story in a compelling way.

First, start with a clear understanding of your brand and your target audience. What message do you want to convey, and who are you trying to reach? This will help you determine the tone and style of your slideshow.

Next, create a strong narrative structure for your slideshow. This could include an introduction, body, and conclusion, or a more creative structure that aligns with your brand story. Remember, your slideshow should be easy to follow and understand, so keep your text brief and your images visually striking.

Finally, choose the right tools to bring your slideshow to life. There are many options available, from simple photo slideshow makers to more advanced presentation tools. Choose the one that works best for you and your brand, and don’t be afraid to get creative with design elements and animations.

With these steps in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating a slideshow that captivates your audience and tells your brand story in a way that sets you apart from the competition. So, let’s get started!

Tips for Making Your Slideshow Stand Out

Want to make your slideshow stand out and leave a lasting impression on your audience? Here are some tips to help you create a slideshow that’s memorable, engaging, and effective.

First, focus on storytelling. Your slideshow should have a clear narrative structure and communicate your brand story in a way that’s easy to understand and emotionally resonant.

Next, pay attention to design. Choose high-quality images that are relevant to your brand and your message, and use visual elements like color, typography, and animation to bring your slideshow to life.

Finally, keep your audience in mind. What are they interested in, and what will capture their attention? Make sure your slideshow is visually engaging and emotionally compelling, and consider using interactive elements like quizzes and polls to keep your audience engaged and invested in your story.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating a slideshow that connects with your audience and tells your brand story in a memorable and impactful way. So go ahead, get creative, and make your slideshow stand out!

Conclusion

In conclusion, creating a brand story through slideshows is a powerful way to connect with your audience and communicate your brand message in a visually engaging and emotionally compelling way. With a clear understanding of your brand and target audience, a strong narrative structure, and the right tools and techniques, you can create a slideshow that sets your brand apart and leaves a long-lasting impression on your target audience. So why wait? Start creating your brand story today, and watch as your audience falls in love with your brand and your message.

The post Creating a Brand Story Through Slideshows: How to Use Photos to Connect with Your Audience appeared first on Active Business Growth.

The journey from a company to a brand is a difficult, long road.

But a rewarding road if done correctly.

Creating a recognized brand that resonates with your ideal customers can be one of the most important business objectives you ever meet.

What Is Brand Communication?

Your customers and stakeholders are the ones who ultimately determine whether they will accept or reject your brand image.

You as a company need to implement a brand communication strategy in order to persuade and influence your stakeholders to look at you in a certain way.

Brand Communication Definition

Brand communication refers to the activities you engage in to influence consumers opinions’ of your company.

Having powerful strategic brand communication initiatives in place will help you convince your consumers of the specific look and feel of your business that you want to portray.

Advantages Of Brand Communication

A successful brand communication strategy will reap heavy rewards.

Whether you’re a small, local business or a large, multi-national corporation, it can be the aspect of your business that catapults you to the next level.

Creates A Relationship With Your Audience

Communicating your brand in a meaningful way will create a trusting relationship with your audience.

Consumers buy from who they know and who they trust.

If you can create this relationship in a way that you audience resonates with, it will convert loyal customers over the long run.

Differentiates Your Company

The more that you can differentiate your company in the marketplace, the better.

One way large corporations do this is through branding.

You may have similar products and similar prices to your competitors, but what they can never truly mimic is your brand image.

Creating a unique brand image is therefore critical to long term business success.

Gives Multiple Reasons For Consumers To Buy

A successful brand will communicate many different qualities of their business to their customers.

It can let customers know that you are environmentally friendly, family-oriented, health-conscious, financially-minded – the list goes on and on.

Having a brand that communicates all of these important aspects to your customers will give them many reasons to buy from you.

Here is a video that outlines the basics and fundamentals of branding:

How Do I Communicate My Brand?

There are many ways to communicate your brand.

A best practice to move forward with is to think of all the ways in which you can communicate your brand, and build a brand communication strategy around it.

Below, we have listed 17 tips on how to successfully do this.

How To Create A Successful Brand Communication Strategy

A brand communication strategy comes in many moving parts.

It is your job to put all of the individual pieces together to create a seamless brand image to project to your customers.

1. Customer Avatar

Creating a customer avatar is one the most important things you can do when initially creating and setting up your brand strategy.

