Merchant Internet

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Introduction

Getting your company or product recognised on the Web is a challenge, but getting consumers to recall you from memory for your particular industry or product is much more daunting a task. Brand awareness tactics for the Web are much like branding in the traditional world, except that you only have one medium at your disposal. The same format and cost exists, but the parameter of time has been reduced in some instances, you literally have just seconds to get noticed.

As with any advertising campaign you develop, the first web site marketing question you must face is, "what is my web site’s objective?" Chances are that your emphasis is on immediate sales. Microsoft, Intel and IBM have the financial wherewithal to spend vast amounts of money on advertising agency fees to insure their brand’s continued recognition on the Web. Of course, the helping hand that they receive from the leagues of web site publishers who place their corporate icons prominently on their home page adds a great amount of free visibility for them.

Why?

If you don’t have the funds available to run a dedicated branding campaign on the Internet, you should at least consider incorporating some branding into your advertising campaigns. The long-term benefits of enhancing the recognition and comfort associated with you product or name may not be quantifiable at first. After repetitive reinforcement of your name and logo, people will begin to accept and become more familiar with you. When consumers reach for product they need, it is typical human behavior to choose the one that they have heard of. Branding pro-actively on the Web today will give you a competitive advantage in your niche market, unless you are forced to brand in order to balance your image with the competition.

Example:

Consider the names Lucent and Cisco.
Do you recognise them? What do they represent to you?
Recently, a division of Lucent technologies decided to enter into the hardware networking solutions marketplace.
Their major competitor is Cisco.
Cisco has been branding on and off the Web for years, giving it a head-start on Lucent. Now, Lucent will need to spend more and spend with advertising agencies to make inroads into this particular niche market, simply because they waited too long to act.

The message here is that timing is everything.
If you have a commanding role in your particular market, it is better to plan now to brand, then to react to your competitor’s movement!

Checklist

1. Web Strategy for your company,
   

2. Establishing a web presence,
   

3. Web Marketing and Promotion tools management,
   

4. Pre-Sales and Post-Sales operations,
   

5. Web ad banner design and development,
   

6. Web Advertising Strategy and Campaign,
   

7. Web marketing, business models and plans,
   

8. Business to customer and business to business operations,
   

9. Order Entry, Order Tracking etc.