Branding Without a Brand

Most marketing professionals still believe that true branding is based on the logo. But they also know that branding is much more than developing a familiar consumer image.
I realized a couple of years ago, when one of my colleagues was asked by a major U.S. airline to write a standard announcement to be used by the airline's captains, that many operational elements, as well as deliberate promotional strategies, are all integral to branding and the establishment of image and identity.
The speech was carefully composed incorporating the advice of a psychologist and a marketing expert, and the writing of one of the country's best copywriters. The aim was to achieve an announcement that would carry the airline's image message to the passenger, just as the company's logo did. This event made me realize the full potential of branding: the 360 degrees that I briefly discussed last week. And 360-degree branding is everything.
Singapore Airlines is an example of a company cognizant of 360-degree branding. A decade ago, the airline developed what is now the well-known Singapore Airlines smell. The hot towels the flight attendants distribute before and after takeoff all emit a characteristic aroma that, once experienced, is not forgotten.
So, what has a smell got to do with branding? Everything. We have five senses, and for some reason we often think only of using one or two of them. Research conducted a year or so ago showed that aural communication is just as important as oral communication. Testing Intel Inside, the researchers documented the interesting result that the Intel melody was as recognizable and memorable to the consumer as the Intel Inside logo.
What does this have to do with the Internet? The fact is that we have achieved only the management of what I define as the "level one" web site: a web site that sort of handles the graphics but falls short of integrating other sensory stimuli.
The reason why I say "sort of" is because I still, day after day, see web sites that don't exploit visuals well. Do you remember the story about the Coke bottle? It was designed so that if it was smashed, you'd still be able to recognize that the fragments were once part of a Coca-Cola bottle. Now, that's branding!
What if you were to remove your logo and your company name from your web site? Would I still be able to recognize your brand? I bet I couldn't. Everything on your web site has to reflect your core philosophy, the spirit of your brand, just like Singapore Airlines' hot towels and the captains' announcement.
Every single element you employ should be an extension of your logo: The copy should be the voice of your brand; the navigation should reflect the spirit and ethos of your brand in every degree; your site's sounds should be your brand's voice. Think of the identity that AOL's "You've got mail" communicates.
Every element of your site's construction and operation should be fully conveyed by your branding aims and integrated to communicate a seamless and comprehensible story. The integration principle is crucially relevant to all your channels and their intercommunications so that, wherever consumers encounter your business, they are able to recognize it instantly: in your store, on billboards, dealing with your staff, on the radio... even without seeing your logo. That's 360-degree branding: branding without using a brand.

Booking-World.com Doing Business on “Niche” Markets

What Is a “Niche”?

Let’s get down to business and define just what the term niche means. It sounds like kind of a fancy French term (which it is). It sounds like it rhymes with riche, as in nouveau riche (which it does). And while the nouveau riche (the newly rich) are often made fun of, it is better to be nouveau riche than never riche at all! The word niche brings to mind something small. Something manageable. A realm in which you can build your business and avoid many of the pitfalls waiting for any entrepreneur. And so a niche business is…what, exactly? Simply stated, it is a business created to profitably serve the needs of a niche market. And doesn’t that sound like where you want to be?

Why Niche?

What’s so great about starting and running a niche business? Business is business, right? After talking with hundreds of businessowners we’ve come up with some compelling reasons why you, too, should niche and get rich. v You’ll stand a great chance of succeeding. Now that is a big claim to make. Why should a niche business be any likelier to succeed? Because you are positioning yourself as a bigger fish in a smaller pond. With that comes greater market power and with greater market power comes greater stability, pricing power, and profitability, and a more loyal customer base. You aren’t as exposed to the whims of the economy, nor to those of the competition.

