Develop Your Brand (and, Importantly, Your Domain)
Your brand is your identity. It comprises such elements as your name, logo, color scheme, imagery, personality, voice and even sound. (Think, for example, of the Intel chime.)
The stronger your brand, the less work it takes to sell your products and services.
For example, when buying shoes in a sports store, people are more likely to purchase a shoe branded "Nike" or "Adidas" than one with no brand name, even if the shoes are equal in quality.
Why? For several reasons, including the brand promise: Thanks to marketing campaigns that have associated the Nike and Adidas logos with such traits as quality and athletic success, we associate those names and their logos with those traits.
Now think of how much it would cost for someone to convince you to purchase the unbranded shoes. Compare, in your mind, Nike shoes in one hand, and unbranded shoes in the other.
If you're like most people, you'd feel the advantage, even if only perceived, of the Nike pair. And that means it would take far more marketing dollars to sway your purchase to the unbranded shoes.
Advantage: brand.
Focus on What's Most Important
For an independent internet marketer or a small business, however, the brand advantage is less clear. In fact, sometimes developing a powerful brand can negatively impact your image as a friendly, down-to-earth, genuine person who's likable and in touch with people's common concerns.
For example, imagine if your local dry cleaner's brand were as powerful as Nike's. How would that change your perception of the store, and whether you would be able to ever speak with the actual owner, express your concerns, and have them addressed?
When we think of big brands, we tend to think of big bureaucracy.
A complete guide to branding and an analysis of branding's benefits is far beyond the scope of this article. But there are a few important brand elements we'll address that can be essential to your success online.
Create a Winning Domain
If your marketing will be primarily on the internet, it makes more sense to develop and secure a good domain name than to create a brand that might not perform well online, nor be available as a domain.
Your domain name can then become your brand name, which will help people remember your website.
There are, of course, other approaches. You can create a more abstract brand, like "Amazon.com," that's unrelated to your offering. But in our experience, for independent businesses that are hoping to derive revenue through internet marketing, more literal domain names, particularly those incorporating keywords, have seen greater success.
This doesn't mean that you need to have a completely straightforward domain like "Books.com." Such domains appear to underperform, probably because they're too expected, and hence far less sticky and memorable. You should aim for a domain, and brand, that explains your offering and incorporates keywords in a more interesting, unexpected way.
Examples include dating site "Double Your Dating," gift site "My Wedding Favors" and cleaning company "Clean My Space." You're probably getting the picture.
If you added "Budding" to "Books.com," for example, you'd have a more unexpected name, "BuddingBooks.com," that still tells people what they're getting. (A good domain, perhaps, for gardening manuals that, as of this original posting, isn't taken.)
This can be important for several reasons, including search engine optimization. Sites will often just link to other sites by their URL or name, and search engines will infer some information from those links. So, if someone linked to "BuddingBooks.com" using the domain name itself as the link text, search engines would be more likely to display that site in results when people searched for the keyword "books."
Here's how to create your winning domain—and brand:
- Start with keywords. The keywords you chose earlier will come in handy here. Take out a piece of paper and write down some of your primary keywords. Then you can use them to brainstorm domain and brand names.
- Add stickiness. Once you have some good keywords to play with, and some brainstormed ideas, work to make your name stickier. Do this by making it more simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional. (For a great discussion of stickiness, read Chip and Dan Heath's excellent book Made to Stick.) Other tricks that can aid memorability are alliteration (for example, two words beginning with the same sound) and rhyming. For example, if one of your keywords were "writing," a good domain name and brand might be "BrightWriting.com" and "Bright Writing."
- Test availability and variations. When you have some sticky keyword-based ideas, test the availability of the associated domains (preferably in ".com" versions) using a good domain registration tool. One of the best, in our opinion, is DomainsBot. Here, you can enter your ideas, see whether they're taken, see ranking for the words that go into their composition, and get suggestions from a keyword thesaurus.
What Else Deserves Attention?
Besides your domain and brand name, you'll obviously want to pay attention to such elements as your logo, color scheme and imagery to create consistent messaging. But since we're particularly concerned with content and writing, let's talk about two other essential elements that, besides your brand name and domain, can make a huge difference to your success.
The first of these elements is your brand's voice. This is how you will express your ideas and content in a consistent way. You will likely want to start a brand guide and style guide, and in it specify traits for your brand's voice. These can include such characteristics as "friendly" and "authoritative." Basically, any traits that you can ascribe to a real person, you can ascribe to your brand. (It's worth noting here that "personable" is one trait that you'll likely want to assign, since studies show it improves the usability of web writing.) When you create and maintain a consistent voice, people come to quickly recognize and associate your messages with your brand.
The second of these elements is your brand's personality. In this case, we're not just referring to its attitude. We're referring specifically to a person with whom the brand will be associated. Like a spokesperson, only better. You will notice that many independent internet marketers write from the heart about subjects with personal significance. This is extremely compelling. In fact, the approach dates back to the earliest days of mail order marketing, when advertisers would find real people—not celebrities, that's a different approach—and install them as the perceived owner of a product line or company. Then they'd write their sales letters. Why bother? Because people relate more to individuals like them than to corporations or stars. The approach dramatically improved sales, and the practice stuck.
What does this mean for you? If you're running your own business, put yourself out there. Don't be afraid to make your business look smaller by talking directly to your prospects and customers. Come out from behind the curtain. As long as your business is credible and your offering valuable, people will prefer to build a relationship with you than with a faceless corporation. Don't worry about the perceived size of your company. It's just a common, albeit often false, indicator of credibility. If you prove your value and establish your credibility, people won't care about your size (provided you have enough resources to meet their demands). On the other hand, if you prove to lack credibility, size won't compensate. And if you're not running your own business, or don't want to put yourself out there? Consider finding someone who can serve as the face of your offering. Someone with whom people can really relate.
Okay, that's a lot to think about. So take a step back and make sure you've got what you need.
What's Next?
Now that you've thought about your brand, it's time to analyze your competition.
What Do You Think? Post a Comment to Join the Conversation
Download Your FREE Copy of Instant Content Optimization Now!
Discover proven techniques that successful internet marketers use to write high-performance ads, websites and landing pages.
(Or learn more before you download.)
With Instant Content Optimization, you also get free content optimization tips and tools as an exclusive member of our low-volume email list. (We never spam, sell or rent your address, and you can unsubscribe with a single click whenever you like.)
