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Brand Promotion Online (Strategic Marketing Jul-Aug 99) |
Quick! Name three brands that come to mind - white goods, consumer
products, services, anything. I bet you didn't have any difficulty
getting those three names, right? That's because the brand builders
behind each of those brands have done their homework well. They've
hit you with their brand where ever they could, whenever they
could, in any which way they could. They've integrated advertising,
sales promotion, public relations, and event sponsorship to build
and maintain the brand. It's very easy to visualise the images
these brands have carefully crafted over the years in different
media. That image is what customers consume in the real world,
and often become very possessive about.
Now think about these same brands online. Do you have any idea
what they are doing on the Net - if they're doing anything at
all? Do they have a website? Have you visited their website? If
yes, how often? Does the brand leave an impression on you when
you're online? Chances are your answers to all those questions
would have been a series of "No's". So what went wrong
with these brands online? In one line: the brand builders haven't
understood the medium. All their marketing textbooks and experience
has taught them what they know about promoting a brand in various
media. And no doubt, they're doing a good job of it in traditional
media. But the Internet is a different ball game altogether -
and the traditional rules cannot be blindly used on the Internet.
Unlike any other medium before it, the Internet supports multimedia
messages and facilitates personalised interaction with the consumer
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year - and all this
at a ridiculously low price. For the brand manager, this means
an opportunity to allow the consumer to touch, feel and experience
the brand anytime and all the time. Exploiting these features
of the medium is what the people behind the brand are struggling
with.
The Internet user's behaviour online is fairly well documented by Internet marketers:
- When he's (yes! Internet users are still predominantly male) on the Net, there's a radio station continuously playing in his mind: WII-FM (What's In It For Me?). He's not on your site to hear you praising yourself, your company, products or brands, but is there to get something for him.
- Users have to battle with slow modems, bad lines, busy tones, frequent disconnects to log on to the Internet. And at the end of it all, if as a marketer, you don't have something to give him in return for all his effort and trouble, he's off to any one of hundreds of other sites more than willing to cater to him.
- Which brings us to the four lettered word that rules on the Internet - FREE. Whether it's a free screensaver with your brand subtly built into it, or passes to an event promoted by your brand, the user is a sucker.
- The average user's online patterns are fairly set - he'll go to a set of sites regularly when he's logged on. Like the rungs on the ladder in Al Ries and Jack Trout's Positioning; The battle for the mind, the sites on the top 5 rungs are one's he'll frequent and keep going back to.
With the uniqueness of the Internet as a medium and the behaviour
pattern or Internet users, traditional brand strategies go for
a toss and cannot directly be applied to cyberspace.
For most marketers who have explored the online media as an option,
creating a website is the only way of introducing their brand
into cyberspace. The real world equivalent would be them starting
their own magazines, newspapers, or TV channels to market their
brands. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But you'll find hundreds
of thousands of brands going that way on the Internet, simply
because of the low entry barriers - it's easy and affordable.
But with over 650 million web pages on the Internet, the situation
closely resembles the proverbial needle in a haystack. So we're
talking about a www.mtv.com, or a www.nike.com here. And though
these individual "vanity" sites may get a user visiting
a few times for specific information, they don't usually warrant
regular visits. Think about it yourself - you've seen television
and print ads by Ponds that have the Ponds Institute website address
emblazoned somewhere at the end of the ad. A quick raise of hands
of those who've logged on to get their tips? Aah - I thought so
- a few here and there. How many of you keep going back to the
site regularly - like maybe once a week? You get my point, don't
you?
