General meaning of the Brand is quite abstract. In short, brand is the image of your product, if we speak about product branding and/or the image of your company if we deal with corporate branding or, in case with one man business, brand of personality.Since the majority of online venture start-ups are represented by small businesses, there are 101% online and the life cycle of digital products is relatively short, it is wise to unite these branding terms into one e-business brand, that reflects market’s viewpoint on your business as an unique entity.
This viewpoint exists in peoples’ minds whether they are your competitors, clients, partners, friends or your own employees. That is why your brand is psychological by its nature, what creates new challenges as well as additional potential.
Strong brand in the mind of a person generates honoring feeling to your company/product or you as a company’s “face”.
Poor brand may represent negative impression about your product or be the result of an absence of that impression, and I should say that it is much more advantageous to offer a new brand to the market, then try to do something with bad image. Since we are dealing with psychology, it is clear that good image and reputation is very hard to build, but it is even harder to restore.
If you want to reach the heart of you customers’ “likes” you need to:
- Offer maximum quality no matter what you offer or do.
- Deliver pleasure.
- Be innovative.
- Address to people’s emotions.
- Evoke desire and interest.
- Provoke active response.
- Build trust by repeated contacts as a foundation of long-term relations.
Factors that would stimulate and reinforce your branding:
1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is number one passive “brander” for your business, where you go UP (Unique Proposition) the straight road of successful branding or making your way through a very deep forest of competing with other already established brands.
Suppose you have created new proposition, new kind of service and if you have named it, for instance, “WebSky”, then all people would call it “WebSky”, not “A service that offers you 1. … 2. … 3…. and provides 1… 2…. 3….” It would have a neutral brand from the very beginning, no need to create, imagine or popularize it among hundreds of others.
Windows is a TM and great Brand for Operation System of well-know software giant. Don’t you think about what makes us pronounce “Windows” instead of “Operational system” or “OS”? The answer is simple – Windows occupies more then 60% of OS market. Microsoft’s OS in the informational society plays the same role that would have played some imaginable Oil Monopoly in the former industrial society. Hopefully there is no oil monopoly but there is a monopoly of the software “fuel” which is used by majority of computer systems.
The idea behind Microsoft is also true with McDonalds, Coca Cola or Mercedes-Benz and it is on the surface – they are monopolies or, at least, oligopolies in their respective markets with their respective strong USPs and therefore strong brands.
So let us summarize this important fact – the more unique your market offer is, the more unique, easy to remember and easy to associate with your brand will be.
2. The second thing is the size of your business in terms of financial capacity and market share. Very few people pointing to that fact, but its effect on your brand shouldn’t be underestimated. No matter what product you offer to the online market, it will surely lose the brand war, if your marketing budget is $00.00 and your whole business is located on some unknown unstable hosting as a result of funds deficit.
Everyone speaks about great brands like Coca Cola, but no one actually says, that it makes absolutely no relation to an entrepreneur, who wants to start his own small practice online.
Know your competition and develop the marketing strategy that would reflect your business capacity, needs and suit a marketing budget. The smaller your business is, the more aggressive your branding should be. Branding has a feature of building itself when your business is rapidly expanding.
3. Corporate culture is another vital brand creator. The epicenter of your brand is the company itself; therefore the more positive and brighter the company feels inside, the more positive, attractive and shiny it will look outside.
If your online venture’s stuff numbers you and your cat :0) you can easily build a delightful business culture but, to my regret, it won’t have a big influence on outside world. What will have an effect is the popularizing of your business values through partner networks and/or clients.
Friendly atmosphere that welcomes employees’ or partners’ creative initiative with the focus on development of personality, is exactly what makes a difference and lights a “fire” in the eyes of every person your company deals with.
4. Know your market. This small sentence comprises an understanding of the needs of your market niche, satisfaction of your market needs via directed promotional campaigns, adopting the development plan in compliance with analysis of the strength and weaknesses of your business as well as closest competitors.
