Aside from the traditional and non-traditional advertising, sponsorship can also be a vital medium, especially in global branding, by creating links between the sponsored event and the sponsoring brand such that the attributes and values of each become a shared resource. Global sponsorship usually focuses around two events, the Football World Cup and the Olympic Games. Public relations, on the other hand, aims to create a favorable reputation for the brand by influencing and coordinating different groups of people and different channels of communication. Unlike the other elements, public relations offers a considerable choice of communication channels like editorial, radio interviews, exhibitions, as well as new technologies like video news releases, and satellite conferencing, may be regarded as a continuous communication of the brand. Packaging many international brands, however, use different pack designs in different countries, sometimes resulting in adapted brand propositions and “local” design teams. Such practices lead to the communication of a consistent brand proposition through packaging unlikely. This has led many international companies and global borders to harmonize or standardize their pack designs across the world in its objective of converting products to sales.
Sales promotion is perhaps the most hard-nosed way of encouraging an intention to buy to a sale. Global campaigns are still in their infancy and often hampered by legal constraints which vary from country by country. Nevertheless, global campaigns can be successful when centrally coordinated and rolled out internationally with the minimum of regional adaptations. And finally, direct marketing is increasingly being used to reach highly targeted segments of the international population on a personal, one-to-one basis. The aim of a marketing campaign is to establish and maintain a continuing, even life-long, relationship with a customer, either business or consumer.
The Internet technology may be the most advanced communications medium today. However, this does not always equate to ease. Creating a brand on the Internet is just as hard as creating a brand outside the net. In fact, it is even harder to create one in this advanced medium. Plain advertising will not do the trick. The Internet, the fastest-growing platform today, is changing the way people live their lives in this no “off” age. The most prevalent misunderstanding of the Internet is the idea that advertising can be used to form online brands.
Several transformations have occurred to produce more effective online advertising:
Solutions over Benefits. Consumers are less interested in benefits, than in solutions to their problems.
Relationships over Transactions. Relationships between a brand and a commodity occur when a brand understands the consumer better than the consumer understands himself.
Dialogue over Monologue. Brands will both speak and listen. They will create e-mail programs, a destination site, as a community with opt-in personal links, offline marketing campaigns, and interactive opportunities.
Integration over Isolation. Consumers’ messages must be integrated across all media
On a survey conducted by Greenfield Online for HMS Partners, it was found that there really is no direct relationship between ad spending and “top of mind” brand awareness for Internet companies. The participants of this survey were asked to list only up to five names that come to mind when thinking about specific dotcom brands. It came as a surprise that some dotcom brands were able to have similar or greater levels of “top of mind” brand awareness despite having a smaller advertising budget compared to other big-spending brands. After all, who said the saying that it’s not how much you spend, but how you spend it, Dotcoms know branding is crucial for success and most seem both willing and able to put considerable resources into supporting brands. The winners are going to be the ones that find the most effective ways and places to allocate those resources with effective online advertising. The best way to pull it off in the Internet market is by doing a sequential campaign. Start off by using public relations as the primary key communication tool since, unless they are relatively known and already have some degree of presence in the mind of the people, advertising would just be a total waste of time and resources; and the fact that advertising needs the credibility and publicity that you can generate, integrated marketing has become more popular through the years.
Even with all the fanfare it’s still all about using the launch of a program for advertising, publicity, and viral marketing techniques. What needs to be done to launch an impressive publicity campaign? After gaining some name identification and acceptance, shift to advertising to sustain it.
Internet brands have an advantage where communication with customers is short-lived. The Internet can provide better two-way communication with customers’ real-world stores. But it can’t provide a smile and a cup of coffee while someone shops. The question here is, are brands losing their personal touch if they become successful vendors online? Are people just buying online because of convenience and not because of brand loyalty?
Internet brands are still invisible until you type the brand name into the keyboard. If the person does not know the brand name and how to spell it, no sale happens. Therefore, online, name identification is paramount. Also, another important thing is, your brands featured on the website will be specific in order to deliver the needs and wants of the Internet user by providing a well-constructed, updated, and beneficial website. This will keep them coming back. Traffic is built on your site, the branding strategies can kick in. Knowledge of a dotcom’s brand in the consumer’s mind does not mean he or she will join your community (your cybertribe), buy your product, or show you the kind of loyalty that will eventually turn into high, lifetime value. Branding is not something that must be taken lightly since it happens over time as a result of consistent efforts to communicate a clear message. Banner ads, even with flashing graphics and fabulous animation, never establish a brand and never will.
