Brand assimilation is essential to the success of a link building campaign, particularly when you’re working with an enterprise-level client.
The ability to effectively adopt an enterprise brand’s voice will help you establish client trust earlier, build campaign momentum faster, and pay major dividends down the road. On the flip side, it becomes extremely difficult to sustain a link campaign if you stumble with brand assimilation.
Before I explain the process of assimilation, it’s important to understand the significance of branding for large corporations.
The Importance of Branding for Enterprise Companies
Major corporations care deeply about their brands.
Enterprise companies have built immense brand equity, and want to protect that equity. For large corporations, branding will come before any and all marketing campaigns. This means that any marketing done on behalf of the company must be consistent with their unique branding, or the campaign won’t happen. Typically, enterprise companies will have documentation and guidelines that must be followed when representing the brand, and if you want to build trust with these clients you’ll need to adopt all these nuances.
Enterprise companies are in the market position they’re in because they’ve spent years developing, cultivating, and establishing their brand, and they will not take that lightly.
The Challenges with Brand Assimilation
There are unique challenges when it comes to effective brand assimilation.
A challenge specific to link building is establishing trust. Due to link building’s unsavory past, current perceptions of link builders among the marketing community aren’t always positive. It’s hard enough to earn the trust of a giant corporation as is, but the negative perception of link building adds an extra layer of difficulty.
Despite this, large companies are quickly growing wise to the value of links on the web and are more aware today of the need for links than ever before. The opportunity is there for those capable.
The fact is, earning trust and buy-in for a link campaign is a bit of a catch-22. You need trust to execute a successful campaign, but first you need an opportunity to prove you deserve to be trusted. It can be difficult to fully demonstrate your abilities within the tiny window and short-leash provided.
There’s very little margin for error within adopting brand voice for link building campaigns.
Enterprise-level companies typically have a decent amount of bureaucracy and “red tape” involved within their operations as well. Bureaucracy comes into play with brand representation when a company has very strict guidelines regarding brand messaging. Jumping through the required bureaucratic hoops before being able to contact prospective link targets can really bog down a campaign.
However, with all that being said, it’s possible to effectively adopt brand voice and prove you can represent an enterprise business well online.
Brand Assimilation: Research
Research is essential to brand assimilation.
The only way to represent a major corporation well is through extensive research of that company. You must have a deep understanding of several key elements to effectively demonstrate you can carry a large brand’s voice. You should understand the company’s:
- Brand voice/tone
- Unique selling point (USP)
- Various products/services
- Industry/niche
- Competitive landscape
- Audience/buyer personas
- Core brand messaging
- Etc.
You have a small window of opportunity to demonstrate effective brand assimilation. Doing the research makes it easier to accurately represent a major brand. The better you’re able to adopt branding, the easier it becomes to earn client trust.
Takeaways
Brand assimilation is essential to the success of a link campaign.
- Enterprise companies value the integrity of their brand above all else. In order to be successful, a link campaign will need to prove they can adopt brand voice.
- Challenges such as bureaucracy, distrust of SEOs, and small margin of error make brand assimilation for large businesses difficult.
- Successful brand adoption requires thorough research.
Lasting link building partnerships are impossible without effective brand assimilation.