Don’t devaluate your brand through wrong market approach. People pay much more attention to their own needs as well as to companies that satisfy their needs. The market offers should be specific and directed to particular niche with its unique problems, joys, hopes and needs. Don’t try to shoot several ducks with one shot.
Your branding campaign should reflect the market you are working with in a clear and highly beneficial way to your potential customers.
Major Ways of online branding:
- All possible kinds of online promotion: banner impressions, classified ads, solo ads, articles submission, web-site traffic building, opt-in email campaigns, promotional joint ventures, ezine publishing, viral marketing. All these ways of branding positioning are to be niche-oriented.
- Expand your e-business network by running partner/affiliate programs.
- Co-branding by means of strategic partnerships, joint ventures with the established brands in non-competing markets, for additional market and branding exposure.
- Unique personal and/or corporate culture.
- Informational and design representation of your business Web-site.
- The product/service itself. It is mainly through them your clients acquiring positive or negative experience of dealing with your company.
- Domain name, design, logo, motto, TMs, SMs are the main subsidiary representatives of your brand. That is why they should be clear and supplement each other in conveying your “message”.
- Testing and measuring the response rate of your branding efforts.
Why branding is so important? Because it, firstly, creates a platform via loyal market surroundings for easy and quick business growth; secondly, increases perceived value of your whole company. Do you want your own company to develop smoothly along with exponential growth of its market value? I do.
Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur, web-developer and marketer. Learn how you can maximize your online profits and get a free access to special profit opportunities and thousands of dollars of ebooks, reports, software, email courses, audio interviews, exclusive programs, resources and enjoy advanced Internet services. Register now free at http://anesbo.com
USP
According to economic theories we live in the world of monopoly competition. That term shouldn’t confuse you, as the meaning behind implies competition between many small or middle-size “monopolies”, that are not monopolies in their direct meaning, as they don’t control some particular sector of economy, rather then they are the prime sources of their unique propositions of services or products. That fact makes them to be a so-called monopolies of their own services or products, despite the fact that a lot of other companies offering very close, in terms of features and benefits, services or products to the market.
That is why it is obvious that the more unique benefits and features your proposition can offer to the market, the more “open-minded” market will be towards that proposition of yours.
Since we are usually involved in activity, which is not related to raw resources and materials, where uniqueness is very difficult to reach, due to the nature of the product like wheat, we are capable to offer a product and/or service that brings new “way of thinking”. While it sounds too expressive, the core idea behind is to be new, at least, in something.
Now let us speak more minutely about online e-business strategies you may and should apply online.
1. PRODUCT.
The product/service your will offer is 100% responsible for your long-term success. While it’s possible to get some profit from useless goods, owing to the professionalism of the marketing experts, it won’t last long. The “word of mouth” marketing is the most reliable long-term marketing tool ever existed. That is why it’s better to make a product you will be proud of, and even having mediocre marketing abilities, due to lack of funds, experts etc. your product would still have a profitable future, of course if, as we stated, it perfectly solves some problems, brings joy and so forth.
How to do it
Research, analyze and develop it. That is your e-business foundation. The best idea that I can give you about what product/service to create is that it should be the one you will be the most happy to use or utilize by yourself, in other words, the product that e-market lacks and you feel a great need in. Make it more beneficial by having substantially lower price or substantially more benefits, features, new way of solving old problems, new service in order to make it faster, cheaper, easier, deliver more pleasure to deal with. Do you see the point?
2. THIRD PARTY PRODUCT. License techniques.
Nowadays, we all hear about resell, reprint or master resell rights.
In short, by acquiring resell rights you are able to resell the product you bought for the specified price. So you pay license fee and then buy a desired number of products at a massive discount (more then wholesale).
Reprint & redistribution rights are the same as above with the only difference – your business entity may solely reprint and redistribute the product in specified quantities, without any necessity to buy them from the licenser. The one who bought the license (licensee) is also have a right to customize or brand that product before retails, if other is not stipulated in license agreement. Sometimes you receive a right to become a licenser and offer resell rights to you clients, whereas you keep all the generated profits.
