With all the talk of online automotive marketing these days, it’s easy to get the impression that when you communicate with your customers online, you’re doing so in a vacuum. Online customers become a crowd full of strangers without faces or names or personalities. They don’t seem like the same real live human beings that come into your dealership and buy vehicles.

Consistency is arguably the most important aspect of branding, and that doesn’t just apply to your website. Yes, you want every page on your site to give the same impression. But you also want to give the same impression on the website as you do in the dealership, in your emails, and in any offline media advertising you purchase. Here are some things to think about.

Does your website scream “cheap”? if a customer comes to your website, is the first thing they see a huge flashing banner telling them about a sale or a discount? There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but is that the same impression they’ll get when they come into the dealership? If they go to the website and see huge yellow flashing discount signs and show up at the dealership and find somber salespeople in suits, you’re not giving a consistent message and you’re bound to make people uncomfortable.

On the other hand, is your site too serious? If you run a dealership that focuses on great pricing and your website gives no such impression, you could be leaving money on the table by turning off your ideal customers when they show up at your website.

Do your emails give the same impression as your website and your dealership? Emails are a great way to communicate your brand. Give your outbound emails an audit. Do your signatures promote the same values that your site promotes? Would somebody receiving your email be surprised when they walk in the door?

One of the best ways to get answers to these questions is to find someone impartial and objective to give your impressions about your different media types. Ask them what they think — you might just be surprised by their answers.

A few short decades ago, automotive dealerships tacked advertisements to telephone poles. Except in smaller, rural communities, telephone poles have gone the way of this form of advertising - disappeared - simply because we now have better ways of doing things.

When we place calls today, signals fly through the air instead of zipping down a wire, and so should advertising messages. There is still the option of television advertising or print promotion, and maybe you still use those mediums.

There’s also a very convenient, inexpensive way to get your product and your brand out there. It’s called Online Brand Marketing.

Online Brand Marketing is the communication equivalent of telephone pole ads on leaflets. Get that name and product out there, everywhere - in your email signature file, in comments on blog postings, etc. Communication doesn’t end at your website. Keep it going in every online transaction, correspondence and message posted. It’s easy, and it doesn’t cost much.

Beware of too much self-promotion, though. When talking about your vehicles or your dealership in a message forum or blog, be careful to serve the topic at hand and avoid posting just for the sake of getting on the board.

Talk about the related post or subject at hand and work your brand into your comments lest you be branded yourself: as a spammer. No one wants that label, so find a way to correlate the subject with your brand.

Be sure to use a healthy brand signature at the bottom of all online correspondence too, whether it be in an email, forum or blog comment. Your name, telephone number and email address aren’t sufficient if you’d like to let everyone know about the great deals you offer.

Add your branding message into your signature or your comments. Readers will see it, even if it’s a quick discussion about next week’s game. That’s called online brand marketing, and it’s the telephone pole of today.

As a dealer with an automotive blog or website, you know the importance of online brand marketing. It’s what sets you apart from the myriad of other automotive dealers in the nation and even in your local area. That’s why you always want to ensure that you put the best information “out there” and have a reputable site.

But how do you protect your online reputation when people can post whatever they want on the Internet? One disgruntled customer could cost you sales. Here are a few tips to protect your brand and your marketing strategies so you can defend yourself and keep as many potential customers as possible.

• Google Yourself
This is the easiest way to see what’s in cyberspace about you or your business. Simply type your name into the Google search engine to find out what information already exists about you.

• Create an Alert with Your Name or Your Dealership’s Name
I’ve done this with my own name just so I can see if anybody is posting anything untrue about me online. You can easily create an alert through Yahoo or Google that will send you an e-mail whenever somebody posts your name online.

• Respond to Negative Comments
When customers are happy with their experience at an auto dealership, they typically don’t create a blog post or any other written statement expressing their satisfaction. But dissatisfied people will. And sometimes, they’ll even exaggerate the truth or just make completely false statements. If you see this, do your best to respond, whether by commenting or by contacting the person who posted the information. It might not be a big help, but at least you get your side of the story out there, too.

