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As the economy is in a soft landing, and perhaps heading into a recession, doing more with less during times of inflation is key to your company’s success. What are the low hanging fruits in digital marketing for you?
The upcoming book “How to Become a Brand: Decode, Create, Amplify” by Joanne Z. Tan, founder, CEO, and brand strategist of 10 Plus Brand, Inc, will discuss the following eight brand elements in depth and detail. This is a short summary for building and amplifying a business brand online. Samples for these elements are also on https://10plusbrand.com/
Also called brand essence, brand DNA is the foundation upon which all the following 7 elements are built.
10 Plus Brand, Inc. has a proprietary and comprehensive methodology for decoding brand DNA, with business model and planning analyses, thorough research, and masterfully crafting a brand’s unique value propositions. Decoding brand DNA is a lengthy, multidisciplinary, multidimensional process, related to the brand’s competitive advantage and to the needs and wants of its well defined target audience.
Brand DNA decoding is the make-it-or-break-it factor for all future marketing success/failure.
The same principles are also used for business rebranding, or personal branding.
If an organization needs to rebrand, or refresh its brand, 10 Plus Brand first does a “3-Ss” audit of the old brand: what to save, what to stop, what to start.
After brand DNA decoding, 10 Plus Brand, Inc. guides companies to create the other “3 Ss”– strategies, structures, and stories, which will be described in detail and in depth in Joanne Tan’s book “How to Become a Brand: Decode, Create, Amplify”.
Brand positioning is based on and results from brand vision, mission, strategies, goals, and tactics.
Brand strategies will determine a brand’s structure so we can then “put the meat on the bone” — put verbal and visual content (“meat”) on the brand framework (“bones”).
Telling brand stories is both an art and a science: not only do the stories need to be factually brand-related, and emotionally connecting to the target audience, but they also need to be SEO savvy to increase its search-ability online and its technical good standing measured by Google Core Web Vitals.
As one of the top content marketing agencies (awarded by DesignRush, 2022), 10 Plus Brand prides itself on laying a solid foundation for each client’s brand establishment and marketing.
If a brand is a human body, we have decoded its DNA, created its bones and flesh in (2) above, now we create its unique “facial features” — colors, font, style in the forms of business name, logo, and even a tagline if you want one.
The brand look & feel symbolizes and visualizes brand essence, distilled and synthesized from (1) and (2) above. The visuals always serve the verbal content, not the other way around.
This is the artistic and creative part of branding and brand building. To 10 Plus Brand’s graphic designers and artists, this is where they will shine, recognized as an award-winning, premier creative agency in 2022 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Now it is time to “clothe” the brand with a website, after the verbal and visual content (“body”) is created, using the principles stated above.
What makes a website stand above the crowd is first, content, – BRANDED content; and secondly, technical performance such as loading speed, SEO, etc., as measured by Google Core Web Vitals’ metrics.
WordPress is the most popular format for many organizations that do not rely on their websites for e-commerce, since WordPress is SEO friendly and user-friendly (but it needs to be regularly maintained to update plugins.)
Now the choice is between developing a custom-coded WordPress (or other types of) website, or using a theme or template for your website development.
A template WordPress website is easier and cheaper to develop, but is slower to upload, thus ranks lower by Google, which hurts a website’s competitive advantage online.
A custom coded (WordPress) website is not top-heavy like a templated theme. With a much faster loading speed, it performs better. Custom coding also allows your website to uniquely fit your needs, styles, and designs for presenting your content and brand elements.
Recognized as a top digital marketing agency in both 2021 and 2022 in the San Francisco Bay Area, by Clutch and DesignRush, 10 Plus Brand has achieved above 90% (out of 100%) scores by Google Lighthouse and Pagespeed Insights for all our clients, so far. Way to go, 10 Plus Brand’s web team!
A brand promotional video, – provided it is a well made, “classic” video, – can anchor your website’s home page and greatly enhance your brand’s power, since humans process visual information 60,000 times faster than words, and a high quality brand promotional video breathes life into the “body” of the newly minted or redesigned brand, after being “clothed” with a website.
What is the secret sauce for making an evergreen brand promotional video that will anchor your website for 5-15 years? – the script. We have made many based on their brand DNA that we previously decoded for our clients.
Video production is what 10 Plus Brand was founded on: We create high quality brand promotional videos. More than mastery of cinematography, videography, and photography, the video crew and the content writers at 10 Plus Brand know how to script, direct, voice-coach, and edit. We do turn ordinary people into “stars”, – without tooting our own horn too much :j
See samples here: https://10plusbrand.com/create-video/
It makes no sense to create a knockout, branded website if no one knows about it. SEO will not only get Google search engines to know about it, but also get your messages across to all your prospective clients, your referral partners, and everyone important to your business.
