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Revamping Your Brand
There is a wide difference between offline branding and online branding. This is because unlike traditional branding wherein your brand is presented to the target consumers in the form of newspaper advertisement and television commercial; online branding requires you to interact with the consumers. This means text, sound, and design should merge together to form the brand personality while encouraging the consumer to participate. Online branding present great opportunities for the entrepreneur but it has intimidating challenges as well.
Of course, all efforts in online branding should be concentrated on the website. A good website needs more than just good content, attractive logo, and well-designed graphics. As was mentioned earlier, interaction is important so a web owner also needs to focus on is communication with the consumer.
Know your goal. Determine if you are an offline brand who wants to use the internet as a promotional tool or if you are solely an online brand. The branding strategy you should use is dependent on this answer.
Utilize your web space effectively. The top of your webpage is the prime spot on your website. Generally, visitors don’t like scrolling downward just to know what your site is all about.
Interaction. Because the internet doesn’t have the “human” factor that is available offline, a web owner needs to build interactivity in order to generate trust.
Don’t use hype. The internet is a huge marketplace and there are a lot of web owners who use hype to attract visitors. Don’t fall for this strategy because hype can destroy the credibility of your brand.
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I totally agree that online branding is totally different than offline branding. As Seth Godin often writes, most offline branding is simply “interruption marketing” whereas good online branding is building a relationship with the user. You mentioned making good use of your web space and interaction in your article, and touched on design. As someone in the web design field, I recently wrote an article on my own blog about this subject: Why Web Design Is Like Getting Dressed .
Good article, but I believe you should add something about getting in the head of your consumer. A big part of branding is targeting your audience and thinking where they would go. That’s why beer companies pay so much advertising at baseball parks. With online it allows you to get more creative. It is not necessary to advertise within your niche, it might be possible to get cheap converting clicks from a related niche.
Also, as coca-cola did when breaking into the north africa market. They easily grabbed 70% of the beverage market share by donating refrigeration units to retailers who did not have them. Living in north africa wouldn’t you buy coke if it was the only COLD beverage IN THE DESERT. I digress. I enjoy your writing, its short and sweet, keep up the good work Rosanne.
Thanks for these tips Alex.
Hey Rosanne,
I would have to disagree with your last point: “don’t hype”. Sure it’s a bad idea to overpromise and then undeliverable, but I think a reasonable amount of hype is necessary to get things started and get people excited about your brand and what you are doing.
Of course your business can’t be ALL hype, but a good mix between hype and product/content is healthy for any business.
Yeah, well..I should probably have written “Don’t use hype if you can’t deliver…”
My problem is that over the years I have accumulated accounts on numerous sites. Although they have similar messages, I want them all to share one message. Over the next two weeks I will be undertaking this task.