How content impacts your brand: for better or for worse!

Could your content be working against you? Explore these 5 areas and make sure your content is helping, not hurting.

It’s no secret that brand building is challenging. There are so many different elements that all play a part and trying to learn all of them can be overwhelming. However, there is one thing in particular that has an overreaching impact on everything your brand is: content.

From pictures to words, content is everywhere and includes almost everything you post. For brands based solely online, it is the only thing customers have to go off when they look at your business. That makes it a big deal! Making sure your content is helping, not hurting, plays a vital role in success.

In a study done, 93.2% of respondents said they had looked up information about a company or product online, just within the last week! What they did with that information, would have largely depended on the content they interacted with, whether it was posted by the company or reviews from someone else.

Because of this, the goal is that when potential customers look up your business all the content they see moves them towards making a purchase. In the same way that great content can attract new customers, poor content will send them looking elsewhere. As stated below:

“Mediocre content will hurt your brand more than doing nothing at all.”

— Joe Pulizza, Content Marketing Institute

Let’s discover these 5 key ways content can impact your brand and how they move from one to the next. It’s time to ensure your content is working for you, not against you!

1. Web Traffic

One of the first things people will do if they are looking at your company (or Googling the product or service you offer) is to check out your website. And hopefully, you have written and visual content that helps them clearly understand the following:

• What you offer
• How it helps
• Why they should buy from you (not someone else)

Remember back in elementary school, learning “who, what, when, where, why?” It’s old school. But it’s still cool. And foundational. Are you answering these questions for your customers?

Because your rank for a search engine is largely connected to the content on your website, answering the basics is even more important.

From landing pages, to product descriptions, to blog posts, all of it is content that impacts your brand’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) performance. Content that’s seen as valuable can help your site show up first. Showing up first means more people are seeing your brand.

While SEO is it’s own beast, and the google algorithm changes everyday, let’s touch on the basics.

We know that Google ranks websites higher with content that is:

• Grammatically correct
• Providing answers to search queries (what problems does your product solve?)
• Written for people (don’t stuff keywords!)
• Using links: internal, outbound or inbound
• A decent length (blog posts should be at minimum 300 words)

There’s more to SEO than just that. However, if you can ensure your content is hitting the basics you will be well on your way.

Action to take: Are you creating content that is answering people’s questions and written to help you rank higher? If you are unsure how to create certain content yourself, consider outsourcing or using web tools to check for grammar and assist keyword and link research.

2. Brand Perception

From the first moment potential customers are exploring your brand, product or service, the content they see and engage with will start to shape their perception of your brand.

Brand perception is owned by the consumer. It’s a person’s thoughts, feelings and ideas about your brand. You can help influence those things but you aren’t ultimately in control.

This is why negative reviews or bad commercials (seriously, check that link out!) can be so catastrophic. Because it will negatively impact your audience’s perception of your brand and reduce the likelihood that they will make a purchase.

The good news though, is that great reviews and quality content can have a huge, positive effect on brand perception. Driving sales, word of mouth recommendations and customer loyalty. A massive win if your content is impacting your brand favorably.

For better or for worse, people’s perception of a brand influences whether they become customers or go elsewhere. With social media, this has become even more true. This means we need to understand how to make sure our content is portraying what we want!

You’ve probably realized that with brand perception, customers are key. We have to think about what they want to see and engage with. Having buyer personas can help you narrow down what type of content you should be posting and what your brand’s voice should sound like.

For example, if your target market is to a younger audience, you’ll need to make content that appeals to them: fun, flashy, creative, visually appealing, storytelling, progressive, etc.

Conversely, if your target market is older your content should be: mature, professional, storytelling, inspiring, informative, etc.

This is where posting content that is blah, grammatically incorrect, or just misses the beat matters. If consumers see your competitor posting content that is consistently engaging, eye-catching and interesting to them, they will perceive that possibly that brand would be a better fit (regardless of whether your product or service really is better!)

Action to take: Have a look at who your target audience is and create some buyer personas. Identify what content they want to see, hear and engage with. What tone and voice is going to appeal to them most? Make sure that the content you’re posting aligns with that.

3. Sales

Once your content is getting you web traffic and making a positive impact on brand perception, you are likely to start getting sales! Whether it’s a service or product, this is the end goal: driving sales and making a proper income from your business!

