“How do I get my brand online, fast?” With technology advancing into virtually every sphere of culture and society, establishing an online presence for your brand is essential.
Whether you’re a creative, startup, consultant, solopreneur or an established business, getting your brand online can help you reach a wider audience, improve your credibility, and increase your visibility. It can also help your visitors, leads, and clients find you instantly. Establishing your online presence will also aid your audiences in finding vital information about your company, brand, service and product.
Launching your vision can seem daunting when approaching fundamentals like creating a website and developing your marketing and outreach. You may wonder where to start and what the bare bones are to getting your idea out to the world in the most efficient way possible. We’ve compiled the basics so you know exactly where to begin and what steps you’ll need to take to start engaging with your audience and future clients, A.S.A.P!
1. Choose a Domain Name
Step one to getting your brand online (and one of the most crucial,) involves selecting a unique and memorable domain name that reflects your brand. Your domain name will quickly become a huge part of your marketing and brand awareness, besides its practical function of leading people to your website.
A domain name is the web address that visitors will use to access your website. (Don’t miss these super useful tips for choosing the right domain. They’re so important that they could actually “make or break” how your visitors discover your website!)
Consider using keywords relevant to your business or brand. If a TLD (top-level domain like a .com or .org) isn’t available, you could also use a unique domain extension that’s also related to your field or industry, like .store or .studio. Most importantly, try and keep it straightforward and easy-to-remember (as in concise, with no characters, hyphens, etc.) To ensure fast deployment of your future website, choose a domain registrar or website builder (like DomainSpot) that offers instant domain registration and includes security features like SSL certificates to validate the safety of your site to both visitors and web browsers.
2. Use a Website Builder
“Don’t reinvent the wheel!” Some of the best life and business advice many of us have ever learned, and it definitely applies to creating your website.
Guess what? Fantastic news for you here – if you need to get your name and product or brand out quickly, you don’t have to spend loads of money and time on web designers and development.
Many web hosting companies (again, such as DomainSpot, surprise!) offer built-in website builders so you can simply click, drop, or drag your own content, images, and colors into pre-existing website templates.
So, you can create a compelling, modern and professional website with zero coding experience, knowledge or skills required! Look for a website builder that offers an exceptional range of responsive templates and allows for easy customization.
Pro tip: DomainSpot’s budget-friendly website builder includes basic e-commerce tools in many templates. Setting up e-commerce tools can get tricky. Expedite the process by using a template with integrated e-commerce tools so you can introduce your online store to your potential customers even faster!
Get a Matching Custom Domain Email Address
Did you know that 75% of customers say “email from a company’s custom domain makes the business feel more trustworthy”? Whatever you do, don’t overlook this step! Having an email address that matches your website’s domain name is foundational for several reasons. Besides strengthening your reputability with your customers, emails from your company domain can also land in primary inboxes more frequently than spam folders.
Email hosting makes it possible to send emails from your website’s domain name. When choosing the right email hosting, evaluate factors like:
- The volume and capacity of emails you’ll send and receive – do you need a lot of space, storage and security?
- How many specific email addresses do you need? Is it just you? In that case, you could have a personal email address (I.e. (first initial, last name)@yourcompanydomainname.com and also a general email address like info@yourcompanydomainname.com. If you have multiple staff members, or anticipate adding to your team, it’s always good to look for hosting that offers multiple email addresses, or more scalable email hosting.
Another pro tip: Setting up email hosting separately from your domain and web host can get complex and time-consuming. If you’re in a hurry, when choosing your domain and web host, look for all-in-one domain, website builder and email companies like DomainSpot, and others. Built-in email hosting lets you immediately deploy your domain email address and have more forwarding flexibility to redirect your incoming emails to your primary email address.
3. Customize Your Website
If you haven’t already developed your “brand identity,” now is the time! If you have no idea what that means, that’s ok too. Your “brand identity” generally includes the color scheme, logo, fonts, etc. that your viewers associate and identify with your brand. You can also develop your brand identity as you go. If you’re unsure, explore other templates to get inspiration for cultivating your own distinct brand style and tone.
As you compose your brand messaging and copy (text) content throughout your website, use clear and appealing language to captivate your audience, convey value, and communicate your brand message.