The better alternative slowly being discovered by marketers world-wide
is that most consumer brands are best marketed where the audience
is already coming on a regular basis. Enter portal sites or highly
trafficked sites that have the target audience the brand marketers
are trying to reach. Keeping the mentality of the Internet user,
the brand is usually promoted on these sites via online event
sponsorships or contests. These can either be a mere extension
of sponsorships / contests in traditional media, or created exclusively
for the Net. Examples are the Smirnoff Bol Baby Bol contest during
this year's Valentine's season. The classified message contest
was extended to the Net, while Close-up had exclusive contests
and promotions on the Net to completely own the Valentine's celebrations
- both online and offline! The Close up Cupid Corner on the Net
offered Internet users a one stop point for their Valentine cards,
messages, Valentine related tips and content, contests, and online
shopping needs, instead of making him go to five different sites
to do the same activities!
The launch of new versions of Internet Explorer - Microsoft's
Internet browser is a good example to drive the point home. Long
before they launch a new version of their browser, they ensure
that there's enough of noise in the media so that the awareness
level exists. But to put up a good fight in the battle of browser
brands (Internet Explorer Vs Netscape), Microsoft does not only
offer the browser for download from their website, www.microsoft.com,
but go all out to localise promoting their browser. For instance,
the launch of the last two versions of Internet Explorer were
done in conjunction with contests on sites like Rediff On The
Net and IndiaTimes, to generate action and push their browser
to more desktops. While the die-hard techies would log onto the
Microsoft site to get the browser, the average user is easily
reached from portal sites that already have a steady stream of
everyday users logging onto their sites.
The net gives marketers a never-before opportunity not only to
reach the brand to the customer, but to allow the user to interact
with the brand and enrich the brand experience. It's been rightly
said that the Net is the brand builders wet dream come true!
A prescription to marketers and brand builders planning their
Web strategy:
- First and foremost, spend time on the Internet, understanding the medium. Surf sites from the perspective of the user and learn from others' mistakes and successes. Read up about Internet marketing - both online and in the real world.
- By all means create your own website. Keep the basic rules in mind: build it with the customer in mind, keep it simple and easy to use, ensure that the basic information about the company, products and brand is easily available. Above all, the experience is what will build your brand online, so don't cut corners on that front.
- Make sure your customer knows about your online presence. Just as brand marketing involves raising a hungama about your brand, the same applies online too. Which means advertising and promoting your website address online and off in every conceivable manner. And remember to keep updating your site regularly with some pay-off to draw him back again.
- If you don't have the inclination, resources, or time to maintain your own website, keep your brand in front of online eyeballs by promoting your brand on sites where your target audience already is - the big portal websites. Even if you have your own website, look at how you can leverage their traffic either for specific events related to your brand, or on a regular basis.
Are Indian marketers using the Net for advertising and promotion?
They are. Log on to any popular Indian site and you'll see enough
banners to show you that Indian marketers are using the Net. However,
like the tip of the iceberg, these are just a handful of forward-looking
marketers who are either convinced about the Internet as a marketing
medium, or those who have been the recipients of a slick sales
talk about the need to advertise on the Net.
But it's not widely accepted, is it?
Not yet, it isn't. The most common reason being that most of the
people responsible for marketing the brand are not Internet savvy.
For them, the Internet is on par with any other medium and they
immediately start spewing jargon filled questions: OTS, ROI, SEC
being some of the most popular words that crop up. Then there's
the wait-and-watch policy - let someone else in my category try
it, and then we'll think about it. That automatically lessens
the risk of their necks being on the chopping block!
It's expensive, isn't it?
Aaah - the classical sticky issue of money. For a fraction of
the cost of an advertisement in a leading print publication, an
online advertisement or promotion can give you a more focused
and niche audience. Try cutting a column centimetre or two from
your print ad the next time and using that for promoting your
brand online. Execute it well, and count the clicks increasing!
What about the reach?
Currently there are over 150 million Internet users world-wide,
with anywhere between nine to ten lakh Internet users in India.
NASSCOM predictions put the number of Indian Internet users at
8 million in two years time. And that number is not a dream with
cybercafes, Internet through TV, and cable Internet access spreading
the reach of the Internet to the common man. How many of these
you reach depends on your advertising and promotion strategies.
At the time of publication, Lyndon Cerejo was an Internet Strategist with Rediff On The Net (www.rediff.com)