During my near decade in digital marketing, I’ve come to recognize a fundamental principle that cannot be ignored if one hopes to manage a successful campaign: If a business does not ensure that its brand looks good online, it will be wasting its money on internet marketing and other forms of advertising.
This point may seem obvious enough but the problem arises on a regular basis. It’s not enough to simply focus on attracting new customers without also investing in the branding infrastructure necessary to keep them once they have arrived.
I have encountered this type of situation many times since my first day in this industry. Imagine a company spends $10,000 per month on TV, radio and internet advertisements. Now also imagine this very same company has not updated its website in years. What do you suspect the average consumer will think when they land on a webpage that looks like it was made in the last century? Even worse, what do you suppose will happen when motivated buyers can’t easily access the site from their smartphones because it was never made to be mobile-friendly? Can you picture what this would do to the credibility of this company?
The fact of the matter is far too many businesses neglect their digital brands and allow their websites to become outdated over time -- I see this every day. Customers are not only turned off by websites that are archaic and difficult to navigate, but it can even cause them to lose trust in a brand.
A recent study from Neustar and the Ponemon Institute revealed which factors cause consumers to distrust brands online. Not surprisingly, they reported that consumers do not trust websites that contain errors, require lengthy loading times, or frequently crash. Losing trust in one’s brand is practically the worst-case scenario for any company. The analysis also discovered nearly a dozen other issues that cause consumers to generally dislike a website. If a company is not actively addressing these problems head on, they will likely lose online visitors.
For this reason and many more, it’s imperative that companies today ensure their brand looks great online before they launch any major online marketing or traditional advertising campaigns. As a fundamental function of my job, I communicate to all my clients the importance of brand maintenance and its relationship to their digital marketing needs. The bottom line is that those ads would be much more effective if their brand looked and performed better digitally. In other words, putting your best foot forward means polishing up your image on the web first before focusing on advertising and directing traffic to your site. In my experience, this is the proverbial one-two punch of truly effective and sustainable internet marketing solutions.
Every company on the planet is trying to save money and make the most out of their resources. However, this push to save cash can sometimes cause companies to scrimp in areas they mistakenly deem non-vital. Digital branding is often one of those action items placed at the bottom of the priority list. In the digital age, this mentality could not be more dangerous. This is especially true given the increasing prominence of online reviews. If a company has negative online reviews or simply lacks positive reviews, they could be losing out on new customers. Most consumers these days not only read online reviews but are heavily influenced by them. Why would a company bother spending thousands of dollars attracting customers, only to immediately lose them due to poorly managed branding?
Although my goal is to help businesses of all kinds grow and prosper, I am forced to make tough decisions when dealing with prospective clients who refuse to improve their digital brand before launching any internet marketing operation. If I were to ignore their branding issues, I would be effectively devaluing my own brand when I can't deliver on my promises.
There may have been a time when companies could get away with ignoring digital branding as part of a broader internet marketing strategy, but I believe that those times are long gone. Until the day comes where the two are not inextricably linked, I will turn down clients who neglect their digital branding.
