Branding
On The Web Is Like Mining For Fools Gold
by: Lee Traupel
I am sick and tired of marketing geeks touting the
beauty of branding, brand building and just spouting
branding in any context, especially when the term
is used with "internet" or "web"
or "digital!" You can't have a conversation
today for more than five minutes without some marketing
type throwing in a line about brand building!
Branding doesn't work with the net's warp speed -
look at some of the leading online brand builders,
including a certain big three TV network here in the
states and a book seller in Seattle trying to do classic
brand extension, from books to barbecues.
We tell our B2B clients to build a revenue-producing
online brand by developing a campaign that sells the
value of their goods or services! Forget the esoteric,
very expensive brand building campaigns that have
no measurable impact! Here are my ten "cliff
notes" to building an effective B2B Brand Online,
B2C coming next article.
1. Do a careful Competitive Web Analysis of your competitors
- you can't build a unique brand without knowing the
lay of the digital and real-world land! The beauty
of the web is that it is a 247/365 resource for analysis
and you can find out quite a lot from your competitor's
web sites. We've created a comprehensive matrix of
75-200 items to assess when preparing a competitive
analysis report for a client.
2. Identify your target audience early on as everything
flows from this. You can't conceptualize your creative,
graphical imagery, content or what type of online
media you want to deploy until you know the size and
characteristics of your target audience.
3. Think revenue producing branding - this translates
to marketing campaigns that deliver sales (the goal
of all good marketing campaigns) by customer acquisition.
Meaning, develop messages that speak to your audience.
B2B customers typically want referenceable data that
addresses their needs. "Our xyz services help
you leverage your IT resources by…." Think
providing tactical information to enhance their decision-making!
4. If your early to market or just plain old early
stage then you may want to develop some branding with
other complementary partners who have established
names (brands) in your market segment. This can include
joint announcements, co-branded pages; direct marketing
or opt-in e-mail pieces, etc. Here's an example of
a co-branded page we did for an existing client, PolyServe,
Inc. http://www.polyserve.com/partners.html
5 .Make sure you PR agency and Interactive or Traditional
Agency are all in concert when it comes to building
a branding campaign. Your various messages and processes
should be mutually reinforcing.
6. Select an Interactive or Traditional Agency that
understands your unique B2B needs. Consumer branding
is much different than B2B Customer Acquisition Branding.
By "understand" I mean ask them about the
types of campaigns they've set up for previous clients,
what types of media they've used, do they know how
to develop creative that speaks to a potential B2B
client - I love the "do the Dew" campaign,
but this isn't the type of branding you would want
to deploy for an IT Manager who is contemplating a
purchase of your software.
7. How do you measure effective branding on the web?
I am not sure if I have any answer or if I have unlimited
answers - this is such a difficult marketing characteristic
to measure. But, again, be "customer-centric"
- ask people who purchase your software or services
what they think. Why did you purchase (or why not
if you can), did our marketing address your needs,
was it meaningful and informative?
8. Think digital shelf life when branding on the web
- you have to build messages and content that will
only last for a finite amount of time. You have to
continually refresh your branding and positioning
by developing new content for a web site, opt-in e-mail
or banner advertising campaign.
9. Incorporate your offline branding (creative, content,
graphics, etc.) into your online branding when/where
you can. So your customer has a sense of continuity
when they review all of your marketing and communications
processes. This also sends a signal to them that you
have carefully thought through your overall campaign.
10. Last but not least - build net speed into your
overall campaign. I've said it before in many articles,
but always essential to underscore; better to be quick
to market with something that may need slight calibration
later on that to delay a facet of a campaign of the
entire campaign to get everything perfect! Revenue
is the engine that makes a B2B Branding campaign work
and you can't drive sales unless you are putting your
branding message out there in front of your potential
customers!
About The Author
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development
and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com,
a results-driven marketing services company providing
proprietary services to clients encompassing startups
to public companies. Lee@intelective.com
Lee@intelective.com
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