When posting to your automotive dealer’s blog, it’s important to have regular updates and posts to keep your name in your customers’ psyches. But the question often arises: How frequently should I post? On the one hand, frequent posts are positive. But there’s s fine line between an ideal frequency of posts and an excess of posts. In fact, the number of posts could “make or break” the success of your online brand marketing strategy. As there isn’t one right answer to this question, here are some points to consider so you can determine the best number of posts for your automotive blog.

• Length of Posts
If you typically write lengthy posts for your car dealer blog, be sure to post less frequently. Customers don’t want to read ten one-page posts each day. When posting long posts, keep it to a maximum of two posts per day, but one each day is ideal.

• Post Daily
Even if the post consists of one or two paragraphs, be sure to post at least once a day. At the very least, make sure you post at least every three days. If you’re less frequent with your posts, people tend to unsubscribe and get their information elsewhere.

• Blog Topics
Readers will tolerate (and maybe even enjoy) a higher frequency of posts as long as your topics are interesting and relevant. But three posts a day about the difference between a navy blue automobile and a midnight blue automobile could lead to a flux of unsubscribing.

Keep these things in mind and keep track of your subscribers so you can see what works and what doesn’t work.

With spiders becoming more and more intelligent, it’s necessary to reevaluate your online brand marketing strategies constantly to conform to the new technology. And with Yahoo’s new phrase-based indexing, nothing could be truer. Here’s how you can use Yahoo’s new technology to positively affect your website’s ranking.

1. The first thing you can do to increase your chances of getting picked up by spiders is to place relevant keywords close together on your pages. This makes it easier for the search engines to recognize the relationship.

2. Use related keywords that have been optimized for a particular keyword. That basically means that you use several different words that mean the same thing as your keyword. When you do this, search engines can get a better understanding of the content on your page from the keywords that you use.

3. Optimize several pages of your website for best results. Use different search terms on each page, but make sure they are closely related so the search engines will notice them. This also shows that your content is relevant to your website’s topics.

Yahoo’s new application is different because it focuses more on concepts rather than simple keywords. This website’s explanation uses the concept of “tiger woods” as an example. When you do a search for “tiger woods,” the new application helps return stories that involve golf terms instead of stories about tigers in the woods. It does this by searching through the related keywords in websites and focusing on overall theme and concept.

This is a new and exciting innovation in the area of search marketing and brand recognition. It’s good to see that the major search engines are continually trying to make their services better for online users.

One of the common denominators for successful online brand marketing strategies is flexibility. Although you should have goals and tactics in mind, it’s best to periodically reevaluate your needs and the methods you’re using to accomplish your goals. Even with this type of flexibility in mind, though, there are eight essential components to include in your strategy. They are:

1. Real Customers: Analyze your audience and tailor your message to reach those customers.

2. Uniqueness: Differentiate your company from others in the marketplace. Be unique in something, whether it’s your advertising, services or follow-up.

3. Targets:  This is similar to #1, but it involves an even more specific definition of whomever you are trying to reach. Create a niche market with a specific potential customer base.

4. Goals: Set small goals and big goals for your marketing strategy. This is the best way to gauge the success of your efforts.

5. Communication: The stronger and more direct communication you have with your customers, the more likely they are to use your company. Have a strong message that they will notice more than those of your competitors.

6. Financial Projections: Have a system for showing the returns on individual product lines and investments so you can see which campaigns are more successful than others.

7. Position: Make your brand your customer’s first choice. Why would they want to go anywhere else?

8. Brand Identity: This is something you need regardless of the size of your business. Create an identity that pops into your customers’ minds whenever they need your products or services.

Making an online brand marketing campaign a success isn’t easy. In fact, very few companies actually become successful enough to make their brands household names in a global or even domestic market. That’s why it can help to look to some of the success stories. This time, let’s take a brief look at the story behind the Guinness beer brand.

Guinness is a company that is nearly 250 years old and originated as a way to quench the thirsty throats of Irish pilgrims. When the company’s marketing staff wanted to capture what the brand was all about, this long history was definitely in the plans.

