Are You Experiencing Extended Reach or Brand Dilution?

As a brand, you want to reach as many eyes as possible. To do so, you may be tempted to create websites and social media profiles for various aspects of your business. In theory, this plan works. If consumers hear of one particular product or service, then maybe they’ll eventually make their way to the rest of your business. If everything goes well, then those customers might just become loyal fans. The problem is, nothing actually works that way. And here’s why.

Creating Confusion

Let’s imagine a company with one website for loyalty rewards (such as Spring), one to tell the world what the brand is all about, and one that’s provided by the parent company. Potential clients who happen across more than one of the websites start to wonder who they’re really dealing with. Which brand really quantifies the business—the brand put forth on the parent site or the one the business owner shared on his company website? Then, of course, there’s the loyalty rewards website, which is created by a third party. And that third party is the one who gets all the brand credit when someone visits that rewards site.

You can already see how the brand becomes diluted with even the introduction of a second website. A third or fourth created with the intention of reaching more people and bringing in more leads…well, these could actually cripple your brand.

Losing Control of Voice

Nothing is more detrimental to your brand—and amusing to onlookers—than losing control of your brand’s voice. This can happen if you’ve created too many social media profiles and given access to these profiles to too many people. Let’s consider a business conglomerate with four different businesses under the umbrella. Then, one of your social media managers makes a major faux pas, maybe a political re-tweet or a Facebook post that was meant to publish on his personal profile.

Suddenly, your whole empire is threatened by the share of one post. This can happen when you spread your brand over several different channels and lose control of those channels. The brand becomes weaker if you’re not constantly vigilant.

Spreading SEO Too Thin

What happens when different brand websites are all competing for keyword domination within Google? No one wins.

The business owner who combines all of his efforts into one website that includes lead generation, branding information, and parent company information gets the top spot for those things because he’s not competing with himself for it. Search engine optimization, in fact, should be your biggest reason for keeping your branding streamlined and simple. When you start competing with yourself, you know your brand has become too diluted.

If you’ve made the mistake of spreading your brand too thin, it’s not too late. Come talk to us right away, and we’ll help you create a plan to rebrand. Take control of your brand again. Call us now.