When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Canada, do as Canadians do. If you want to develop your business brand in Canada, you need to consider a few specific things before setting out on this journey.
When starting a business, you need to dedicate a great deal of time and attention to developing your brand, as it creates your identity on the market. Back in the day, brand awareness was built on a high level of sales, and word-of-mouth marketing. Nowadays, in the era of social platforms taking the role of influencers, the whole approach to advertising made a huge leap forward. The Internet presence is key to an extensive influence on the market of goods and services and an integral part of the brand image.
Internet branding features for business in Canada
By developing a brand in the online world, you have full access to a huge audience through the website, blogs, photo and video content, and communication on various marketing and social networking channels.
Internet branding is beneficial for any group and type of service or goods. The beginners mistakenly understand brand promotion as an activity online, and the more the better. However, every post, photo, video, or any other piece of content is part of a plan and overall business strategy. Let’s have a look at the cornerstones that help brands develop Internet awareness and presence.
First of all, Internet branding is based on the RACE framework. It’s a marketing strategy that is used for planning, optimizing, and managing your development strategies. The central part of everything makes the customer.
The lifecycle consists of planning REACH-ACT-CONVERT-ENGAGE steps to provide an omnichannel for every customer.
- Reaching – approaching the right customers, at the right time in the right location.
- Acting – engage the audience using a variety of tools, and interact with them.
- Converting – persuade the reader to take the next step and become the customer who buys what you offer.
- Engaging – create a long-term relationship to make make your customers stay and not look for alternatives. If this stage isn’t planned, you are about to have lapsed buyers.
The main steps to take:
1. Define the target audience
The very first thing to do is to define your Canadian end-users, as all the further steps will be built around them. It is crucial to be very specific – the better you outline the precise needs of your customer, the more chances you have to win their attention.
There are four major levels of target groups: geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral. You need to narrow down the list by reaching the last and most important level – behavioral, as it gives you an understanding of the behavioral patterns of potential buyers, and thus, more chances to choose the right strategy.
It’s highly recommended to create the customer avatar – a cover-it-all description of habits, likes, dislikes, preferences, behavioral patterns, a typical day, a job, etc. When having such data, you can easier decide on the types of tools and techniques to use to influence the audience.
When elaborating on the avatar of the end-user in Canada, you need to consider various ethnic groups and create a specific description for each. Besides, the living conditions in Nunavut will differ from the ones in Quebec, or Alberta. Keep that in mind when triggering the needs of people.
2. Website
Online presence starts with a website, this requirement is set in stone. When users type in keywords in a search line, they will be given a list of websites with the answers. If you are not there, you are out of the game. The website is your face and one of the signs of reliability and long-term existence.
While choosing the name, make sure it is memorable and punchy, neither too long nor too short. Provided you want to set up a business in Canada, you may want to register it with the .ca domain extension, as it will look more trustworthy for a Canadian audience. Besides, you can consider registering two domains, for French and English parts of society.
3. Consistent design
The brand is a quintessence of the design, ideas, philosophy, and culture of the company. Design of the website, logo, social networking sites, and all the content must be performed in one style, and have one distinctive feature, the one that will stand out from the crowd.
When elaborating on the design, make sure it reflects your tone of voice and meets your promises and claims. Consistency in everything builds up an invisible layer of trust for the customers and complements the image of the company.
4. Regular online presence
Social media improved the quality of communication between business and their customer and brought it to a new level. You can use social media platforms to inform your followers about new products, updates, collaborations, launches, etc.
Generations of the Internet era tend to be quite forgetful if you don’t maintain their level of interest. Therefore, an Internet presence is essential. It isn’t about spamming pictures day by day, it’s a regular feed for your subscribers and clients. Depending on your business type, you can plan various content, 1-2 times a day, but not more, as people will get tired of such spamming. Besides, if you plan on a noteworthy and informative post, don’t do it every day, 2 times a week will be enough, not to overload the readers.
If you forget to post from time to time, you are bound to lose the readers, and thus, your clients and profit. Make sure you have specialized software that helps you plan all the content and post it automatically.
Don’t forget to communicate with your readers, as they want to be heard and noticed. It gives them the feeling of being appreciated.
5. Convincing online content
Online content is typically made of photos, videos, and text posts:
Photos
Quality of photo content is your attitude toward your customers and your product. Low quality transfers the message of disrespect. Make sure all the images and captions match and complement the style of the brand.
It will also be a good idea to use some specific ‘native’ features for the content, making it emotionally closer for the clients.
Videos
Video content is a part of every marketing strategy and the most popular way to communicate with the audience. It creates an illusion of talking in person, which makes the readers more engaged. Video content requires certain editing skills as well, to provide the best viewer experience and it needs to meet certain technical requirements for every particular platform.
Texts
Be convincing and informative, and avoid being wordy. Don’t post long-reads, as people rarely read further than the second paragraph (however, it depends on your audience). As was already mentioned, it’s worth registering two domains, French and English. Clearly, the same approach works with languages.
Bottom line
Creating a brand takes time, effort, and consistency. The Internet community gives every company a chance to establish its brand and maintain a proper level of interest in the consumer. A winning marketing strategy is about a steady presence, strong company principles and values, and communication with the customers. Aiming to develop a brand for a Canadian audience, make sure you consider its main and distinctive feature – diversity, as it heavily influences the way people see life.
A brand is your ticket to a long-term market presence, do everything to win the attention and loyalty of a Canadian audience for years.