{"id":4485,"date":"2018-02-01T13:55:45","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T12:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/?p=4485"},"modified":"2025-03-12T13:48:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:48:55","slug":"brand-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodpecker.co\/blog\/brand-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"How Should I Take Care of My Brand Online Before Email Outreach?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most\u00a0cold email senders craft their campaigns with a view to acquiring new business relations. They commit all their efforts to planning a new cold email campaign. They spend a long time on precise targeting<\/a>, perfecting their email copy<\/a> and taking care of impeccable deliverability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the end, they do indeed achieve a very high open rate of their email campaign, one that would amaze even a well-seasoned cold email sender. Yet the reply rate to their campaigns is very poor. How is that possible?<\/p>\n

They might have created a top-notch email sequence, directed at carefully chosen prospects. But when a prospect opened the email, she decided to google email sender\u2019s company. She didn\u2019t find much information about it, or worse, she found bits and pieces of information that didn\u2019t make the sender trustworthy enough to make her reply. All in all, what she saw stopped her from replying, and in consequence, the outreach was in vain.<\/p>\n

Because of that, it\u2019s important to audit everything our company does online before we hop on cold emailing. And that includes analyzing our websites, blogs, social media profiles, various fora and review sites.<\/p>\n

How to Audit Your Brand Online Presence?<\/h2>\n

There are a couple of\u00a0areas that influence how others perceive us online. Let’s examine them.<\/p>\n

Improving the website<\/h3>\n

A website, nowadays, functions as a digital business card<\/a>. It features basic information about the company and what it does. A website explains what the company is about, where it\u2019s based, who works there, etc. It also contains contact information for anyone who\u2019d like to get in touch.<\/p>\n

A web page fulfills a couple of functions. It positions us on the market, indicates what our target group is, but most importantly, it\u2019s a way for a company to introduce itself to potential customers.<\/p>\n

Visitors who enter the website expect to learn something about the company. They form their opinion about the company based on the quality of the website. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important for us to make a company page as professional as possible.<\/p>\n

We, as website owners, are responsible for our website look and feel. No matter whether we use a common website template or we had it custom made, nothing defines our brand as much as our website, because we\u2019re in charge what\u2019s on it.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t mean you need a state of the art website to entice customers. No worries. If you\u2019re on the shoestring budget or just starting your business, you don\u2019t need to spend loads of money. All you need to do is to make sure that it\u2019s easy to navigate, fast to load and responsive.<\/p>\n

A. Easy to navigate<\/h4>\n

A professional website should be pretty intuitive. Visitors shouldn\u2019t wreck their brains over where to click. When they hover over the button, they should waste no time wondering what that button means and whether it\u2019s clickable or not.<\/p>\n

To make a website easy to navigate, stick to website design conventions that are widely recognizable. To learn about them, I\u2019d recommend you two sources. The first one is Steve Krug’s \u201cDon\u2019t make me think\u201d<\/a>. It\u2019s a quick and easy read\u00a0that will help you assess whether your website is easy to navigate.<\/p>\n

The second source that helps you measure your website navigation is Nielsen Norman Group. I\u2019d urge you to read Jakob Nielsen\u2019s usability heuristics. They are available here:<\/p>\n

10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design >><\/a><\/p>\n

B. Fast to load<\/h4>\n

Visitors are very impatient and abandon pages that don\u2019t load quickly. Slow websites seem unprofessional. Additionally, websites\u2019 speed influences on which position your website rank on Google: the slower the website the lower its positioning is.<\/p>\n

To see how your website is performing, check out one of the three tools: Google\u2019s PageSpeed Insights<\/a>, Pingdom<\/a> or Yslow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

C. Responsive<\/h4>\n

Many people read their email on mobiles. What follows is that they may check out the addressee and their business website on mobile, too. That\u2019s why, when doing a brand audit, it\u2019s essential to check whether your site is responsive, that is it responds to any device that is being used.<\/p>\n

If that doesn\u2019t convince you to make your website responsive, know that Google is preparing a\u00a0\u2018Mobile-first\u2019 index<\/a>, in short, a webpage will receive a lower ranking unless it renders well on mobiles. Here’s a web app that tells you whether your website is responsive >><\/a><\/p>\n

D. Some\u00a0additional tips<\/h4>\n