Online Branding Benefits

Transforming marketing-Online medium has changed many rules of branding, customer services and even product packaging. Growing global competition with the customer spoilt for choice at the click of a mouse makes online branding more challenging than ever. While offline branding can have the luxury of time, e-branding needs to evolve and be relevant to changing needs and tastes instantly.

Localized Focus-Online businesses have the advantage of instantly contacting global customers at a fraction of offline business costs. However this has its own localization challenges. People do not change their preferred choices for the sake of limited offerings of a business; they simply go to the competitor. Online branding thus needs to be adaptive to localized needs instantly. For example for an online apparel store, customers in different geographic regions have varied choices as per their local conditions. Depending on the local IP of the e-visitor the online store front presents locally relevant branding (culture, tone) and product offerings.

Friendly adaptive branding-Majority of customers are averse to dramatic changes and appreciate brands that are friendly and adaptive to their changing needs i.e. speak their language and are simple. Online branding needs to narrow its focus viz. target regions rather than be generalist. Brand campaigns need to be highly interactive too to succeed in today’s customer focused online business environment.

Technologically Superior -The web gives a technological edge over offline branding mediums. For example an online advertisement not only informs but also facilitates purchase fulfillment through secure e-commerce transaction. Different types of online promotions can even allow online customers to engage in e-conversation with others users for a better informed choice, without having to move. Online branding thus leverages technology to add new paradigms to customer convenience.
- Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net