One master brand that has gotten it right on a global scale is IBM. In only a few short years, IBM has gone from what some would consider the heir to the grandfather’s technology company to the inventor of the e-business dot com. While Barnes & Noble may have been the best-known bookseller on Earth, the first book store most people thought of was Amazon.com who was able to sell the e-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. Today, Amazon.com is one of the most successful online vendors in the world. The Internet is transforming customer buying behavior, with major consequences for how the new breed of consumer develops familiarity with, and ultimate loyalty to the brand. Marketers who strive to capitalize on these shifts, as all successful marketers must do, will have to better align their branding with new data about how consumers shop and buy online. Only by strategically recomposing the marketing mix can marketers drive traffic, build brand equity, and capture customer loyalty in the Internet age.
J. G. Sandom, president of RappDigital, shares seven key secrets to successful branding in the Internet:
“Always start with a big idea, always. For any given channel, leverage the medium that delivers the greatest return on investment against MarCom and business objectives. There are real differences between online and offline brand attributes. In the offline universe, a brand is created by the advertiser and expressed through the media channel. The medium reveals the brand. The advertiser is in control. In the online universe, the advertiser empowers the consumer to define an experience through which the brand is built. The medium creates the brand. The consumer is in control. The Web has engendered a set of expectations inherent to the digital interactive medium, namely: speed, control, and value. Maximize your use of creative assets across all media and geographies, preferably through an extranet-based asset management sys all your Never forget to put language about global digital distribution. Remember talent contracts. Don’t be afraid to let ideas bubble up from their natural wellsprings.”
Most of all, never forget that YOU should be the focus point and your product
should speak to your target market. There needs to be converting. Find an industry expert to do this— send them examples of people’s branding that you like and things you like about their website. Show credibility through testimonials and give access to products as well as services you are pre-launching. There needs to be the ability to opt into your mailing list, newsletter, or email updates.
As for pictures of your products, you have one go to get this done professionally! It’s the most important thing and crucial for credibility.
WWW.YOURNAME.COM
Your website should be your name. Remember that people remember people, rather than companies. Plus, using your name encourages you to put your best foot forward. For this reason, you might want to buy various versions of misspellings of your own name as well, to avoid competition and confusion in the long run. Adapting to computer technology, whether you are well versed in technology or not, really isn’t a choice these days. In other words, you have to.
The computer emerged into the scene around the 1940s. At that time, the impact of the computer was just its having created unlimited jobs for clerks. Peter Drucker (1979) pointed out that the computers, in spite of all the excitement and agitation they have been generating, were not yet economically significant. By far it was only used for clerical chores, which were unimportant by definition. During that time until the 1970s, people had not yet begun to exploit the full potential of the computers. It was only around the 1980s did it start to make great sense and significance. But now, we realize that the computer is more than just a machine that does arithmetic. It is only now that we begin to utilize the computer for the things it should be used: for information, control of manufacturing, control of inventory, shipments, deliveries, communication, and much more. If payrolls were all it could do, we would not be interested in it.
Ecommerce, our “crystal ball” in our fast-changing what worked yesterday probably does not work anymore. “The only thing permanent thing in this world is change,” is such an undying cliché, but its truth is quite resounding. As we move further into the knowledge of basic assumptions, we soon find that the name of marketing and management, much of what was taught and practiced in the past, is becoming hopelessly out of date. Quite apparently, yesterday’s basics are now the obsoletes or the archaic of today. Any marketer who does not decipher marketing trends will be even more flabbergasted in the future because new trends will alter the marketing realm. As a matter of fact, they are already in sight, and as they dominate the scene, they will compel us to modify most of the marketing strategies that have worked in the past. Quite frightening, but true, Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and The Third Wave, was on point in his theory on change. His discussion of the third wave has such a Nostradamus effect that it has become a concrete reality. “We are living through the greatest wave of change and enlightenment and the industrial revolution and waves cause the planet since the en turbulence and buffering,” says Toffer (MCB Business Strategy Publications). Although, often attributing it to technological change, Toffer stressed that this third wave of change is more than merely technological, it is a process of change altering cultures, social relationships, communications, and organizational structures.
Economists, political thinkers, and business leaders have yet to grasp the implications of this emerging society (Newell, 1997). Currently, consumer goods companies are looking at improving stronger relationships with their final consumers, in addition to the traditional business-to-business relationships with their immediate customers. Thus, all sectors—industrial services and consumers, are increasingly examining ways to develop greater competitive advantage through relationships-based strategies (Payne, 1995). They say that a new era of marketing has taken place. Out with the old and welcome the new! News, data information, and pictures have become even more mobile than people. They travel in “real time”—arriving at virtually the same time that they happen. And yonder the earth itself, the horizon of man has stretched out into stellar proportions. In marketing, there has now been a vicious and intensified shift from conventional to modern. Commerce and e-marketing have invaded the scene. Actually, there has been so much saturation already. The Internet is hot, and businesses are leaping and vault on the surfboard into cyberspace. It is becoming a mainstream communications tool.
