Consistent and cut-through brand communication is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. Ask yourself: Is your company really using the internet to its full branding potential? If not, you may be losing the chance to separate your firm's brand name from competitors in the mind of your customers.

Following are 5 successful tips we recommend to all Freestylemedia clients when they are wanting to further build their brand online. All 5 adhere to the Freestylemedia philosophy of online strategies - quick, easy and inexpensive to implement, providing you with maximum marketing impact.

1. Email signatures

Your staff would use letter head stationary with every physical note sent by snail mail from your office but many would not add an email signature to every email sent out. This represents a lost opportunity for your brand, because it is not reinforced in every piece of communication seen by your customers, partners or suppliers.

Emails have the potential to be forwarded on to an unlimited number of potential customers, and your company name, contact details, website and slogan at the bottom of each is one easy way you can stay top of mind.

We recommend you ensure all of your staff have a company signature automatically attached to every email they send, every single time.

2. Add your company name after your name

Your email Inbox typically consists of emails from a few names you do know well, a few names you don't know at all, and a few names you have had communications with before, but they are not a priority to open. As the sender of an email how do you make it easier for the recipient to recognise your email above others? By putting your company name after your name. For example, in all my emails that I send, it arrives in the recipient's Inbox with a Fred Schebesta - Freestylemedia. The result is that recipients don't just become familiar with my name in their Inbox, they become familiar with my company. The contents of all emails should communicate the company's professionalism and client orientation, so putting the company name and my name to that is just one more small step in building a stand-out brand.

3. E-newsletter

Organisation (or a non-irritating site) is one of the most important factors contributing to the way your company is perceived by current and potential clients. Sites that are confusing, cumbersome, slow or messy all rate low on the Organisation evaluation criteria. Overall, these 3 criteria - Informativeness, Entertainment and Organisation are the most important dimensions employed by users when they are assessing a website.

When evaluating if your firm's site needs to be changed, you must decide what are the objectives of your particular site and what are the expected objectives of the visitors to the site. For example, you must determine if users visiting your firm's site for the purposes of entertainment or to collect information. The answer will then determine the focus of your firm's site. Since, the focus is the most important factor users will use to form their overall attitude to your website.

4. Send out e-brochures

Electronic brochures are another clever way you can use online technology to communicate your brand and product offerings to potential customers. The benefits of e-brochures are endless. Apart from the obvious cost savings, e-brochures can be easily updated, interactive, incorporate amazing multimedia effects, and emailed out in response to client requests almost immediately!

Furthermore, we recommend all our clients have their e-brochure available for download from the front page of their website, so it's the first thing any potential customer sees. If the viewer downloads it, it can be an extremely powerful advertising tool for your business (similar to a TV commercial) that reaches right into your customer's office or home and commands their attention for as long as your message is compelling.

5. Position your website on top search engines

The adage of "If you build it, they will come" has never held true on the Internet yet many companies still act as if it is, by failing to systematically drive people to their site. If you are investing in your website as part of your marketing plan to increase sales, your plan should include strategies to drive people to your website in the first place. Adding your website address to all your physical and electronic stationary is essential, but it means that all your website visitors already know about your business to some extent if they are receiving communications from you. How do you attract people who are interested in your services but have not heard about your business? One of the easiest ways to do this is through positioning your website on top search engines. There are a small number of companies who can help you achieve this.

Freestylemedia also provides this service using your unique combination of domain names, links, regular site submission, and content coding, and we guarantee your website will arrives in the top of any search engine request results. All you need to do is give us the search terms you want people to be able to find you by and we can make it happen. But whichever supplier you use to position your site, we recommend you do so quickly, because over 95%of Internet users use search engines to find what they're looking for. That means if your business isn't on or near the top of the list when people search for your products that's another potential customer lost.