• It will be easier to find customers. Easier? Why? Because the tighter your niche, the better you will be able to capture customers, focus on their needs, and meet those needs. The customers you capture will be the right customers—ones you can do business with over and over again.
• You’ll have less competition. A famous American general maintained that the secret to winning is to “get there firstest with the mostest.” You’ll be the first to serve your niche and should therefore capture the largest market share. Market leaders control markets so long as they preserve their advantage. They are the first to respond to trends, set the pace on product and service deployment, and set the terms on price. Isn’t that where you want to be? You understand the market and lead the way in meeting its needs—creating what Warren Buffett would call a “moat” around your business and protecting it against competition as long as you stay in touch with your niche. Competition may happen, but you’ll have a leg up, especially in the beginning.
• You’ll make more money. Not only will you have more control over pricing and profit margins in your business, some operating expenses will be lower too. With a captive niche less will be spent for promotion and advertising to acquire new customers and preserve market share. Word-of-mouth is a powerful advertising tool in a well-defined niche.
• You’ll be able to do it over and over again. Once you’ve built one successful niche business and understand the thought process behind it, what is to stop you from using that same knowledge to build a similar business that serves a slightly different niche? Or to add products and services to more profitably serve the existing niche? Such crossover niching works well—to identify new products and services to serve your existing niche or find new niches receptive to your current products and services. Online entrepreneur John Drummond and his wife, Amy, founded Unicycle.com, and quickly built a successful business shipping unicycles to customers around the world. “Now that I know how to build a Web site that caters to a specialized niche, I’m on the lookout for more ideas. Ideally I’d like to have five different niche Web sites, each pulling in a million dollars a year,” says John. Maybe accident and health insurance is a good “crossover” product to introduce to the unicycle niche? More seriously, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other “ephemera” would work, and who’s to say unicycles couldn’t “cross over” to the extreme sports, scooter, and skateboard crowd?
• You won’t be caught off guard by market changes. In many niche businesses you are the perfect target customer; when your interest or needs shift or change, you’ll know your customers will soon be shifting as well. Large corporations run from remote headquarters offices are the last to hear their customers have changed, defected, or otherwise moved on. But if you run a store for middle-aged surfers because you are a middle-aged surfer who didn’t feel comfortable buying in an atmosphere designed to appeal to young boys, you will be smack dab in the thick of things. And when your customers start looking for bright green shirts instead of pale yellow ones, you’ll know it immediately. As a niche business owner, you will be nimble and swift. Just as in the example above, you will be able to quickly adapt to changes in your niche. A niche seller of ethnic cooking ingredients will be able to adapt much faster and more favorably than a supermarket to the latest cooking trends.
• It is often easier to get financing for a niche business. A lender who thinks you understand your market and are well positioned to serve it profitably is more likely to invest in you than another “me too” business and business plan.

Website Tips: Keep it Simple! : Thomas' site

ONE OF THE GOLDEN RULES OF WEBSITE DESIGN IS: Keep it simple. This applies to your overall site, its graphics and the copy or words. Let’s tackle them one at a time. First, make sure your site is not loaded with so many bells and whistles that your pages are slow to load. The faster people can navigate around your site, the more likely they’ll be frequent visitors and buyers. Make sure you monitor your pages to check loading times and fix any broken links.

Sites don’t need to be flashy(see: www.booking-world.com). When designing your site, keep your target audience in mind. Use bandwidth-consuming audio and video judiciously. Don’t put something up just because it wows you; it needs to wow your customers as well. And that wow shouldn’t be restricted to design—it should encompass site functionality as well.

You want to create a site that’s enjoyable for visitors to browse. Design your pages to allow customers to easily find what they’re looking for. Users get bored and move on when they have to search through pages and pages of information to find what they need.

Don’t clutter up your web pages. Some web entrepreneurs find that offering fewer products with more detailed descriptions translates into higher sales. For others, success comes from offering lots of products but categorizing and displaying them in a way that enhances the customer experience.

Word-of-mouth in digital communities (social networks)!

Today, people are organized in social networks and can take action together. They can discuss isolated instances of bad customer experiences and place them in context. Thus, they express concerns and dissatisfaction more loudly than they have ever been able to. What is more, they can take action to challenge business activities and people in power. In the digital environment, the voice of a few can inspire and reach many. The facilitated (and constant) flow of information among different social networks makes the voice of every single customer that much stronger. This is where customer evangelism becomes critical.

The fact that the customer’s voice has gotten louder shouldn’t scare you. On the contrary, it should motivate you to be a better marketer. It highlights the idea that if your customers are happy, they will share satisfactory experiences with a broader social network and earn you more followers.

In fact, people who share positive emotions tend to have a larger following. (Tweet this)This premise is backed up by HubSpot’s social scientist Dan Zarrella’s analysis of over 100,000 Twitter accounts. Negative remarks, which included negative feelings and morbid comments, belonged to people with smaller reach.

Positive Comments Are Shared More Often

Positive remarks, on the other hand, are exchanged a lot more frequently. Zarrella’sresearch of linguistic content shows that positive comments are the second most shared item among Facebookusers. So how do you take advantage of this phenomenon? By encouraging your customers to become marketing evangelists.

