Internet Marketing Help

Any form of branding essentially refers to consumer recognition. A positive website brand image means that your potential customers will recognize your brand and have a positive association with your particular product, or range of products.

Many website operators believe that creating their brand is complete when they have selected a compelling company name, adapted a well designed logo and implementing a half-dozen comprehensive web pages.  Not so.  If fact, each and every aspect of your online presence needs to convey your brand image.

This includes:

1. website design and development

2. content optimization

3. Internet advertising

4. Internet marketing

Most importantly, all of these avenues must be supported by open communication with your consumer.  This will work to your advantage and further strengthen your brand.

Do you know who your consumer (Target Market) is?  Competent market research, coupled with competitor analysis, will yield valuable information about the people you are aiming to attract.  Effective branding considers the demographics of a target market.  Be acutely aware that age, sex, nationality, religion, and disposable income bracket are determining factors.  Online business owners must have at least a reasonable understanding of their target market demographics in order to navigate a successful campaign.  Knowing this valuable information ensures that you not only create a positive brand, but a brand that is relevant and powerful; and working to attract the right people.

The first aspect of branding is your company or website name.  It doesn’t necessarily have to portray the products you sell, but it does need to be memorable.  Brands such as Google and Ebay relay little information about the services they provide; but they are short, catchy, and easy to remember. You may want to consider other aspects of branding when choosing a proper name. For example: PayPal clearly conveys that the service is related to paying and payments; while the gentle addition of the word “Pal” implies that the service is user friendly and intuitive.

Once you’ve made an educated decision about a brand name, and further ensured that domain names and company names are readily available, it’s time to proceed.

“.com” domaíns are the most effective. This is simply because they are the ones most often remembered by “web-surfers”. Often, online consumers will remember a company name and forget the domain extension. Statistically, Internet users will include .com as the extension and hope to find the right site.  I strongly advise that you purchase a number of domains including regional domains (.eu, .co.uk, etc.).  There are a number of consumers that will prefer to deal with local firms and as such are more likely use local extensions (such as on.ca).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Branding and Image. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.