Perhaps nothing is more misunderstood online than the meaning of branding. Branding in the pre-internet world required the integration of advertising, customer service, sales promotion, public relations, direct mail, newsletters, frequency discounts, event sponsorship, word of mouth and other communications tactics to present a unified message about the company, its products or services. And guess what? It still does!

Online, where seemingly everything can change before you can say “click,” everyone is looking for shortcuts. Nobody has time to study the classic principles of marketing, or the history of public relations. Everything has to happen now, today. There apparently is no time to waste studying history.

Well, here is the quick bottom line: the technology is new, but the things that make people buy have not changed. People still want to buy products and services from companies they trust and like and that they believe will be there tomorrow.

Banner ads, even with flashing graphics and fabulous animation never established a brand and never will. Clickthroughs don’t establish branding. Publicity alone will not establish branding. Email alone will not establish brand recognition and acceptance.

Branding is something that happens over time as the result of a consistent effort to communicate a clear message. It begins with a marketable concept as the foundation of a business. That means that the business founders have given great thought to how they will distinguish their business from the five or five thousand other businesses selling essentially the same products and services.

When there is no bricks and mortar store, no national advertising campaign and no flamboyant and well-known business leader as the founder, a web site can be awfully hard to promote. I know, promoting web sites is what I do for a living.

More than once, we have presented a carefully planned design for launching an unknown company online. We’ve discussed the need for quality, dynamic information, superb customer service, a searchable library of articles by experts on the subject, online events, by-lined articles for other web sites, and so on. And more than one overwhelmed business owner has pleaded “Why do I have to do all that just to sell my product?” Because those are elements of branding!

Al Ries and Jack Trout in their classic marketing book, “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” said that only one company can have the top share of the consumer’s mind. That is one thing that the Internet has changed. Online, a better concept, even by a tiny company has the opportunity to become the biggest and the best. In that respect there is no doubt that the Internet is unique.

Al Ries and Jack Trout in their classic marketing book, “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind,” said that only one company can have the top share of the consumer’s mind. That is one thing that the Internet has changed. Online, a better concept, even by a tiny company has the opportunity to become the biggest and the best. In that respect there is no doubt that the Internet is unique.

While Barnes & Noble may have been the best-known bookseller on earth and the first book store most people thought of, Amazon.com was able to sell the pants off of them by creating a better concept. And, because of the immediacy of the Internet, the value of Amazon’s great concept could be spread around the globe in a matter of months. (They’ve since diluted that concept and become an unfocused mess, but that’s another story.)

That unique selling proposition needs to be built into the business plan. No meaningful branding will happen without it -- no matter how many gerbils the company president kills on national television.

About the Author:
B.L. Ochman, BLOchman@whatsnextonline.com Journalist, Marketing Strategist and speaker, http://www.whatsnextonline.com is the author of several books on Reality PR -- cutting edge PR tactics for the Internet age. B.L. Ochman Internet and Outernet marketing strategist, publicist, journalist and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of www.whatsnextonline.com

B.L. Ochman
BLOchman@whatsnextonline.com
Marketing strategist, journalist, speaker
212.369.8312
http://www.whatsnextonline.com is the author of “Reality PR™-- Cutting Edge PR Tactics for the Internet Age” and “Press Releases From Hell and How to Fix Them.”

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