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Branding InformationBranding 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 simply jetting stigmatization in any context, especially once
the term is used with "internet" or "web" or "digital!" You can't have a speech now for more than five minutes without some marketing type throwing in a line simply about brand building!
Branding doesn't activity 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 marketer in City 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, really big-ticket 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 realworld 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 once
preparing a competitive analysis report for a client.
2)Identify your target audience early on as everything flows from this. You can't gestate 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 stigmatization – this translates to marketing campaigns that deliver sales (the goal of all nice marketing campaigns) by client 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 simply plain old early stage then you may want to develop several stigmatization with another 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 once
it comes to building a stigmatization campaign. Your various messages and processes should be reciprocally
reinforcing.
6)Select an Interactive or Traditional Agency that understands your unique B2B needs. User
stigmatization is more several than B2B Customer Acquisition Branding. By "understand" I mean ask them simply about the types of campaigns they've set up for previous clients, what types of media they've used, do they cognize 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-be want to deploy for an IT Manager who is contemplating a purchase of your software.
7)How do you measure effective stigmatization 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 folk who purchase your software system or services what they think. Why did you purchase (or why not if you can), did our marketing address your needs, was it important and informative?
8)Think digital shelf life once
stigmatization on the web – you have to build messages and content that wish only last for a finite figure of time. You have to continually refresh your stigmatization and positioning by developing new content for a web site, opt-in e-mail or banner advertising campaign.
9)Incorporate your offline stigmatization (creative, content, graphics, etc.) into your online stigmatization when/where you can. So your client has a sense of continuity once
they review all of your marketing and communications processes. This besides sends a signal to them that you have cautiously thought through your overall campaign.
10)Last but not least – build net speed into your overall campaign. I've aforesaid it before in galore articles, but always essential to underscore; better to be quick to market with thing
that may need slight standardization later on that to delay a facet of a campaign of the entire campaign to get everything perfect! Revenue is the engine that does a B2B Stigmatization campaign activity and you can't drive sales unless you are putt your stigmatization message out there in front of your potential customers!
Just simply about THE AUTHOR
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience. He is the founder/CEO of a Northern American state based, privately held, profitable Interactive Marketing Agency and Software system Company, Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com and can be reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com Intelective Communications besides has a EU sales and keep office placed outside of Brussels, Belgium.
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