When the company built the Guinness Storehouse in late 2000, the designers implemented a variety of exhibits and displays that celebrate the company’s history. They also included an explanation about how they make the frothy black beverage. The facility also has an art gallery with conference rooms, training centers for employees, bars, restaurants and even a large open space for events. The seven-story storehouse demonstrates that the beverage maker is dedicated to the community.

According to Ralph Ardill, one of the integral minds that helped design the facility, “Guinness as a brand is all about community. It’s about bringing people together and sharing stories.”

Guinness succeeded by setting and meeting a community-drive goal to spread the message of its brand. It’s important to have a goal for your brand that you can strive to meet.  Without a goal, it’s impossible to tell if you’ve achieved success in getting people to recognize your brand.

For anyone working on an online brand marketing campaign, there’s no better time than the present for this advertising effort.

In 2007, the revenues brought in by Internet advertising reached an all-time high with more than $21 billion. And there’s no place to go but up. The Internet is quickly becoming the best way to advertise your brand or get your message to the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time.

Last year’s figures show a dramatic increase over the figures from 2006, with a 25-percent increase from the previous year’s $17 billion.  In 2006, the numbers showed a 35-percent increase over 2005.  

Some analysts believe the relative slowdown in traditional advertising reflects the fact that the Internet commands a larger share of the advertising dollars. When businesses or companies advertise online, they typically forego advertising in other mediums, like newspapers and radio. As such, the Internet takes money away from those advertising forms

As of right now, however, the Internet only makes up about 10 percent of advertising dollars in the United States. That leaves room for a large amount of growth. But some companies are still skeptical about the power of online ads and the number of people they can reach.

If you’re looking for ways to reach more people and get your brand “out there,” look to the Internet. It really is the future of nearly everything.

Are you looking for more ways to get your online brand marketing message out to more people? Facebook, the social media marketing giant, is making it easier for you to do so. Here’s how.

When you have an account at Facebook, you can build up a list of friends with whom you have something in common. These “friends” are people that you typically communicate with through the website. You share your preferences for products and read their blogs and other posted communications.  Each Facebook member has a homepage where photographs and updates can be posted.

But now, you can go even a step further. Facebook recently began selling advertisements that you can purchase. When you do, your profile photo appears next to commercial messages that your Facebook friends can see.

Let’s say, for example, that you rented a movie that you particularly liked from Blockbuster.com. The website will then ask if you’d like to have your movie choice advertised to all of your friends on Facebook. Your friends then receive the message in addition to an advertisement from Blockbuster.

And because Facebook’s millions of existing members already use the social media networking site to tell others about the things they like, there isn’t much of a change with this new offering. The only difference is that your messages may be accompanied by an advertisement when you tell others about the things you like.

This is just another great way to get your name and your brand noticed. If you have a Facebook account set up for your brand, your logo or your face can accompany each of these messages to embed it further into the psyche of those with whom you are networking.

Anybody who has ever created an online brand marketing campaign from scratch will tell you it’s not easy. It takes hard work, dedication and a variety of strategies to make it successful. Whether you’re just starting out or have been working on your campaign for a long time, you could always use more suggestions to get your campaign noticed. Here are five more suggestions you can use to make your campaign work harder for you:

1. Leave your signature when you comment on somebody else’s blog. Be careful not to sound like you’re self-promoting, because that’s just rude. But mentioning your brand underneath your name isn’t something that would make most people upset.

2. Mention your brand and your name in your blog tag lines.

3. Use your brand and logo when you send an email. Most, if not all, email servers allow you to attach a signature with each email you send. This signature appears at the bottom, and it exposes your brand to everybody with whom you communicate.

4. Put your brand name in the title of your blog. This serves several purposes. Every time visitors view your blog, they will see your brand. But when they subscribe to a feed for your blog, they encounter the brand each and every time you update your blog.

5. Create a separate blog to talk about your brand. Blogs are one of the best ways to attract attention, as long as you constantly update them with fresh and relevant content. You can also do pretty much anything you want on your blog, so self-promotion is certainly not out of the question.

Keep an eye on our blog here for more brand marketing tips in the future.