Need Ecoomerce Branding? Key to Colonizing Online Consumers

Updated June 12, 2008

Branding is a nebulous concept - and it becomes even more ill-defined once you take it online. People love to talk about Internet brand-building, about creating 'top-of-mind' brand recognition, about generating 'word of mouth' brand hysteria.

But despite all the branding ballyhoo, colonizing the online consumer psyche - or at least a segment of it - with a name, image, slogan, or differentiating benefit is much easier said than done.

Offline companies gone brick-and-click have an easier time of it. In many cases, they simply transfer the energy of an offline brand into digital format and let brand momentum carry forward. It also helps if you have the marketing budget to paint your brand across various media channels, or to coordinate an integrated on/offline marketing push, or to develop an advertising arsenal designed to imprint image as it sells product value.

However, because the Internet is a decentralized, fast-motion environment, classical brand-building is more complex in hypertext. Many of the common branding exercises routinely launched via 'traditional' media are based on affective, visceral messages overcoded with emotionally/psychologically charged substance. When Microsoft buys the advertising rights to a Rolling Stones song, they are targeting the gut and reflex level of a target demographic. However, you may have noticed that they don't play this song on their website.

That's because affective is not necessarily effective on the Web. Flash intros are among the newest means to visually brand in a text-based environment. Some e-businesses include sound files. Others wait for developments in broadband so they can hit you with broadcast strength impressions. Well designed banners can brand, and there are many banner advertising campaigns that brand successfully, though in many cases they have not proven to be a cost-effective means of Internet positioning.

The point of branding is to develop a differentiated business identity through instinctively memorable messages that associate a consumer need/desire with you or your product. Top-of-mind awareness means the displacement of other competing ideas, or better yet, the translation of a novel, innovative benefit into a unique message that stands sharply alone.

A big part of branding deals with psychology, reflex, and memory. Hence the importance of sensory-driven branding. But another big part of branding deals with rationally communicating a message that speaks to consumer needs and/or sells a desired online experience. Instead of brand building through mere image, online branding should focus on concentrated product differentiation - using value-boosting content.

In other words, building brand with an image on the Internet is an expensive premise. In the long run, marketing a direct consumer benefit or overarching differentiating principle will go farther than mere sing-song catchiness - and selling a unique concept is always better than a sensory imprint. If you think about effective online branding efforts, ideas and benefits always precede logo and watchword.

Here, people who can't stop talking about branding seem to translate the idea as a kind of all-inclusive corporate mind-meld in which miniature versions of your logo manifest themselves in a collective consumer imagination. On the Internet, branding should be better understood as reaching a target demographic with a memorable message, reinforcing that message, acquiring customers through profit-generating marketing agendas, and maintaining brand contact with them through various channels - from email to advertising.

A solid campaign begins, of course, by understanding your target audience, the marketing strategies of your competition, where you should be marketing your message, and where, in that message, you can elevate value and clarify benefits as you differentiate. Who your customers are - and what they want - will dictate your graphical and textual content. And all your messages (in all the places they show up) should be designed to mutually support each other, from domain name to logo to web page layout to website and ad content.

Where do you brand? Everywhere you can - and always communicate your primary, differentiating message. The company I work for promotes the message of comprehensive, integrated ecommerce services. More importantly, the benefits we brand are the convenience of working with just one ecommerce provider (instead of the headache of several), the reassurance of enhanced customer service, and the affordability that comes with utilizing integrated ecommerce systems/services. The message: 'One Partner for all your ecommerce needs'.

Ultimately, there are dozens of ways to get your brand across - from dead-on graphics and say-it-all catchphrases to viral marketing and even those little IE bookmarking icons. But on the Internet, it pays to simplify, to focus on content, to push the value of your product, and to sell the tangible benefits of your service.

That's not to say you should ignore image or the impact of a uniquely designed website. It's just that image should serve your primary message of differentiated benefits and unique value.