This article is dedicated to small business practitioner who want to develop website for an online branding activities. I explain you the fundamental step by step how to develop an online branding.

Steps to develop online branding via website

1. Research.

a. Define your target market.

You have to know them thoroughly. How do you know your target market? You can get the information by answering this question, “What overall customer base do you serve?”. From these overall customer, you can grab the information more detail, such information as their characteristic or interest, their basic need, their location, their habit, and so on.

This is the most important thing when you want to build an online branding. So, do not run the other step before you finish this step.

Why is this step very important? Because the more specific target market you get, the more you understand your target market. If you completely understand your target market, you can serve their basic needs. Finally, if you provide a solution that is very suitable for their basic need, they will trust you and become your loyal customer.

b. Competitor research.

If you have known your target audience comprehensively, then it's turn to do a competitor research. You have to obtain a detailed information who are they? What is their strategy? What is their service and quality? What is their solution to the customer? and gain other aspect of information.

The easy way is, observe their website. You can investigate their product and the way they give solution to their customer.

If you find there is something which is not being served by them, you can place your position here. This makes you unique and focus on this service to get more customer.

2. Define a strategy.

After knowing your niche (specific target market) and knowing your solution that will be offered for them, you can set a strategy.

Before doing that, you have to clearly state your prospects, their basic needs, and your solution to satisfy their needs.

After that, you can ask, “How is the way to satisfy their needs?”, “What is the thing should I perform so that they know that I can give them a solution to satisfy their needs?”

The answer of these questions becomes your strategy to achieve the best result.

3. Set a goal.

This is closely related to strategy. If you have a clear goal, you can easier define your strategy.

4. Create a website.

Your website must be able to translate your business goal and your strategy. You have to know what you want your website to do based on your goal.

All aspects of website design must be able to interpret your goal, strategy, and your branding. Aspects that you can consider:

- domain name

- website theme, template, color

- content

- page

- logo

- image

- feature

- customer channel

- communication channel

- salescopy and call-to-action

All aspects of your website must be suitable for your business objective and strategy. So that, you can easier perform online branding in your website.

5. Monitoring, tracking, and optimizing.

Afterward, you can monitor and analyze your return on investment result. You can optimize your online branding performance by run a SEO campaign, PPC campaign, or social media campaign. The campaigns that are driven by your goals.

Above are the steps of developing online branding via your website.

For more detail about brand reputation, click this link.