Today’s topic is an Internet Marketer’s Guide to Positioning and Branding.
Branding
Now there is some miscommunication about branding and internet marketing. A lot of people think that branding is a negative thing (and I guess it is in a traditional sense). We are not talking about institutional branding – that’s where people try to get you to associate one or two words in your mind which automatically make them think of your product.
Good branding is when you think ‘headache’ you might think Tylenol or Ibuprofen or something like that. That’s branding. They have linked in your mind one word to their product so they have top of the mind awareness (if you want to use a fancy term) and that kind of branding sucks for sub niche stuff. Like making money online is such a sub niche, I don’t know one out of a hundred people in my personal life who have any interest in it at all but everybody has an interest in curing a headache, everybody has an interest in drinking some nice flavored sugary drink and that’s why Coke can brand their name because that has universal appeal.
I am not really interested in that branding and anyway I would argue that that branding is ineffective. You should have branding as a by-product of your marketing communications where you are selling benefits in a certain way.