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Online Brand Building – The Basics
By Find2k | March 15, 2008
To become a successful brand is what a every company wants in online and offline marketplace. So, what is a successful brand? – A successful brand is a marriage between your own strengths with what your target customer wants. That’s why it is very essential that we don’t rush into any kind of business before understanding and deciding upon our own brand and its utilities.
In a highly competitive world like today, it is tough to have brand recognition; you cannot give customer something which no one else is giving, even if you try doing that you will find followers who will tear out your customer base with their freshness. So what’s the catch, how can I build a brand as my brand will not be anything new under the sun which I will be presenting to my target audience?
A very good way to look at this scenario is to find the opportunity where customer will move towards your brand then to others and that opportunity is the question to the customer – what they feel is lacking in the current set of brands. After you know what is not available you can launch your product brand with those features and that freshness will give you a new user base of target audience. The key of growth will be to do changes in your features whenever and wherever needed as per your customer requirements. Take example of Pepsi and coca cola, both are big brands, both are unique, but they are very different brands for a very similar kind of drink, but most people will agree that they look on one or the other brand when they go for shopping to buy that drink.
So the first start of brand building will be to decide on:
1. What we want to sell?
2. Research the market thoroughly
3. Understand what you can offer
4. Is your offerings already done by your competitors?
5. How your competitors are selling their products or services
After answering these five points you will be able to create a unique recipe or way of presenting your product to the market. You can give away free gifts to your customers for each purchase. You might decide to market your offerings in a different way, in a different location or in a different set of target audience. For example, Orkut and Linkedin both are social networks. But Orkut is more of a casual look, for friends and personals. Whereas Linkedin is a social network which is for professional purpose, its a more of formal business network site.
Another important feature which needs to be there for creating a brand is a slogan. These slogans can help you to make your product look different from your competitor and also create your unique identity in the marketplace. Creating a slogan and a logo is a strengthening market base for a brand to build and recognize by a target audience. Never try to copy what is already out there, try getting something innovative, different and unique based on the features of your product.
Be daring and do something different. You can make your brand stand out for all the right reasons. It is very essential that you put a lot of head and time to create a strong brand in the first place. If you honestly do this, it will help you create a good brand as well as it will payback many times over the years to come.
Topics: Internet Marketing |
March 27th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Thanks for the good guide about branding…
1. What we want to sell?
2. Research the market thoroughly
3. Understand what you can offer
4. Is your offerings already done by your competitors?
5. How your competitors are selling their products or services
Then number 6 will be to expose your product
or brand to your largest market.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Nice article,
What actionable online tools do you use to determine your competitors offers and services?