B.O.O.M. - Brand Optimizing Offsite Marketing

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Brand Optimising Offsite Marketing

B.O.O.M!

It’s the new phrase kids, this is the phrase that is going to help you rocket your sales, your rankings and your business.

But what the F-Bomb does it mean…Let’s break it down.

B is for Brand

You don’t have to be a player on the internet to be a brand; in fact the smallest businesses can grow just by acting like a big brand. People often look at a “brand” and gain an emotive response…companies spend £millions trying to evoke an emotive response just to get noticed.

And that is the point. Being noticed is key, needless to say a positive response is more important, but just being noticed is enough.

All businesses need a brand identity; a logo, a typeface, a website, but most importantly a personality. With the help of the internet, your small shared warehouse business can grow into a national retailer, but you need to connect with people first.

How?

O is for Optimising

So you have a brand…now what?

Optimise it, or in layman’s terms: get it out there. Make it memorable and start thinking about all those things your competitors aren’t doing.

Firstly, define your niche/niches. Most small businesses are built with the idea that they can sell to everyone, but define your niche and your profits will increase tenfold. By deciding who your customer is, you define the target areas that you should market to, the blogs that you should interact with, the places to send free samples to and most importantly the people that your business needs to identify with.

Let’s take something boring…tyres.

Tyres are on cars…Cars evoke an emotive response, but unless you follow F1 this year you aren’t bothered about tyres.

So what if you sell tyres as a business, how do you Brand Optimise?

So the majority of people who buy tyres online are two things:

  1. Car Enthusiasts
  2. Male

Both of these things define a market. You see, a tyre business may not evoke an emotional response, but the love of a motor vehicle does. There are TV stations, magazines, blogs and live shows all dedicated to it.

So strategise with this in mind, evoke that response and do something original, create a clothes site for cars, an app that changes the tyres on your car, safety advice, driving lessons, mechanical to-do’s. By using the experience in the car industry to speak to your customers you automatically Optimise your brand.

But what about my Rankings?

O is for Offsite/Onsite

Ahh SEO! Actually link building, or “Offsite Marketing”, has traditionally been used to spam websites for the gain of search engine rankings on specific keywords. But small businesses have the benefit of doing something better.

By defining your niche, you have given your business a market to speak to. These are not your customers!

These are the people who influence your customers, the web masters of blogs they read, the magazines they peruse, even the music they listen to. You see, every niche has its specialists.

So a car enthusiast might write a blog, or be part of a magazine, but the average Joe either doesn’t care enough to write his own, or more likely is too busy with the other things in his life to share his enthusiasm for one thing with strangers.

And this distinction is important, because these people, everyday people, are your customers, but they are influenced by the niche.

So which one do you send your samples too?

  • The one who won’t mention it, but will appreciate it?
  • Or the one who will share it with everyone!

Even tyres make a lovely gift for the right niche, but a track day, sponsored by you, makes an even better gift and one sure to evoke emotion and excitement in this niche influencer.

It is important to also involve these people on your own site. Simple acknowledgement or better still the creation of an onsite campaign, that uses the same branding across all your offsite content ensures that the campaign doesn’t just become a quick win strategy. By spending the time to get it right initially, you can create a fantastic offsite/onsite campaign that people will want to engage with.

The ideal situation is that websites and influencers come to you, instead of you having to beg them to add your content.

But how does this all get me more sales?

M…is for Marketing

Now that you have:

  • Defined your brand,
  • Optimised it
  • Defined your Niche
  • And interacted with it

All that’s left is old school marketing, designing campaigns to help promote certain services, interacting with the niches to help promote some of your ideas, and even involving them in the business so they feel like a loyal member of your marketing community.

By working to market the brand that you create, you will always find more opportunities for offsite marketing. Most importantly though, is that you take a campaign idea and run with it through every aspect of the business. Become an authority in an area, related but essential for your business and you will soon see the growth identified with it.

And just remember:

B.O.O.M. = Research X Free Stuff = Blog Posts.

Online Mentions and Magazine Covers = Better Rankings + More Sales + Positive Brand Emotion.

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About the author: "As a comic book geek that plays prop for a local rugby club, I'm kinda the ultimate social contradiction. I've come from a bit of a techy SEO background but my enthusiasm lies in the development of strong Online Marketing Campaigns that deliver real results."
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