SEO is more than how to vary H1 & H2. It’s about using relevant, trending Google keywords, in both descriptions of landing pages, photos, as well as in blog-writing, to make your website pages and content searchable for people who look for, or vet your services and products.
BUT, if all your competitors are using the same SEO software, same keywords, same rules of the game, often by outsourced SEO services, then all of you are just paying a lot of money and getting nowhere.
We firmly believe that it is not in your brand’s best interest to have SEO work done by those who do not understand your brand elements, and/or lack cultural and societal understanding about how your American target audience uses American English words. Without being prejudiced in any way, when an America-based company outsources SEO work to India or the Philippines, their understanding and usage of keywords can be different CULTURALLY from your American target audience’s.
The usage of SEO keywords for website landing pages is very strategic, brainy, and “architectural” in terms of creating an overarching SEO structure for the entire website’s content AND for future blog posts. That is the kind of high quality SEO work we deliver at 10 Plus Brand.
Another element is ADA (American Disability Act) compliance, which can be part of the SEO alt-texting.
Website ADA compliance is all about describing pages and images on a website in words for legally blind people, using alt text, which is also part of the SEO work AFTER a website is fully designed and developed.
Since ADA compliance descriptions and SEO work are closely related, the best time to get them done is when the website is close to going live.
We at 10 Plus Bran not only TECHNICALLY get all our clients’ websites loading speed and performance above 90%, we also get their CONTENT standing above the crowd, as a BRAND, SUBSTANTIVELY. 10 Plus Brand won the “best SEO agency award for 2022” in the San Francisco Bay Area from expertise.com. (If we don’t toot our own horn, who will?)
We do toot YOUR horn on your LinkedIn (on both your personal page and company page), with profile optimization, revision, and personal or business branding.
Here is our website dedicated to LinkedIn professional, personal, business branding: https://10plusprofile.com/
Why do we focus so much on LinkedIn?
Well, just Google yourself. The first thing that comes up is either your LinkedIn profile, or your website.
That’s how your prospects and referral partners vet you, and they most likely won’t tell you about it (especially if your LinkedIn profile fails to impress them, or even turns them away to your competitors.)
We apply a comprehensive content marketing strategy for every platform, including your website, to fully optimize your online presence and digital footprints. 10 Plus Brand creates a uniform social media presence across all your social platforms.
10 Plus Brand is ranked as one of the top San Francisco social media marketing companies. (“Here you go again”, I hear ya… )
Now the “body” is living, clothed, and breathing. You need to feed it with organic food and/or high quality processed food.
Original blogging, and repurposing curated high quality content are two key ways of growing a brand’s stature and influence, for the long term goal of elevating a brand to be a thought leader and an authority in its field. Using trending keywords (that people are using online to search for your expertise) in both writing your own blogs and in repurposing others’ relevant articles will establish your authority in your industry over time.
For those who don’t have time to write their own blogs, our highly trained business content writers (with minimum master degrees in law or business) ghost-write thought-leading articles for companies and leaders.
What is the ratio between original content and repurposing articles? – around 20% – 80%. Of course the more original content you publish, the better.
For curating high quality content, AND posting them with customized summaries and hashtags for your own brand, we at 10 Plus Brand use a hybrid of AI enabled software and human intelligence to select, summarize, and post articles relevant to your own brand.
This is drip irrigation, – you need to do it persistently, regularly, consistently, over years. But the results can be astounding: some of our clients grow their clientele several fold resulting from this.
For those with a budget for podcasting, we recommend that you kill two birds with one stone: make a vlog (video blog) by narrating in front of a video camera, after editing, use the audio MP3 version for posting on podcast platforms, and use the video MP4 version for posting on Youtube. If you want your brand’s videos to look professional, we at 10 Plus Brand can either offer our own professional studio or go to your location to record both video and audio for you. We then do the editing, SEO, posting on social media platforms and your own website, — all these processes are labor and time consuming, AND require commitment for the long term. Frankly it is not for the faint of heart and/or those who are budget constrained.
You can also choose to only record audio for podcasts without video making, to save some money.
Again, 10 Plus Brand has been recognized two years in a row as one of the best digital marketing agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, and social media marketing companies in California.
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Which of the above eight brand elements are the most important to your business, right now? Which is your lowest hanging fruit in this golden age of deep branding and impactful digital marketing? Need some consultative advice? Call us: 1-888-288-4533.
© Joanne Z. Tan.
Edited by Phil Toudic
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(About 10 Plus Brand: the “whole 9 yards” is not enough, we go 10+ to exceed your expectations in brand building, digital marketing, and content creation for both business and personal brands.)
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