Who are you marketing to?

That is what the customer avatar answers.

It is essentially the specific characteristics of your perfect, ideal customer.

When creating your messaging, marketing and branding, it should speak exactly to who this person is – AKA your customer avatar.

2. Core Message

Now that you know your customer avatar, how can you formulate a message that will speak directly to them?

What do they resonate with?

What will they respond to?

Any great marketer and brand strategist know what buttons to press and levels to pull to get a positive and actionable response from their ideal customer.

Create your messaging around this person and speak directly to them in all of your marketing material.

3. Unique Value Proposition (USP)

You also need to understand what benefits you have to offer your consumers, what makes you unique in the market, and why your ideal customers should buy from you.

What value are you giving them in return for their money?

This needs to be crystal clear – as the value you communicate to them should far exceed the price you asking them to pay for it.

4. Marketing Mix

Next, you must understand how you will communicate with your customers.

This comes down to the 4 P’s of marketing: price, product, place, and promotion.

Price

The price point that you are selling your products and services at.

Product

The product or service you are offering to your customers.

Place

As the saying goes: “location, location, location!”

Define the point of sale in which you will be selling your products.

Is it in store, online, or both?

Promotion

The exact marketing activities you will engage in to sell your product.

This includes methods of advertising, deals and discounts, contests and prizes, and more.

5. Brand Personality

Define the personality you would like to portray for your brand.

It should be memorable and something in the realm of which your ideal customer will remember.

A good example of this is Old Spice.

They’re known for their funny and over-the-top manly commercials.

Because of it, consumers remember their brand and their products.

Try to emulate and illicit a similar response from your own target customers.

6. Brand Positioning

How do you want your customers to perceive you as – a premium or low-cost brand?

Brand positioning is the component of the brand communication strategy that will help you justify higher prices if you so wish.

In your messaging, you must brand yourself in a way that aligns with your pricing model.

If you market yourself as a low cost brand, but your prices are very high – this confuses customers and as a result, makes them question your validity and intentions.

And vice versa.

If you have you position yourself as a premium brand but your prices are very low, it is again a cause for concern.

7. Brand Uniformity Across Touchpoints

This is where brand uniformity comes into play.

However it is you choose to brand yourself – you must communicate this across all marketing channels.

An integrated brand communication strategy is vital when you are playing on multiple different platforms.

You need to make sure your messaging is uniform everywhere your customer goes, or risk appearing unprofessional and questionable.

8. Authentic And Genuine

It is important that you actually walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Consumers are getting smarter and smarter.

With the internet at their fingertips, consumers are more knowledge about brands than ever before.

If your branding is inauthentic and disingenuous, potential customers will be able to see this from a mile away.

Don’t brand yourself in a way in which you can’t honestly commit.

9. Promote Transparency

Promoting transparency helps build trust.

Showing a clear effort to promote your brand in a transparent way proves that you have nothing to hide.

This even goes into owning up to your mistakes as a business.

If there is a product recall, for example, instead of playing the blame game and making excuses, making a public statement and giving the actual reason for why this happened – and why it won’t happen again! – can go a very long way.

Yes, you messed up, but in the long run, customers will notice that you took ownership and did not try to hide.

10. Brand Salience

The best of the best companies have created incredible salience with their brands.

Brand salience is simply the ability to be the “top of mind” or “first to mind” brand when a particular subject is mentioned.

This is extremely apparent in the alcohol industry.

A great example is Corona.

Corona has created brand salience with the beach – whether it be summertime, on vacation, or laying by the pool, chances are, when you think of these types of activities, the first brand that comes to mind is Corona.

This is the definition of brand salience.

11. Valuable And Helpful Content

You always want to provide more value than what the customer is willing to pay.

Knowing your customer avatar, you need to think of ways in which to best communicate with them.

Providing free value on a topic in which they resonate with is a great way to build trust and create a relationship with your audience over time.

12. Have A Conversation With Your Audience

This goes into having an actual conversation with your audience.

Seek their input and involve them.

Providing free value as well as reacting to their responses to this free value further creates a relationship with your customers.

13. Engage Customers

This is where social media managers can come into play.

Having your social media team respond to social media posts, go out and like customer photos, create engaging surveys, and involve them in giveaways and contests are all great ideas to starting a conversation with your audience.

