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Branding: Targeting Your Market Online

Start by Defining What You Stand For!

Your brand is not your corporate color scheme, or your logo, or your jingle. Your brand is the way customers and potential customers feel about your company when they encounter it in the market place. So, it is the specific reactions you would like those customers and potential customers to experience when your company hits their radar that must drive your branding activities.

For example, Sir Richard Branson includes "fun and a sense of competitive challenge" in his description of what the Virgin brand means. Over the years, his approach to the market has definitely reflected that brand mindset from brand name selection, to off-the-wall publicity stunts, and guerrilla marketing tactics.

Trevor Schoerie's PharmOut, on the other hand, had a different brand objective. Schoerie needed to build awareness of his company in a niche market with fewer than 100 potential clients. He knew that the nature of the regulatory compliant pharmaceutical industry required a very different approach to branding than that used by Branson (jumping out of planes would not work for PharmOut).

Shoerie focused on demonstrating impeccable credentials and building PharmOut's reputation for expertise in the field. He did this by creating a technical white paper that showcased his firm's expertise and offered valuable tips to their target market. He then supported the distribution of the white paper with a search engine-optimized news release. For more information about the specifics of PharmOut's highly successful branding campaign, visit http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/pharmout/study.html

Before you put a lot of money and time into your branding efforts, take the time to determine what you want your brand to be. Your brand, like your reputation, will be built on what you do and how you behave in the market place. Decide what you want your brand to stand for, and then make sure your advertising, marketing, customer interactions, and internal policies are all consistent with that intent. Only then will customers and potential customers begin to react the way you'd like them to when your company hits their radar.
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