There is such a thing as merely using technology to sell your products versus using marketing principles in the process of understanding and meeting the needs of target consumers, and then employing integrated marketing programs to establish customer relationships in online businesses Can you imagine that Amazon.com, a company that sells books and CDs on the Internet, had annual sales of over 18 billion USD? Jeff Bezos, the young mastermind behind the success of this service, understands that many consumers are willing to purchase books even without seeing them, as long as they are promoted properly. Bezos saw the power of the Internet in reaching a small, highly focused market segment, he realized that his comprehensive bookstore could not be all things to all people. For that reason, he established a sales associate program in which websites referring to a particular topic, such as public relations courses, could provide links to Amazon.com books that talk about public relations. To compensate the site, Amazon.com will remit a certain percentage of sales to it. The success of Amazon. com lies with the proper understanding of the needs and wants of the consumers, giving importance to the 4 Ps and striving to improve each process continuously. Bezos, with his Amazon.com, serves as a very good example of success in e-marketing (Schneider and Perry, 1999). Because of the success of e-commerce, other such similar buzzwords have been coined in order to describe this phenomenon. Terms such as Web marketing,
Let’s chat further on E-Marketing Online Businesses. Which number is greater? The number of Web pages in the world of people? You guessed right. Webpages outnumber all the people on the planet. Taking into mind the simple statistic, simply having a Web presence isn’t effective. First, yours has to be found among all the other webpages out there. And when someone comes to visit and visit again it has to be compelling enough. This is where the term “e-marketing” comes into play. E-marketing is marketing and promoting your website. It is developing and implementing a strategic plan that makes use of Web-specific promotion activities, as well as marketing techniques than are prevalent in “the real world.” In a continuously changing environment today, people must face greater challenges. A simple brick-and-mortar store can be transformed to a cyber-store engaged in e-commerce. But it does not end here. Because of the changes, good marketing programs have become more and more important to attain business success. That is why from e-commerce we can go to e-marketing. As time passes, we will be overloaded with dot com that will be turned to “dot coma” for Internet users. Competition will become tough in the cyberspace. Many people who engage in e-commerce would have the majority of the existing brand programs are just based on the assumption than on efficient data feedback. E-commerce is transacting commerce using the Internet; while e-marketing is marketing via the Net. E-commerce is plainly becoming the usual method for the transaction of commerce. However, to gain a competitive advantage, one must employ e-marketing. The key point is still satisfying online consumers and, finally, delighting them tying in the needs and wants of the client with quality service.
A brand is what identifies the product and differentiates it from its competitors. Building brand equity is important in ensuring the success of a product/service. Having a strong brand is one of the most important assets for a business to hold in the e-economy. Brand is very important because the customer cannot touch the product personally in order to buy it. Likewise, the company sales people do not have the chance to meet the buyer face-to-face. In the absence of these advantages, the buyer will often just rely on his “gut feel” and trust the brand or company that he thinks is reliable. Thus, the brand becomes the first thing that people search for in the e-environment of e-companies, therefore, it must come up with a strategic plan, as well as appropriate and
effective marketing strategies in order to increase the awareness which places it in a different light. A brand can lose its value when it is forgettable. For instance, Sony is very popular in making electronics such as televisions, etc. We recognize Sony as the number one main players, audio components in this product category. But what if they decide to sell laptops on the Net? Do you think it will have the same standing as when it sells its usual product line? The branding of a product will not necessarily transfer to another environment. Some experts have differentiated the emotional brand traditionally used in their other promotional efforts to uplift the image of their product. “Perhaps these types of branding can work in TRI-media (television, radio), and the use of ads are in a passive mode of information acceptance” (Schneider Perry, 2000). However, emotional appeals are hard to convey in the Internet. The main reason is because the Web is controlled mostly by the user. Many Web users are considered busy people so they probably don’t have the time to buy into emotional appeals. Marketers are attempting to create and maintain brands on the Web by using “rational branding.” Rational branding offers to help Web users to view an ad’s emotional appeal.
Customer assistance, detailed product information, and personalized viewing of products are examples of strategies talking to the cognitive side of consumers. There are other strategies that can be employed in establishing brands on the Web aside from rational branding. Another method that can be used is a brand using an already established brand and extending the scope of its services or extension sales. Yahoo! is a perfect example of this. Aside from being one of the Web portal pioneers that provides a directory of websites, it developed one of the most successful search engines that allows any user to search information on the Web conveniently. It continues to take the lead by acquiring other businesses on the Web. In 1999, Yahoo! acquired Geocities and Broadcast.com, which entered it into an extensive promotion partnership with a number of Fox entertainment and media companies. Yahoo! continues to lead its two nearest competitors, Excite and Infoseek in ad revenue by adding features that Web users find use and that increases the site’s value advertisers. Amazon.com’s expansion from its original book business into CDs, videos, and auctions is another example of a website taking its dominant position and leveraging it by adding features useful to existing customers. The approach mentioned applies only to companies that have strong brand equity. But for new players in e-industry, it is a good move to employ affiliates where two companies and its affiliate partners are involved.
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