14. Showcase Consumer-Generated Content

The more you engage and create a relationship with your customers, the easier it will be to ask them for reviews and testimonials.

Leveraging this consumer-generated content creates social proof for your brand.

Showcasing this social proof to potential customers will make them feel more inclined to trust you, as so many have clearly done so in the past.

15. Don’t Be Overly Promotional

When you’re overly-promotional, it becomes less about the consumer and more about yourself.

You never want to come across in a way that implies that you’re just trying to make a sale.

Consumers want to feel special and feel like they’re buying for their own benefit – not because you’re trying to grab their money.

This loss of connection with your customer is harmful to your overall relationship.

Never come across as overly-promotional.

16. Show Your Company Culture

Showing your company culture to the world proves that you are actually the way you promote yourself to be.

Your culture matches your brand, and so everything adds up.

This helps further establish trust.

Showcasing your company culture also shows consumers that you are real people – not just a company.

Portraying real people with real lives deepens the connection your brand has with its customers.

17. Tell Stories

The last aspect of the brand communication strategy is to tell stories about your business.

The greatest marketers in the world are storytellers.

As humans, we naturally relate to stories and put ourselves in others’ shoes when a story is told.

Portraying your brand image through storytelling is the best way to relate to a customer, and should therefore always be included in your strategic brand communication.

Conclusion

There are a lot of moving parts to a brand communication strategy.

When done right, branding your company can help you get a foothold in the marketplace.

From your initial customer avatar, to your brand positioning, to your brand salience and company culture – implementing an effective and integrated brand communication strategy can soar your business to new heights and create loyal customers.

If you’re looking for advice on your small or local business’s branding efforts, check out Active Business Growth today.

The post Top 17 Tips To Improve Your Brand Communication Strategy appeared first on Active Business Growth.

It could have multi-faceted purposes with many different website goals and objectives in mind, or it could have one singular purpose and one singular purpose only.

Let’s discuss what the most common purposes are for different types of websites.

What Is A Website?

A website is whatever the website owner wants it to be.

It could be informational, educational, divisive – you name it.

A website is essentially a platform for an individual or business to express themselves and utilize in whichever way they choose.

Below are some of these such ways.

1) Make Money

The most common purpose of a business website is to make money.

Nowadays, the whole world is coming online.

Consumers have become more comfortable inputting their credit card information and buying things online.

Where consumers are is where businesses go.

Since consumers are spending most of their money online now, businesses have begun to build websites to target these buyers.

2) Sell Products

One of the most common ways to make money online is to sell a physical or digital product.

By making the customer journey as easy and seamless as possible, businesses have begun making millions online from selling products to online users.

E-commerce Websites

And this is exactly what e-commerce companies do.

They create a website that has built-in functionality to accept and process credit cards online.

By doing so, they can turn a simple website visitor to a purchasing customer without the user ever having to leave the comfort of their own home, making business faster, easier, and more convenient for everyone.

Affiliate Websites

Affiliate websites sell other companies’ products online.

“Affiliate” marketing is just another way of saying “commission-based” salespeople.

It is where you sell a product on behalf of another company, and receive a commission for doing so.

Technology has become so advanced nowadays that affiliate websites allow the website owner to be completely hands-off once it is earning a substantial income.

This essentially removes the owner, thus creating a semi-passive stream of income.

The purposes of most affiliate websites are for just that – for the website owner to earn a passive income.

3) Sell Services

Alongside selling products comes selling services.

This is where the website is used to generate awareness, leads, and sales online for a service that will be rendered by the business that owns the website.

Service-Based Websites

At the end of the day, these websites are used to sell their services.

Whether it’s a small, local business, or a large multinational corporation, the purpose of these business websites is to increase their top line.

4) Save Money

On the other end of the money-making spectrum is the money-saving spectrum.

Today, websites are extremely cheap and relatively easy to create.

The return on investment for creating a business website can be huge, and save you money in the long run on overhead, salespeople, office expenses, and more.

5) Build An Online Presence

As the saying goes: “if you’re not online, you don’t exist.”

The vast majority of consumers research a product or service online before they every make a buying decision.

As a small business owner, if your business can’t be found online, you will potentially be losing out on HUGE amounts of money.

