“Let’s Go Digital!!”

Building strong digital brands is not an overnight task. Promise and delivery is the first step

It took more than fifty years for Coca-Cola to become a worldwide market leader, but only five years for Yahoo! to gain market dominance. Companies such as America Online, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Google, Amazon and Netscape have built strong, well-defined, online brands in a relatively short period of time. These companies have realised that building a brand is about consistently and continually managing “the customer experience”.

With all the competition on the World Wide Web for the attention of both casual surfers and prospective customers, to build a strong brand you need to stand out. In the real world, there may be plenty of room for one or more brands, but in cyber-space, there can be only one, that remains etched in the mind of the surfer.

The medium may be different but the fundamentals still rule: ” Strong brands, whether off-line or online are built one experience at a time”. How and why are questions that need to be answered!

From the Marketer’s point of view
Traditional companies see the net as just another distribution medium rather than an opportunity to set up shop - a channel that exists only to sell or generate further leads. Other than this, traditional companies face the following problems:

Audience

“Are there enough takers out there for my brand?” is the question most marketers ask themselves. Building a brand on the web for most traditional companies is all about justifying a presence by the number of people who are drawn to the site. Although the web has not presented huge audiences for many brands, it is still a great medium for the search of the “special/niche” audience that represents your best customer segment. For instance, priceline.com has found its target audience to be “bargain travellers”

Technology

There are no best, tried and tested formulae for branding online. Too many problems cloud the branding horizon - e.g. bandwidth limitations. At the same time, the web provides many interactive capabilities that can be leveraged for online branding.

Impersonal

The web is considered to be highly impersonal. There is no one-to-one interactivity.

The biggest challenge for marketers would be to understand the web and its citizens. The web is entirely a different medium, but at the same time it is just another channel for the customer. The current blitz of advertising by dotcom companies is an inadequate model for those who want to build an enduring brand. Marketers must go beyond this by promising and delivering great online experiences.

Online Promises

The first step in building strong digital brands is to select the core promise of the brand. The five basic guarantees to which a customer may relate are:

Convenience Promise: Faster, cheaper and better are the keys to promising
navigation convenience. Amazon.com fundamentally is built on this promise, assuring fast delivery of products and less download time.

Accomplishment Promise: Internet brands that make people feel like winners after the transaction is over. Bidorbuy.com for instance, makes surfers feel that they have got a real good bargain despite bidding.

Fun and Adventure Promise: Games, virtual sports, adventure quests, etc offer consumers thrills to identify with. Amazon.com gives visitors a chance to send a free E-card – a customised greeting card that the visitor prepares and e-mails to a third party recipient. Over time, if the recipients’ feedback is positive, the visitor may continue to return to Amazon.com because of the added "fun" feature. Eventually other aspects of the relationship will develop.

Self-expression promise: A consumer with a viewpoint immediately goes to epinions.com. as they have succeeded in allowing consumers to air their opinions. V India.com has positioned itself as a portal of self-expression for youngsters.

Belonging: All sites are promising 'belonging' by building communities including chat rooms, giving the customers an opportunity to interact with like-minded people. egroups.com is one of the most popular community-building sites. Similarly women.com promises a sense of belonging to women.

The promises made above are not new. They have been made before in the real world. The medium is new, quick, easy to deliver, and rewarding. How will these promises eventually lead to delivery? As every medium has its own tools, so does the web!

Tools of the web

Personalisation tools that creates one-to-one interaction and customisation between the consumer and the brand and reassuring privacy between e-business and customers. My Yahoo! and My Inc pages are perfect examples of personalisation.

Collaborative tools are “email this page to a friend”, “recommend our site”, “message boards” or “giive us names of your friends” that enhances community-building.

Purchase Process Streamlining tools are those that enable the customer to keep track of purchases and also recommend related products. Amazon’s one-click model keeps track of purchases of customers.

Self-Service tools allow customers to obtain answers to their questions instantly. Changing addresses online, queries, FAQs, etc are forms of self-service tools that are very helpful for banks and retailers.

Dynamic Pricing tools give the consumers a chance to name their own price. Auction sites such as bidorbuy.com make use of such tools.

Do-it-Yourself tools allow consumers to customise products or services either from scratch or through electronic configuration. For instance, on music.com one can download their favourite numbers onto a single CD.

Every brand is based on an experience that comes through a promise made and delivered. The aggregate of those experiences over a period of time creates a collective perception and builds the value that perpetuates a brand.

Related Reading:
“Building Digital Brands”(1233)
Sandeep Dayal
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2000. Number 2.