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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 running disapproval in any context,
especially once
the term is used with "internet" or "web" or "digital!"
You can't have a language 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 merchandiser in Metropolis
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 costly 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 conceive 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 disapproval – this translates to marketing
campaigns that deliver sales (the goal of all nice marketing
campaigns) by consumer
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 disapproval with different 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 disapproval campaign. Your
various messages and processes should be reciprocally
reinforcing.
6)Select an Interactive or Traditional Agency that understands your
unique B2B needs. User
disapproval 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 disapproval 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 code or
services what they think. Why did you purchase (or why not if you
can), did our marketing address your needs, was it meaning and
informative?
8)Think digital shelf life once
disapproval 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 disapproval and positioning
by developing new content for a web site, opt-in e-mail or banner
advertising campaign.
9)Incorporate your offline disapproval (creative, content, graphics,
etc.) into your online disapproval when/where you can. So your consumer
has a sense of continuity once
they review all of your marketing and
communications processes. This as well sends a signal to them that you
have with kid gloves
thought through your overall campaign.
10)Last but not least – build net speed into your overall
campaign. I've aforementioned it before in many a articles, but always essential
to underscore; better to be quick to market with thing
that may
need slight activity 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 Disapproval campaign activity and you can't
drive sales unless you are golf shot your disapproval 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 Ca based,
privately held, profitable Interactive Marketing Agency and Code
Company, Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com
and can be reached via e-mail at Lee@intelective.com Intelective
Communications as well has a EU sales and keep office set outside
of Brussels, Belgium.
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