Market your Web

Branding Considerations

1. Are you pinning your image on your product or your company?

One day, you decide to further develop your "Widget 2000". So off you go to your investors for more money. If you've developed a strong corporate brand identity and promoted it properly, the investors' impression will be 'Here's a solid, reliable company, let's give them some money'. Instead of: 'We're not putting any more money into being "Slick"'.

Naturally, the younger the company, the harder it is to distinguish between the image of your company and your product. In the above scenario, the investors would be more interested in your "Personal Brand" - solid, upstanding citizen, pays his bills on time etc. However, as you grow, if you continue to identify your company with one specific product brand, it will make it harder to diversify.

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2. What's in a name?

Everyone knows the name and brand "Amazon.com". When they first started business, it was all about selling books online. Now they've got their fingers in all sorts of pies, not least eBay's business. As BooksOnline.com, they would have found it difficult to brand themselves as an auction house.

In this example we are considering a purely online business where their web address is identical to their corporate name. What if you're a "Bricks & Mortar" company with a corporate website? Some companies will use a web address that only relates to their image, but has nothing to do with the name of their company. 

Consider this web site you are on now. Imagine we had been doing business offline for years as Smith & Smith Inc, but still doing the same work. We decide to make a web site. Do we call it www.SmithandSmith.com, with the tag line "Market your Web", or simply www.MarketyourWeb.com?

Which one of those two web addresses do you think you're more likely to a) remember, b) make you think this web site will know anything about online marketing? This doesn't even begin to address the marketing and search engine issues surrounding the name choice.

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3. Some Do's and Dont's

• DO establish "Brand Mobility"
  The internet can now be accessed by many different mediums, like cellphone, Palm, Blackberry. Your web site is only one access point.
  
  
• DO reinvent your brand
  Not just your product. Strong brands always refresh how they communicate who they are, what they stand for and why.
  
  
• DO think long term
  The internet has enabled brands to be created much faster than before. However brands require continued support over time by their companies.
  
  
• DONT confuse "First to Market" with Innovation
  Being different isn't what it's all about. Brands are strengthened by their relevance. First Movers do have an advantage, but if they don't provide relevant differentiation, they will not grow. On the internet, brands can die off as quickly as they appear.
  
  
• DONT confuse Marketing with Branding
  Basically branding creates an image, which is disseminated to your target market via marketing. For example putting your logo (brand symbol) on a brochure (marketing material).
  
  Without a strong brand proposition, no amount of marketing spending will attract and retain customers . . . or put another way, spending buckets of marketing money won't salvage a weak brand.
  
  
• DONT fail to deliver on the Brand Promise
  The old adage " Under Promise Over Deliver!" applies. Demonstrable claims must link back to the brand promise and companies must deliver on them. The internet is an extremely unforgiving medium. What might be a bad experience offline, online, could be the death knell to your brand.

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