Internet Marketing for Brand Building
In response to article posted on http://www.realtybizcoach.com/2008/01/04/internet-marketing-the-big-picture/
I think this is an excellent way of explaining Internet marketing but I do however feel that there is one are which has been missed off and that is Internet marketing for the purposes of brand building. The Internet is an excellent direct marketing medium but it can also work well in terms of building up brand awareness. Everyone slates banner adds for having poor click through rate but at the end of the day that’s not what they are about. By placing a banner add on a web site that is well respected you can increase the awareness and creditability of your brand. Internet marketing in my opinion should be considered a mix between direct response and brand building as with off line marketing. I do however acknowledge that online brand building through banner ads is not cost effective for smaller companies.
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Hi Tony. Thanks for leaving a comment at RealtyBizCoach. I responded over at my blog, but will also post here.
Small businesses don't build their brand through banner advertising. They build their brand through getting people to their site, having them to opt in to their mailing list/RSS feed/etc thus getting permission to continue marketing to them, offering them valuable content over time to build a trusted relationship and hopefully, eventually, getting people to convert to paying customers.
Branding is about shaping how others think about you. It’s about differentiating yourself with your USP and building trust and credibility with people who have no idea who you are so that they feel comfortable doing business with you.
Can you do that online? Yes, absolutely. But it’s not a one time deal and it’s certainly not done by placing a few banners on websites. The people that have built up solid online brands are high profile bloggers who continue to share useful information each day or people that run regular, highly successful mailing lists. Yet even those people have agendas. You don’t “build a brand” for the heck of it. You “build a brand” for more leads and referrals, to sell more books or get more speaking engagements, to make money from your website via advertising or affiliate marketing, etc.
Perhaps banner advertising works as a branding tool for Fortune 500 companies who everyone already knows and who are trying to sell more physical products at their stores, but for anyone that is relatively unknown and offers an intangible service, direct response advertising is far superior and cost effective.
That said, banner ads can certainly be designed with direct response advertising principles. If you are going to run banner ads on a site, you do so because that site’s readers are your target audience. By using a good headline and making a great offer, you can increase how many people click over to your site. When they get there, the page they “land on” should be a special page that reiterates that special offer and asks them to do something (join your mailing list, fill out a form, call, etc) that you can measure.
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