Branding Loyaltepays Publishing Marketing
Branding is one of the oldest forms of marketing known to mankind. With branding you can build trust and with trust your sales graph will soar. The problem with branding traditionally is that you need to put up your names and advertisement everyone people go to get a strong brand awareness and thus this makes it hard for small business to pursue the branding efforts in their business because of the sheer cost. The cost to brand a product is never cheap (Not Until You Landed On This Page lol) and so small business owners have turned their heads and attention towards branding via the online channels.
Online is great (not to mention that the cost is very low) and thus we are seeing a huge growth in the social network branding sector these recent years. online is so cheap and so available to everyone that we are seeing people doing it wrong and this is rather bad for business. When we talk about a bad branding strategy we usually take about branding that annoys people. Yes, in real life, we see advertisements everywhere by the roadside or anywhere within view. But they are rarely intrusive and it is rarely an eyesore hence these branding actually works in their favor. You Get This Free PDF “5 Ways to Encourage Sharing” Click The Picture
On the internet, however, there have been people who try to brand themselves the wrong way and this is really going to harm their business more than it will ever do them any good. Here are a few pointers to help you avoid bad branding habits that can harm your business.
Is your Advertisement annoying?
Recently, there have been a pop-up music video that is really annoying a lot of the people that they are trying to reach. They are supposedly trying to ‘brand’ their song or music group but the problem is, they are doing it wrong. Ultimately if you wish to brand anything, you must first make sure that your advertisement isn’t annoying.
What happens is that every time you surf on some of the most popular internet sites, you get a pop up in the background with an annoying music blaring in the background. What happens right after that? People will hit the close button with a sense of hurry and after they finally had it turn off… they will swear and mumbling bad stuff about what just happened. Do you want your product to get that kind of response? I bet the answer is a solid NO. All you are doing is wasting money, wasting your effort and the next thing you know… you are getting a lot of ‘negative’ energy and comments surrounding your advertisement or brand.
As crazy as it seems… it is really happening. Traditionally… ads at the roadside are at most… distracting but never intrusive. Imagine a student in a library surfing some site for information and suddenly that annoying music come out to play? What an embarrassing moment that would be. Hence as a marketer you need to be extra careful not to be intrusive. If you have a video, do not put it on auto play. The last thing you want from your advertisement is a bad response. Does the video I mention work? Absolutely not.
The video creator probably thinks that when they set the video on auto play they will get the attention. Oh yes they got our attention alright… but a negative attention isn’t what you want. Take PSY’s recent Gangnam style phenomena… It didn’t get famous for being intrusive. In fact it got viral because it was unique and it was aimed at the right audience (not everyone loves Gangnam style and it exploded anyways). This brings us to the next point… The right audience.
Your audience matters!
If you are going to brand your offers to the masses, make sure you know your target market very well. Do your research and homework. Never try to market to everyone because if Gangnam Style couldn’t please everyone… what makes you think your product could? Hence the lesson here is that you should only try to brand and market to those who has the highest potential of purchasing your product especially if your product is not in one of those ‘general niche’. By saying a general niche, I am referring to a niche that most people would want to know about it such as the Food Niche, The weight loss niche or the Make money niche.
Know your niche well and learn about your target market. I am sure if the above music video that I mentioned earlier were to target someone else that love that particular band or music then it wouldn’t have been that offensive or intrusive. But to those who are not into that kind of genre, it is bad news and of course a waste of money. Everything in the demographic matters, so go to Quantcast.com and do your research there. Test your advertisements and branding on a small group of people first before releasing it to the public. Never try to use a pop up without permission when you are trying to brand yourself. It will make your advertisement look like a pesky sales person clinging to you and pressuring you every single step that you take at a mart.
When it is all said and done, you need to make sure that your final copy of your ad is actually something that can pull a positive response. Again if you have tested your advertisement on a small crowd first you will be able to predict how it will work when you release it to the public. If you can connect with your target market and they start sharing and distributing your advertisement, you are in for a viral treat. And it can only happen if you are doing the right things to please the people that will love your brand. Never be intrusive, offensive and never try to buy cheap un~targeted advertising that will waste your money while getting more people to dislike you. Keep these rules in mind and you should be safe from making that bad first impression.