A website is used to mitigate this risk and establish an online presence for your small business.

6) Branding

A website is the hub of your business.

With this in mind, most businesses use it as a way to further establish their branding.

They can add pictures, videos, stories – anything they want.

It is a great way to further enhance your brand and communicate to your audience what it is that you do and what it is that you stand for.

7) Showcase Authority And Establish Trust

With branding, comes showcasing your authority.

Your audience needs to know that you’re an authority figure in your industry that they can trust.

Social Proof

Providing customer testimonials, reviews, and case studies is a great way to communicate this authority to your customers.

Websites can be used as a way to show your customers that you can be trusted and that they should do business with you.

Awards And Recognition

Awards and recognition add to your authority.

Having a proven track record tells your website visitors that you know what you’re doing and have the results to back it up.

This is one of the major purposes of a business website.

8) Generate Leads

Marketing has changed in 2020 and beyond.

No more do businesses have to rely on expensive television, radio, and print ads.

Instead, the internet has changed the game.

It has become cheaper and easier than ever to generate leads for your business online.

And it all starts with a website.

9) Nurture Sales

Nurturing sales and bringing your customers down your online sales funnel is essential in the customer journey.

A website is perfect for this, as it creates another important touch-point for your customer.

When designed properly, a website can dramatically increase your sales and closing rates.

10) Informational

There has been a lot of talk about the purpose of a business website, but there are also many purposes of websites that have nothing to do with business at all.

Informational websites are an example of this.

These are websites where the purpose is simply to provide information to the end user.

Wikipedia is a great example of this.

11) Entertainment

The television revolutionized the way we seek entertainment.

Now that we all have a portable television in our pockets, it makes sense that our entertainment shifts to these devices.

There are websites such as 9gag that are used purely for entertainment purposes.

12) Online Education

Online education is becoming a massive industry.

With college tuition putting college graduates into tens of thousands of dollars of debt, students are looking for cheaper alternatives.

Many platforms and website portals are now popping up that are strictly purposed for online education.

13) Social Media And Social Networking

Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat.

These are the websites on the internet that get the most use, traffic, and engagement.

We are social animals that live in a digital world.

Thus, websites that are really just social media platforms are seeing the most success today.

14) Blogging

Instead of journaling, many internet users are turning to blogging.

Simply having a website where you can vent and get whatever it is you need to get off your chest and onto a screen has been found to be very useful to many people.

In fact, there are millions of blogs on the web today.

Blogging is a huge use case for websites today.

15) Express Creativity And Originality

As you can probably tell by now, the main purpose of a website is to have the ability to express yourself however you want.

Both businesses and individuals value this.

It is why businesses use it to grow their brand and individuals use it to bring their personality to their own safe space online.

16) Build A Relationship With Your Audience

Websites allow you to build a relationship with your reader.

They allow you to tell stories and bring your audience into your world.

If you seek a deeper connection with the people you’re trying to reach, creating a website is highly advisable.

Should I Create A Website?

All-in-all, there are many reasons to create a website.

Whether you want to generate more leads for your local business online, sell products in an e-commerce store, or build an online presence for yourself – a website can be a great idea.

In fact, there aren’t very many reasons not to create a website.

However, whether you decide to build a website for yourself or not, we hope this article helped answer your question:

“What is the purpose of a website?“

The post What Is The Purpose Of A Website? appeared first on Active Business Growth.

This is a very loaded question, as there are dozens upon dozens of different online advertising elements that you must know to be a successful internet marketer.

However, we decided to boil these components down 21.

21 digital marketing components that will give you a foundational understanding of what digital marketing is, how it works, and how all of its elements tie together.

Let’s get right to it.

1) Your Website

First and foremost, your website is the hub of your business online.

It is where you have the freedom to brand yourself the way you want and to connect with your target audience in a meaningful way.

This is where you want to eventually direct all your traffic to at the end of the day.

All of your online marketing efforts will lead back to your website, where you can gently push your audience down your funnel and turn them into a sale.

Your website is your brand identity.

As such, you should put careful consideration into how you create it, what it looks like, and the message it communicates to your visitors.

It is an essential part of both global marketing and local area marketing.

2) Online Lead Generation

The main purpose of having a website for your business is to convert its visitors into leads.

Having traffic visit your website is pointless if this traffic doesn’t convert.

