3 Ways To Make Your Brand “Sticky” on The Cheap

November 29, 2012

Nearly every small business must figure out how to become, in the parlance of branding experts, “sticky” or “top of mind” when potential customers or clients need products or services. In the past, many of the traditional strategies to help make a brand sticky, such as TV or radio, were cost prohibitive and inefficient for small businesses. However, new less expensive yet more efficient strategies have emerged over that past decade to help even the smallest businesses make their brands sticky.

Remarketing

Perhaps one of the most promising branding strategies to come along during the last few years is “remarketing.”

Have you seen banner advertisements for the same advertiser, who you vaguely recognize, that seem to follow you as you browse different websites? If so, you are probably on a remarketing list.

At its most basic level, remarketing is the practice of tagging a website visitor and displaying advertisements associated with that website while that visitor browses other websites.

Advertisers use remarketing for a myriad of reasons; not the least of which is to increases brand exposure or induce “the one that got away” to come back and take action, whether that be ordering a product, contacting the business, etc.

Google, Facebook, and others provide platforms that enable remarketing. In particular, Google’s AdWords platform allows businesses that also use Google Analytics to easily and quickly create remarketing lists and ad campaigns. Because of the relatively low cost of display advertising, which is the term for traditional banner advertising, the cost of remarketing is generally low and thus the return on remarketing is generally quite high.

Currently, remarketing in the United States doesn’t require the permission of website visitors to opt in to remarketing lists; however, this could change through future privacy legislation passed by the U.S. Congress.

Email Marketing

Unlike remarketing, email marketing requires a website visitor to opt in to communications from a business. Of course, there are many ways to convince a visitor to opt in to an email list, but perhaps one of the most sustainable is the promise of value. For some businesses, that may be a discount on products or services, for others that may be entertainment, or for others that may be expertise and knowledge.

Like remarketing, email marketing can help a business convert “the one that got away” or increase brand awareness, but it is also inherently more personal. Unlike remarketing, a business often knows the names of the recipients to whom it sends emails and can personalize email salutations as well as other aspects of the email.

Perhaps the most compelling attribute of email marketing is attention. Unlike remarketing advertisements, which are often distractions when a person is viewing a web page, a person’s express purpose when reading an email is, just that, to read email.

With great power comes great responsibility, however. Just because a business has an individual’s email address, doesn’t mean the business should flood that individual’s inbox with messages that are likely unwanted. Sometimes, less really is more. In order to become sticky, businesses should only send emails that will provide value or utility to recipients. This will help ensure that email recipients won’t unsubscribe and will remain interested in future email communications.

Social Media Marketing

While the hype associated with social media, thankfully, may be dying down, it still presents a viable method of communication with current and potential customers or clients. Similar to email marketing, the best way to convince people to follow a business is to provide value or utility. Unlike email marketing, the consumption of social media is generally less focused than reading emails because it is often filled with numerous short posts all vying for a person’s attention.

Although a single social media post may not command much of a person’s undivided attention, people don’t generally need to provide any personal information when choosing to follow a business via social media, which may be more appealing than providing the personal information often required to opt in to email marketing.

As with email marketing, if a business wants to become sticky it should take care to only post information that followers will find truly valuable or useful in order to keep followers interested.

While many strategies to make a brand sticky were once available only to businesses with deep pockets, even the smallest of businesses can now become sticky on a scale that fits them.

Briefly Technical