Smart Brand Building

Businesses can save time and money by proactively evaluating important customer needs from their online presence/offerings. Their web-presence and the overall marketing plan should be cohesively integrated to compliment each other for meet organizational goals cost effectively. Every brand marketing initiative needs to support and enhance the other – seamlessly. Small & Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack the marketing budgets of their larger competitors are amongst the greatest gainers from internet marketing and online customer services.

Internet marketing is highly adaptive; thanks to its ability to monitor ongoing results accurately and quickly change ongoing campaigns in real time for best possible results and Return on Investment. Online branding can greatly benefit from proven traditional/offline marketing initiatives like yellow pages advertisements, direct mail and display advertisements.

Similarly brick-and-mortar businesses need to effectively leverage Internet to promote themselves and get more business. Leveraging the synergies of online and offline brand innovations together can help you maximize impact of even a shoestring marketing budget.

Branding Success Mantra-Follow the customer
‘Customer is the king’ and brand- marketing' primary motive is to serve the information needs of the targeted customers. As it is expensive and risky to change consumer habits, integrated marketing strategies need to follow customer preferences rather than creating them where traditional marketing methods are firmly entrenched. For example, in case of popular sports events, television is the primary means of viewing them.

Web based brand-marketing needs to compliment the offline viewing by intelligently made contests and co-branded (with the sports event brand) informative advertisements / memorabilia. At the same time smart TV advertisement placements can drive traffic to the web based advertisement for special promotional sales related to the sporting event. A well planned media plan creates the required customer attention.

Significantly it also generates useful leads with word of mouth /viral advertising as interested fans spread the word around of compelling campaigns. The brand promotional synergies these online-offline commercials generate build a sustainable brand salience, provided it makes a tangible difference to consumers’ life. Hence while TV advertisements en-cash the mass appeal of sporting events; the online promotions leverage the convenience and interactivity of the web medium.

The increased time consumers spend engaging with the online and offline advertisements of these brands in positive ways allows smart marketers to build higher awareness and brand preference

-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net