You want to have as many visitors as possible email you, call you, contact you, or perform some sort of action that implies a greater interest in your product or service.

By doing so, you will have more opportunities to increase your sales.

This is the whole point of online marketing:

To generate leads that turn into sales, to increase the top line of your business.

3) Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

This is where conversion rate optimization comes in.

When discussing website lead generation, your “conversion rate” is the percentage of website traffic that turns into a lead.

Example: if you have 100 users visit your website and 2 users call your business as a result, your conversion rate would be 2%.

The goal behind CRO is to increase your conversion rate as much as possible, turning this 2% into 3%, 4%, 5%, and so on.

You achieve this by adding discounts, promotions, offers, call-to-actions, and more.

You want to test many call-to-actions over time to see which convert best.

This will ensure you are receiving the highest number of leads possible.

4) Marketing Analytics

A fourth component of digital marketing is marketing analytics.

You must become familiar with the different metrics and measurement tools available on the market to understand how best to move forward with any digital marketing campaign.

Below are three common terms you should know when it comes to analyzing your website’s traffic:

Users

A “user” is simply a visitor that lands on your website.

The more users that visit your website each day, the more chances you have to convert a lead and make a sale.

Session Duration

A “session” duration is the amount of time a user spends on your website in one sitting.

A high session duration means your visitors are very engaged with your website.

Bounce Rate

The “bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors that leave your website with only visiting one page.

A high bounce rate demonstrates a lack of engagement, as the user is not enticed enough to visit more pages on your website.

5) Content Marketing

There are many different tactics that fall under this category, including YouTube videos, blog articles, Instagram posts, and more.

Content marketing is an important component of digital marketing because it gives you the opportunity to provide valuable material to your audience.

The idea behind content marketing is to provide as much helpful information to your target market as possible so that they begin to trust your brand and see you as an authority figure in your space.

Content marketing helps your business stay top-of-mind at all times and serves as a reminder of your business when your audience happens to be in the market for your product or service.

6) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a method of search engine marketing.

It uses Google and other search engines to drive traffic to your website.

The key differentiator of SEO is that it drives free organic traffic to your business.

It does this by showing your website high in Google Search for key phrases that are relevant to your products and services.

Click here to discover if SEO is worth it for your business.

7) Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC is another form of search engine marketing.

It is one factor of search engine positioning.

PPC differs from SEO because PPC traffic is all paid.

Google Adwords, for example, will rank you at the very top of Google Search, but every click that is generated from your PPC campaign will cost you, regardless if that click turns into a lead or not.

The benefit of this, though, is that you will see immediate results, whereas SEO – although free – will take time before it kicks in.

8) Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing is simply the act of posting organically and generating traffic to your website from social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

When done properly social media marketing can have a viral effect, showing your business to thousands of potential customers for free.

However, you must now be very strategic with this marketing channel, as social media platforms have begun reducing the effectiveness and reach of organic posts, forcing businesses to start paying for impressions.

9) Paid Facebook, Instagram, And Youtube Advertising

Since advertising revenue is how the majority of social media platforms make their money, they are pouring their earnings into their paid advertising options to make them as effective as possible for businesses.

This is because the more effective it is, the more businesses will use them.

This digital marketing component of paid Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube marketing allows you to laser target your audience and put your business directly in front of them.

The one major downfall of this method is that it is slowly making our previous point obsolete, as giant social media platforms are drastically reducing the reach of organic SMM.

10) Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is not a new idea.

This component of digital marketing is simply the act of selling a company’s product and receiving a commission from it.

The great thing about online affiliate marketing, though, is that it can streamline the sales process very efficiently.

All you need to do is have a link on your website that leads to an affiliate marketing product, and when a visitor buys said product through your link, you get a commission.

There are a lot of professional online affiliate marketers that make a fulltime income off of a single blog just through affiliate commissions.

11) Programmatic Advertising

With the billions of websites on the web and a whole host of different online marketing components, it is impossible to manually learn where the best place to be to place an ad for your business.

Programmatic advertising solves this problem.

By using technology and machine learning, programmatic advertising can test your ads across multiple different platforms and websites at a very high speed.

It can then determine which ads work best where in order to allocate your advertising budget as efficiently as possible.

12) Email Marketing

“The money is in the list”, as the saying goes.

