Who ever thought the face-to-face meeting would be almost entirely replaced by something digital we all call social networking? KISSmetrics recently put out this awesome little infographic piece on how different genders use all the different social networks that people spend their time on every single day.

It is pretty interesting to see how the different genders (male & female) use these popular networks in order to communicate on a daily basis. Everything from business to personal communication is now done all online leaving search marketers scratching and clawing at the landscape in order to find their target demographics to be visible in front of.

Search engine rankings are great and all but if your company’s branding abilities really do not convey your business message to your audience you might have a hard time getting your point across to your core online community. With massive amounts of clutter, vast social media conversations and a boatload of competitors in every angle it takes a lot to grasp a person’s attention online and have them actually create an action on your website. Sometimes you have to think about what is just as important as pulling in traffic to build a business online. Website visitors are important but what happens when your website visitors are not happy once they arrive to your site?

Here are some reasons when heavy strong branding is just as important as website traffic:

Heavy Online Competition

If you are in an extremely competitive space how exactly are you going to differentiate yourself from your sea of competitors? It is going to take some work trying to infiltrate the search space if you are in a situation where you are just getting started or even just getting started with your online marketing. Strong, robust branding could be an amazing way to really differentiate yourself from your competition by giving people a reason to pay attention to you.

Target Demographic

Different demographics are going to respond in different fashions to any business. If you have a product or service that clearly targets a much older audience you are going to approach your design and development of your brand in a different light than if you are targeting college students. A younger audience tends to respond much stronger to clearly defined branding efforts. Understand you’re demographic in under to get your branding abilities correct.

New To the Scene

If you have a company that has been in the game for quite a long time sometimes all you need to do is enter the search space and you instantly generate traffic but if you are new to your space chances are your branding efforts are going to play a significant role in the rate of speed that your business grows on the web. People feel good dealing with a business that clearly wants to build their brand image online because often times a good solid brand is closely followed up by a unique story which people really enjoy and tend to gravitate towards.

Branding is a very important part of marketing a business online solely because people’s shopping patterns and behaviors have changed quite a bit over the years. With much more attention being placed on savings and really thinking about purchases any website or brand online is really going to have to think about the message they are spreading online and the way that they spread it.