Branding is very important in web site marketing and the success of your site. A brand is a collection of images, text, symbols, logos, slogans, and design that represent a company or individual. It is so important in marketing that companies often trademark their brands (particularly logos or the company name) to protect the identity of the company. You purchase items at stores, often paying more for a branded product because you know and trust the brand.
This means that in selling a service or product with a web site, your site needs to brand the product or service. If your company is new, you show strive and work toward the branding of your product or service, using your web site to help with this.
Brands protect you from becoming a commodity. So avoid commoditization at all costs.
Sir Anthony O’Reilly, former Heinz CEO
I began to realize this with my own sites when someone mentioned to me that “I was all over the Internet”. I replied that was essential for my business. I had to show I could do it to build trust in those who would be my clients.
The real shocker came when my brother emailed and said a search on my name showed almost 400,000 pages, with my sites at the top. I was even more shocked when I searched on my name and found Google returned just under 4 million pages, and the top five were all referencing me or my sites. Google had essentially branded my name without me even knowing it!
What this means for your web site is that you need to decide how to brand your product or service and how the web site will carry that brand. For example, a city needs to brand their image, and then their web site can carry that image. For my own town of Tualatin, a major Bridgeport shopping center effectively branded the community. It was so successfully, in fact, that land near the shopping center has become very important to other developers. Restaurants and other stores are taking up the name and riding in on the brand, enhancing it further..
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