Email marketing is where you collect the email address of a website visitor in order to follow up with them at a later time.

This follow-up could be a multitude of different things, such as providing value to the user, offering a discount on a specific product or service, or even sending them an email to wish them a happy holiday.

The purpose of email marketing is to nurture your leads.

As they become more familiar with you through email, the goal at the end of the day is to push them back to your website to initiate a sale.

13) Influencer Advertising

With thousands of people now making a living off of their large Instagram and social media followings, the emergence of influencers has arrived.

Influencer marketing is a new digital marketing element where you pay a set price to an “influencer” with a lot of followers to make a post about your business to their loyal fans.

Since these influencers have such a close connection with their fans, their followers trust their recommendations.

If you can find an influencer that has a lot of fans in which match your customer avatar, then reaching out to them and asking for a quote to make a post for your business may be a good idea.

14) Blogging

Blogging is another form of content marketing.

Quite a few people think that blogging is dead – but it is far from this.

Blogging allows you to create content that is helpful to your readers.

It also adds keywords and relevance to your website to boost your SEO efforts.

When done right, blogging can be an effective form of lead generation by sharing your ideas and building your brand through your efforts of being a thought leader.

15) Remarketing

On average, it is ten times cheaper to market to a consumer that has already had at least one point of contact with your business than it is to market to a consumer that has had none.

This is where the digital marketing component of remarketing comes in.

Consumers that find your business through SMM, SEO, PPC, etc., have already expressed interest in your brand.

Knowing that they have an interest in your products and services is what makes remarketing so effective.

Instead of wasting your advertising budget on people whom you think might be interested in what you have to offer, you are instead using maximizing your budget in an efficient way to people who have already expressed interest.

Digital remarketing can be an extremely effective online advertising element when done right.

You can learn more about it by watching this video:

16) Marketing Automation

Marketing automation streamlines your processes so you can focus on more important aspects of your business.

Examples of marketing automation are: automated followup email sequences, an embedded calendar to book a call with a sales rep, paid advertising campaigns that run while you sleep, etc.

The beauty of this digital marketing component is that what once took a huge sales team and massive capital can now take a small team of only two or three people.

Marketing automation has dramatically reduced the cost of doing business and has allowed online business owners to make much more money while doing much less work.

17) Videos

Video has grown like wildfire over the past decade of internet usage.

With the advent of YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and other video platforms, video consumption has increased exponentially online.

This means that video is receiving more and more views from consumers.

And from here, it will only continue to increase.

It should, therefore, be a priority to educate yourself about video marketing and create consumable video content for your audience as much as you possibly can.

18) A/B Testing (Split Testing)

When it comes to online advertising, split testing is everything.

You need to test your landing pages, ads, creative, content, messaging – leave no stone unturned!

The name of the game with digital marketing is to make everything you do as optimized as possible.

This way, you will be able to drive as much traffic and generate as many leads from this traffic as your budget permits.

If you neglect to test A/B test your marketing, you could very well be leaving money on the table.

19) Brand Uniformity

With your website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and all of the other digital platforms in which your business lives, you need to have brand uniformity.

Your Facebook page shouldn’t portray you as a family-friendly company if your products shown on Instagram are R-rated.

Consumers need to feel uniformity in your brand presence on every platform that they visit.

If they don’t, they will be confused and unable to resonate with your overall message (whatever that may be).

This component of digital marketing is especially important in the online arena as there are many different profiles, pages, and platforms you need to align.

20) Online Reputation Management

Nowdays, consumers do their research before they purchase a product or service.

You need to pay close attention to your online presence and ensure there is nothing negative about your business anywhere online and that if there is, you act accordingly.

Let’s say you receive a bad 1-star review on Yelp.

A best practice is to try to get this review removed and to respond to this review with reasoning or an apology for the negativity in the meantime.

Consumers have become experts in market research.

If there is something negative online about your or your business, you can be sure your potential customers will find it.

21) Tracking Tools

It is extremely important to understand your marketing metrics to make informed decisions about how to optimize your campaigns, presence, and advertising.

In order to track these types of marketing metrics, there are common tools that most businesses use to do so.

You must master this last digital marketing component in order to fully know how to move forward with your online marketing efforts.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool provided by Google that collects information about users that visit your website.

