How To REALLY Market Your Business on the Internet

1. How To REALLY Market Your Business on the Internet Presented by Darlene Gregory, President East Meets West Productions, Inc.

2. Branding: What is it and how do I get it? BRAND: def:A singular idea or concept you own in the mind of the prospect.

3. Branding: What is it and how do I get it? BRAND: def: The power of a brand lies in it'sability to influence buying behavior

4. A Brand is Not Just A Logo Branding is the creation of a recognizable entity which defines the product or service provided by your company and creates legitimacy and top of mind awareness in the mind of the consumer.

5. Branding: How Famous Is Your Company? But what if your brand is still unknown? Tom Fornoff, VP of corporate marketing at IntelliQuest, which has measured Internet brand awareness for two years, feels that "the next opportunity for growth in recognized brands is with small, niche audiences."

6. Internet Brands That Are Household Names

7. Brand Development The client wanted to launch an e-commerce venture selling sugar free and diabetic food products to the public.  Although the company had operated several health and wellness related businesses, this was their first major online venture.  The company hired an agency to create a branding strategy for their venture, implement a strategic online marketing plan and to design a professional, user-friendly website.

8. Brand Development The company also did not wish to spend significant resources on pay-per-click advertising such as Overture.

9. How To Develop A Brand • Research the company and its market • Develop a strategic marketing plan that includes a focus, image and brand for their website.  • Create a name for the company that conveys the concept of sugar free foods. • Procure a toll free telephone number that contains the company’s name for branding • Select and procure a domain name. • Design the company's logo. 

10. Brand Development • Develop a professional, e-commerce website that reflects the marketing and branding strategy.  • Maximize the company's Internet presence • Select the best and most relevant keywords and phrases to draw highly qualified and targeted traffic to the website through organic search engine results. 

11. Brand Development • Create proper title and META tags • Write content • Carry out a highly successful link building campaign that draws targeted traffic to the website

12. Advertising Spending Doesn’t Equal Brand Awareness There is no consistent correlation between ad spending and "top of mind" brand awareness for Internet companies, according to a survey conducted by Greenfield Online for HMS Partners.

13. Advertising Spending Survey participants were asked to list up to five names that come to mind when thinking about specific dot-com brands. Surprisingly, some dot-com brands managed to achieve similar or greater levels of "top of mind" brand awareness despite significantly smaller advertising budgets than several of their big-spending brethren.

14. Advertising Spending "It's not how much you spend, but how you spend it," said HMS Partners' CEO Rick Milenthal. "Dot-coms 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."

15. Name Recognition Since name recognition is considered only half the branding battle, the survey also named several sites and asked respondents who recognized a given name to then describe their site's function.

16. Recognizable Internet Brand Names "Names like Amazon, Monster, and Oxygen don't really tell you anything about the site, so their high recall scores (78 percent, 76 percent, and 74 percent, respectively) show that branding messages are getting through," said Robert Abbott, president of studiomotiv, HMS Partners' interactive unit.

17. Well Established Offline Entities Brands with well-established offline identities score high on the recall meter. Of those who recognized Barnesandnoble.com and Gap.com, almost all (97 percent and 93 percent, respectively) could also identify the functions of those sites.

18. How Consumers Become Aware of Your Site • Surfing the Web is how most respondents (83%) say they became aware of a specific Internet site Traditional media advertising has a great influence: • 53% say television advertising • 52% say print and radio advertising

19. Do I Need To Have A Physical Presence? With e-commerce sites, a physical "bricks and mortar" presence is still important to many consumers – • 50% of all respondents rate having a physical offline presence as very/somewhat important • 15% say it isn't important at all.

20. Do I Need To Have A Physical Presence? •35% report they would be more likely to make a purchase from a Web site if the brand had a physical offline presence • 34% say it would not affect their purchase decision

21. Do I Need To Have A Physical Presence? People under 25 place the most importance on a physical presence • 61% rate it very/somewhat important • Men and women have virtually identical attitudes toward online shopping and purchases

22. Brand Awareness Drives Online Shoppers Brand awareness is the top influence on consumers when purchasing • 63% of shoppers relied on brand awareness as the leading factor in purchasing online •28% of online shoppers shopped at a site they found through a portal or search engine Source: National survey of 500 online shoppers randomly chosen from Harris Interactive's multimillion-member panel of Internet users

23. Stanford University on Web Credibility • Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don't follow these links, you've shown confidence in your material. • Show that there's a real organization behind your site. Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organization will boost the site's credibility. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce. • Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear. Conversely, don't link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association. • Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies.

24. Web Credibility • Make it easy to contact you. A simple way to boost your site's credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and email address. • Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site's purpose. • Make your site easy to use -- and useful. We're squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company's ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology. • Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed. • Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don't mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere. • Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site's credibility more than most people imagine. It's also important to keep your site up and running.