| 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!
|
Lee Traupel has
20 plus years of marketing experience. He is the co-founder
of a Northern California and Brussels Belgium based, privately
held, Marketing Services and Software Company, Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com.
Intelective focuses exclusively on providing services
to small-to-medium-sized companies that need strategic
and tactical marketing services. He can be reached at
Lee@intelective.com.
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