It can track their location, their age, how they got to your website, how long they stayed there, and more.

This is a must when it comes to tracking website analytics.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another free tool provided by Google.

This includes a host of different search metrics for your business including search terms, clicks, and impressions.

It also allows you to manage any issues Google may have with rendering your website to users.

Pixels

A pixel is another tracking script that allows you to track users and attribute specific actions to them.

If you have an e-commerce store, the Facebook Pixel is a great example.

It allows you to track who viewed your product, who added your product to their online shopping cart, and who purchased a specific product on your website.

Pixels are also very powerful for remarketing purposes.

The Core Components Of Digital Marketing: A Summary

There are many, many digital marketing components that you need to learn in order to be a successful online advertiser.

These are 21 of some of the most important digital marketing elements, but there are many more you must master in order to have optimal success in this field.

You can learn more about digital marketing and online advertising by visiting our Knowledge Centre.

The post 21 Essential Digital Marketing Components You Must Know appeared first on Active Business Growth.

A brand can be thought of having two parts – the physical and the symbolic.

Physical Brand Identity

Physical brand elements are things that you can directly see and sense. So for example, things like the brand’s logo, colours, visual style. In the case of Starbucks, you have the classic Starbucks logo, the classic cups with the colors that more or less stay the same, and the interior that has a similar theme no matter which location you go to.

And the idea behind doing physical branding properly is consistency. You want your brand to be recognizable in whichever context its presented in, and that’s best achieved by being highly consistent. It’s also worthwhile because you want to have a tight connection between the physical brand elements and the symbolic brand elements – which is the second part of what makes up a brand.

Symbolic Brand Identity

A brand’s symbolic meaning isn’t something that’s directly physical, but rather it’s made up of concepts or feelings that live inside of consumers’ minds. So things like the kind of emotions the brand gives off; it’s personality, whether it comes off as a serious brand or a light-hearted brand; and the social values it stands for and the principles it believes in.

In the case of Starbucks, the symbolic associations that most people have are that it’s a hip, cool brand, that’s inclusive; it allows customers to come sit down, spend time there, maybe catch up on some studying – with no pressure or judgement. It also stands for certain things like social corporate responsibility, and individuality.

These are all things that most people “feel” that Starbucks stands for, but for the most part the brand never actually explicitly says these things – it’s more just an association that consumers get. And this is exactly what a brand’s symbolic meaning is about.

Ok so that’s all nice and all – but why does it really matter? It matters because research consistently shows that the strongest and most loved brands are ones that have these strong symbolic associations formed in the minds of consumers. And brands that appeal to consumers on these symbolic levels are ones that those consumers are most likely to choose.

So beyond just having your brand’s logo be recognizable, you want consumers to build a concept of what your brand is about, what it stands for, and what it believes in.

Examples

So how do you do that? There is one major effective way to get your brand’s symbolic meaning across, and that is through storytelling. Here are two examples to demonstrate this.

“Neuroscience has shown how a powerful narrative can stimulate emotions, builds engagement and long-term memory encoding of the message.”

First is from the watch brand MVMT. In the video the founders explain how they stand for particular principles – of giving consumers the ability to buy quality watches at fair prices. They go about this by telling their brand story – of how they started up their company to fill this void in the market. After watching the video, you gain a complete symbolic conception of what the brand is about and what it stands for. And if these principles matter to you, you are likely to think of this brand when in the market for a watch.

The other is from Dove. This particular video doesn’t go into talking about any of Dove’s products at all. Instead it tells a story – of common issues & experiences that women face, that Dove is passionate about addressing. Even though it doesn’t talk about Dove’s products at all, because of their method of storytelling, you immediately know what Dove as a brand stands for and what greatly matters to it – which may very well connect and align with its consumer base.

So these are just two excellent examples of how brands can control and form the symbolic associations that consumers have of them, through storytelling. And this doesn’t have to be done through just videos. It can be through simple social media posts, by consistently using a specific tone, language, or style of communication.

Or it can be done through the brand’s website, by having sections of the site that communicate points related to what the brand stands for and what it’s about.

Regardless of how you do it, it’s without a doubt highly critical that your business and it’s brand clearly communicates its values, and creates these symbolic associations.

The post Branding a business to success appeared first on Active Business Growth.