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Dynamic Logic just released a new report that touches on branding, and how it can work. They also mention the challenge that advertisers face trying to communicate with their consumers.
"The increased volume of online advertising is making it more of a challenge for marketers to successfully communicate with consumers," the report said.
And:
The study found that online sponsorship campaigns have success in connecting a brand with an event. In addition, brand awareness was increased 37 percent, brand favorability by 50 percent, and purchase intent by 4 percent.
What I found to be important however is something that is implied and often ignored by webmasters in promoting their sites.
Business, like politics is local or rather, it is always local first. In the article they define "sponsorship" as "programs that seek to connect a brand with an event, person, place, content area or promotion."
What this means is that it doesn't require deep pockets. Of particular interest is "connect a brand to an event or content area". If you run a site about Motocross, sponsor local events. Purchase 'targeted ads' on sites that can connect your brand to Motocross. It's the targeted ads that many webmasters are failing to pay attention to. Don't waste your time placing ads for your Motocross sites on sites about bath and body lotion. Connect your site to Motocross at every opportunity. This includes writing articles about the sport and offering the article to targeted sites in return for a link.
Dismissing branding as something that only the big guys can do is selling yourself short. Branding is one of the most effective means of ensuring long term viability and you don't have to have Pepsi's budget to start branding your site. When Pepsi started they didn't have a huge budget either. It was branding that helped them get the big budget.
[internetnews.com...]
I was looking for this thread [webmasterworld.com] when I posted this but the site search was down and the active list was whacked for a bit. Google neither encourages nor discourages branding, that's up to the promoter.
Never mind, just caught the title change...
I think in a more general market such as clothing branding would be much more difficult and would take some significant capital investment.
Although this is a very small player, they out-gun all the industry leaders and have built enormous brand awareness. Being #1 for a major category keyword is very powerful branding. If their domain was best-widgets-online, they certainly would not have benefitted from such branding.
It is important to understand that the principles of business are the same online or offline. Successful business build brands. Those that don't, sell commodities. With commodities, gains are short-term and having a low price is essential. You are always looking over your shoulder to see who is coming onto the market a lower price to cut your throat.
Building a brand on the other hand is a long-term investment. Use a brandable domain and work like hell to get to #1. In my category, I am amazed at how poorly optimized the top sites really are. It seems to that the big guys are too busy counting their money to work on optimizing their sites. This provides an huge window of opportunity for us small players to build recognizable brands on shoe-string budgets.
Six months ago when I discovered webmasterworld, my site was in oblivion. Today it is #4 among 2 million results. More importantly, when visitors see us ranked ahead of the industry kingpins, they gain respect for us and have greater confidence doing business from us. This is the power of a brand.
Just my .02cents.
Branding does work exceptional well.
A client with a domain name as the business name - recently found out how important this is.
No keyword in the domain name "no problem" the domain name is unimportant - why?
If people know your company name - they will find you, and those keywords... well a keyword in the domain name is but 1 point out of a 100 for good ranking (that's pretty good odds that you don't need it).
BTW the client in one update - when to the first page on everything targeted and #1 on his best keyphrase.
Seems he got seen and trusted exposure in one shot! ;)
The "find" is more important than the search. They are not going to trust you just because you listed well. fathom