Here are some other content ideas that can help you drive sales further:

• A website pop up. Website pop-ups are a common way for brands to grow email lists and convert web traffic into customers. Offering a small discount for signing up can be an amazing way to encourage sales.
• A website freebie. Website freebies work well for companies who offer services and might not want to offer a discount. Whether it’s an informational PDF, e-book, calendar download, etc. it should be connected to what you do and offer value to your target audience.
• A giveaway. It was found that Instagram accounts who hold contests for a giveaway grow 70% faster than accounts that don’t! An easy set of requirements? Include following your account, tagging a couple friends and sharing to their Instagram story. It’s a guaranteed way to get your brand in front of fresh faces.
• Email marketing. By 2023, the number of email users is expected to reach 4.3 billion! That’s half the world’s population. Email marketing is cheap compared to other forms of paid marketing yet deliver a great return on investment (ROI).

For your email marketing keep these things in mind:

• Your headlines need to be catchy! If you aren’t making your audience curious with the headline, they will not open the email.
• Create set campaigns. “Welcome” email series are a great way to have fun, friendly emails send automatically when someone new signs up for your newsletter.
• Make sure your emails are adding value. From special discounts to information about the company. If your audience decides you aren’t adding value to their inbox, they will get off your list.

Action to take: Have a look at other content ideas that can help drive sales. Which ones could you implement? Which ones are you doing already? Go over your written content and see what can be improved.

4. User Experience

Next, is user experience or what some refer to as (UX). While this topic can become very complicated when getting into user design, we will keep it simple.

The Google dictionary definition of user experience is, “The overall experience of a person using a product…”

Wikipedia says, “The user experience is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service.”

While a consumers positive perception of your company may have led them to make a purchase, their experience in using your product or service is still crucial.

A final, great experience with your product or service can lead to good reviews and your brand being shared and recommended.

This creates a circle of positive brand perception. On the other hand, a bad experience might lead to the opposite.

While your product or service may stay the same, consider how you deliver it. Delta Global is a company that specializes in luxury, eco-friendly packaging for brands. They say in this article, “Packaging is another way of building and marketing your brand.”

Consider all the “unboxing” videos posted on YouTube. Or iconic packaging like Tiffany & Co. with their blue boxes.

Make your user experience positive with the following ideas:

• Make physical packaging count! They say, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” but people do. And the same goes for first impressions with your product. Whether it’s eco friendly packaging, a welcome note, a guide for usage, etc. Help people create immediate positive feelings.
• Create “packaging” for your service. Even if you aren’t delivering a physical product, having a thank you email, video or pdf can have a similar effect. You could also consider sending out physical thank you cards with extra info about your brand or business.
• Consider the reviews. If customers are consistently recommending the same thing, it’s time to pay attention. There are always improvements to be made!

Action to Take: What are 3 ways you could maximize your first impression with customers? Consider whether there are changes you could make, not just to your product or service, but on the way it is delivered. What can be done better?

5. Customer Loyalty

Finally, we come to the last area of how content impacts brand building. And that is customer loyalty. If your content has brought them to your website, helped shape a positive brand perception, led to a sale and then delivered an amazing user experience, you are on your way to building a base of loyal customers.

Most people agree, customer loyalty is a critical part of what makes a business successful. Having a loyal base of customers who keep coming back for new or different products and services means a steady income and greater long-term success. Sounds nice, doesn’t it!

In addition to everything else, keep these content tips in mind to help with customer loyalty:

• Don’t lose quality. If your content starts to slip, your customers will notice.
• Use incentives for user-generated content. That means content posted by social media followers, personal testimonials, etc. Use competitions or rewards and start sharing the content you are tagged in!
• Consider greater sustainability measures. Sustainability matters more and more to customers and has billions of sales dollars behind it. Do the right thing for our planet and tell your audience what you’re up to. Your customers will thank you for it!

Action to take: What steps could you take with your content to encourage repeat purchases and grow customer loyalty? Make sure that all content posted is to the same high standard to keep current customers engaged and paying attention.

There you have it! How content impacts your brand in 5 important areas and tips for each one. Keep your content working for you and watch your business flourish.