Master resell rights entitles you to enjoy all the benefits mentioned above plus the right to resell reprint and redistribute rights and sometimes the master resell rights themselves. That is truly fantastic opportunity as you actually acquire a complete business of the licenser. The only priority the licenser has is that he may change and develop his product further, where your power is limited by customization only, i. e. you are not allowed to change the “nature” of the product or service, if other is not stipulated in license agreement.
When we speak about Internet and info (intangible) products one thing should be stressed here. Taking into account unlimited supply and the way info products are being copied, with a press of a button, it is difficult, if not impossible, to control their further distribution. Therefore resell rights that coming with info products are accepted to possess free redistribution rights as an additional feature of reprint & redistribution rights. The thing that still makes a difference between these rights is customization or branding.
To sum up, let us say that, concerning info products, any rights you acquire allow you to distribute, but customization of the product is allowed only under reprint & redistribution or master resell license agreement, if other is not mentioned. That is why, they are sometimes called customization rights instead of reprint & redistribution.
You can also order at wholesale prices before retailing, but if your intentions to establish long-term partnership are serious, acquiring license is more advisable as you will be able to save substantial amount of resources (usually financial), brand the product (if poses reprint or master resell rights) and generate new income streams by offering license certificates to your clients.
How to do it
The product/service you choose to license should meet the following criteria:
- Satisfy high market demand;
- Be innovative (strong USP);
- Have an acceptable benefits/price ratio;
- Reflect your business “likes”;
- Reflect your long-term business strategy and marketing potential.
You should take your hand on the pulse of economy development in order to proper track the trends. It doesn’t matter what economy sector or market demand these trends belong to, what does matter is how you track and analyze these trends in a sphere or scope of activity you work in.
If you are like me, an info business operator, the main priority to you in searching for license deals is to anticipate the possible high future demands. That is also true when you are developing your own product/service. If you find a product that perfectly suits your current business and meets criteria mentioned above, then chose what license to acquire and go for it, or contact the owner and offer him to acquire a license or have a discussion about considering new terms of license agreement, no problem should arise in that case.
3. PACKAGE.
Other front you can strike from is to bundle products/services into another unique offer. Don’t think that it’s too easy. This way demands much more financial investments and even more time on market research. Your “package” of products or services is nothing more then a number of third party’s products/services, which were licensed by you, accompanied or not with your own offer(s) into some new product that is implied to offer complete solution.
How to do it
Here is a brief example that shows, which direction you should move.
Let assume that you are running a web-site selling dietary supplement capsules and quite often you get emails from thankful customers asking you to solve their other health problems or provide them with a recipe of healthy diets to lose weight etc.
What you can do is partner with fellow marketer, who is successfully offering brochures and other materials on the best diets to lose weight as well as with another e-business owner who promotes ebooks on how to solve minor health problems indoors. You can even acquire a license to resell some light sport trainers, just reassure via independent research that these offers are reliable and beneficial for your customers and not frustrate and ruin your positive image.
So by setting up these deals, you are not only answering the question – what health food should be, but also starting to provide a complete package of products and services on how to keep everyone’s body in good shape. That’s it.
CONCLUSION
The way you choose is yours and yours only. Make yourself feel comfortable with it, let your business and your future plans be comfortable with it. And never forget about the market – as a place where you develop your business. You should follow the market, anticipate it and satisfy it in the best possible way.
This is the only attitude that may almost guarantee your success, unless you are still looking for new “revolutionary” matrix schemes, super “breakthrough” offers of the next 22 century, or these fake last-chance programs like “jump-in-today-get-rich-automatically-tomorrow” or “all-job-is-done-for-you-just-pay-now” :0) You may continue that list.
Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur, web-developer and marketer. Learn how you can maximize your online profits and get a free access to special profit opportunities and thousands of dollars of ebooks, reports, software, email courses, audio interviews, exclusive programs, resources and enjoy advanced Internet services. Register now free at http://anesbo.com
