As Online Business Marketers we can often overlook the importance of branding and image building. Like consumers, we often just see the large corporate company brands associated with our daily lives but overlook the positive effects a strong brand can have on our own online marketing efforts.A strong brand is vital to the success of your business. Particularly when you are selling a product or service that you are directly associated with, unlike maybe an affiliate marketer who is simply marketing another persons product or service.There are several options available to the online entrepreneur when considering branding his/her business. You could use the existing brand name of the business you promote, create a new brand name or even co-brand with another business. What is important is that you decide on the route you wish to take as it can have a strong influence on the domain name you want to choose.Consider this, if you are marketing a business that people would search for by the business name then you would want to try and include this name in your domain. It helps improve your overall SEO for your website. If you feel that your business or service is often searched for using a common phrase i.e “wedding cakes” then again, including the phrase in your domain is an advantage.A few points to take into consideration when choosing a brand name are:Try to keep it short and catchy – tricky in today’s market where many domains have already been snapped up, just try to avoid the use of characters to separate words as they can often be misspelled, losing you business!Keep it simple and easy to spell. Try to include the name of the brand or business you are promoting. Suggest something about the product.If you intend to use a capture/sales page to forward people onto a generic website for a business you are associated with, try to build continuity. Use the same or similar colors, graphics, layout. Be clear as to what people are going to discover when they opt in to your site and don’t leave them wondering where they have be sent otherwise they will all to soon start their search all over again.Brand name recognition can make a big difference to your bottom line profits. People choose to buy from businesses and people they connect to and trust. Making yourself and your business instantly recognizable creates continuity. All too often I see a sales page promoting a great new product or service to help you succeed online. When I register for further details I get taken to a completely different site, name, image, colors etc. All of which make me feel that I have either been redirected to the wrong page or the person making me all the promises on the first website has little or nothing to do with the site I am now viewing. People are already very cautious about buying online and building trust with them is essential to making sales.If you choose to use the power of video to market your business, create a recognizable image from video to video. I use the same opening & closing screenshots throughout all my videos and have a short 30 sec intro on each one. This way people begin to recognize my videos instantly and associate them with quality content. With software such as PowerPoint and Keynote and movie editing software on most computers now, it is not difficult for the work at home entrepreneur to produce some high quality, branded videos with a little imagination.A Brand is a promise. It is how you set your customer expectations. When you build a strong brand, follow it up with products or services you promised, then customers will buy from you again and again.