If you work as a consultant, solopreneur, writer, freelancer, etc. you may only need a website that highlights your personal bio, the type of work or service you offer, and a contact form or page with your contact information. (No need to overcomplicate it, sometimes less is more.)
While you customize your website, personalize it to align with your specific brand identity. Aim for a cohesive and visually appealing experience for your visitors as you add in your brand logo, colors, and images. Your website should reflect the values and personality of your brand.
To really reinforce your brand identity and let your visitors reach you faster, include a custom phone number with your brand or industry name somewhere consistent, like the website header or footer.
4. Optimize for Search Engines
You don’t have to get lost in the ever-changing and complex world of SEO optimization! (At least not right now.) However, you do want people to see your site when using search engines like Google for words (or keywords) associated with your business, product, service or industry.
Your website competes with infinite content and millions of websites across endless stretches of the World Wide Web. Without basic keyword optimization, your website might not rank high enough for your visitors to discover it in the first page or two of their web search.
Make sure to implement basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve your website’s visibility in search engine results. Conduct keyword research to identify relevant keywords for your brand and incorporate them naturally into your website content.
For instance, if you have a website that promotes your hauling company, include words like “hauling service” in your headlines, body copy, and so on. This will help search engines understand the relevance of your website for specific search queries.
It’s always good to include meta tags, headings, and image alt tags to attract organic (non-paid) traffic.
And one more pro tip: Heads up, DomainSpot’s website builder templates include no-coding tools to help improve your website’s SEO optimization, so you don’t actually have to go very far down the rabbit hole of SEO optimization just yet.
5. Create Social Media Profiles
“There are 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, representing 59.9% of the global population and 92.7% of all internet users.”
Yikes! Social media is taking over the planet! Welp, like it or not, with new platforms emerging every day, it’s certainly not going away. Social media has become an extraordinary channel for communicating in real-time to vast audiences. Your business can’t afford to miss it.
With so many rising platforms, like TikTok and Snapchat, it’s helpful to recognize who your potential audience and customer is while creating a social media strategy. Establish a presence on social media platforms that are relevant to your target audience. For instance, if you want to reach individuals between the ages of 25-34, make sure to create a profile for your brand on Facebook.
Don’t forget Instagram, X (the “artist formerly known as ‘Twitter’”), and LinkedIn. Share interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking, inspiring or bold content that’s tailored to each platform and catalyzes interaction. Expand your reach and drive traffic to your website by using social media strategies like including a Link in Bio in your Instagram profile.
6. Publish and Promote
When you’re satisfied with your website and social media profiles, it’s time to get the word out about your brand. Include your website link across your social media platforms, email newsletters, and any other marketing channels you use.
Eventually, consider running targeted online advertisements to quickly reach your desired audience. (Perhaps start running online ads once you feel like your business infrastructure and administrative systems are strong enough to handle any influx of traffic or orders. Always good to aim for getting the best reviews possible to strengthen your rapport as you build your online presence.)
Expand Beyond Web
Expand your reach by cross-collaborating with industry partners or social media influencers. Of course, you can capitalize on email marketing to nurture and grow your existing client and customer-base.
If you’re ready to multiply your engagement, consider integrating SMS marketing to quickly point your leads and customers to deals, rewards or promos. You can add a link to any additional information on your website.
7. Observe, Analyze, Adjust
“Always learning. Always innovating.” As a ClearHello company, we strive to let our larger company values direct the way we interact with our day-to-day work endeavors. No matter how new or how established your brand is, you will always encounter hiccups, setbacks, challenges and learning opportunities.
Regularly observing your website’s performance and tracking the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts is an essential way to identify areas for improvement. “What’s working? What’s not working?”
Take advantage of tools like Google Analytics to gather insights into your website traffic, user behavior, conversion rates, and so much more.
Let your data inform you on ways to better optimize your online presence. Observe your social media engagement and adjust your strategies as needed. While trends change with lightning speed, stay aware of major trends and industry changes to keep your brand competitive and relevant.
Everything You Need, In One Place
Need to get your brand online quickly? Save time and money with DomainSpot. DomainSpot has everything you need to launch your idea with just a few clicks.
Let us fetch you the perfect domain, help you publish a captivating website, and start communicating with clients, A.S.A.P!