Online Κρατήσεις Ξενοδοχείων με το Booking-World.com

Κάτι καινούργιο συμβαίνει στο χώρο των online ξενοδοχειακών κρατήσεων αυτές τις ημέρες! Σε περιόδους κρίσης είναι που εφαρμόζονται οι πρακτικές και καινοτόμες επιχειρηματικές ιδέες σε ένα χώρο, μάλιστα, με ιδιαίτερο ανταγωνισμό. To Booking-World.com σύστημα online κρατήσεων για ξενοδοχεία, δεν είναι ακόμη ένα site για εύρεση ξενοδοχείων αλλά ένα σύστημα διαχείρισης διαθεσιμοτήτων με απ' ευθείας πώληση των δωματίων από τα ξενοδοχεία και πληρωμή απ' ευθείας στο ξενοδοχείο χωρίς επιβαρύνσεις.

Στο σύστημα αυτό, το ξενοδοχείο δημοσιεύει τις διαθεσιμότητες (δωμάτια) όπως επίσης και τις τιμές για κάθε ένα από αυτά. Λόγω του ότι δεν υπάρχει παρέμβαση ή προμήθεια στις τιμές και στις διαθεσιμότητες από το σύστημα, δεν γίνεται επιβάρυνση με extra κόστος για τον τελικό πελάτη. Επίσης τα ξενοδοχεία μπορούν να μειώνουν τις τιμές των δωματίων σε νεκρές περιόδους ή χαμηλής ζήτησης, προσελκύοντας με αυτό τον τρόπο περισσότερους πελάτες. Ο πελάτης πληρώνοντας απ' ευθείας στο ξενοδοχείο δεν έχε επιπλέον επιβαρύνσεις στις τιμές που πληρώνει με αποτέλεσμα επιπλέον κέρδος.

Ο ρόλος του συστήματος είναι να προωθεί τις διαθεσιμότητες των ξενοδοχείων και να διαφημίζει την ύπαρξή του σε διάφορα μέσα (online και offline) και να εμφανίζει τα δωμάτια των ξενοδοχείων στο μεγαλύτερο δυνατό αριθμό οθονών ταξιδιωτών. Αυτός είναι και ο λόγος της χρέωσης κατά την εγγραφή ενός ελάχιστου αντιτίμου - ετήσιας συνδρομής - των 50€.

Με την μικρή αυτή επένδυση, ένα ξενοδοχείο μπορεί να έχει πολλαπλά οφέλη.

Αξιοποίηση Δημοσιότητας στο Internet

Έχουμε γράψει επανειλημμένα ότι το βασικότερο θέμα στην επιχειρηματική δραστηριότητα στο internet δεν είναι η πόσο καλή δουλειά κάνουμε στο σχεδιασμό και την αισθητική ή την πληροφορία που δημοσιεύουμε, αλλά το βασικότερο και πολυτιμότερο από όλα είναι η επισκεψιμότητα. Κάθε μέρα δημοσιεύονται ή βγαίνουν στο αέρα χιλιάδες web sites τα οποία επιζητούν την επίσκεψη των χρηστών και αυτών που αναζητούν τη συγκεκριμένη, δημοσιευμένη πληροφορία. Άρα λοιπόν, το βασικό ζήτημα είναι να προσελκύσουμε τους επισκέπτες στο site μας. Όσο καλοί και να είμαστε στο SEO και SEM, όσα και να πληρώνουμε σε διαφήμιση και banners σε τρίτα sites, ένα είναι σίγουρο: η πλειοψηφία των χρηστών βρίσκει τις πληροφορίες μέσω αναζήτησης με τη βοήθεια των μηχανών.
Κάθε φορά που συμβαίνει κάτι στον κόσμο, όλο και περισσότεροι ανατρέχουν στις μηχανές αναζήτησης για να βρούνε ένα άρθρο με το σχετικό συμβάν. Πως μπορούμε όμως εμείς να προσελκύσουμε επιχκέπτες που αναζητούν ένα άρθρο για ένα συγκεκριμένο συμβάν; Πολύ απλά να στήσουμε ένα Blog στο site μας και να σχολιάζουμε τα γεγονότα ή ακλόμη καλύτερα χρησιμοποιώντας RSS feed να τραβάμε άρθρα από άλλους ιστοχώρους.
Ένα απλό παράδειγμα από τις προηγούμενες ημέρες είναι το συμβάν με την κα Αλεξανδράτου και τον τρόπο που απασχόλησε τους χρήστες του internet. Πολλοί διαχειριστές blog έτρεξαν να γράψουν δύο γραμμές ή ακόμη και μόνο ένα σχόλιο για το συμβάν χρησιμοποιώντας λέξεις-κλειδιά από αυτές που χρησιμοποιούσαν οι χρήστες για να αναζητήσουν το περίφημο βίντεο (πχ. Julia Alexandratou, Greek amateur porn, Julia alexandratou video, κλπ). Ξαφνικά αυτά τα Blogs που δεν είχαν παρά κάποιες δεκάδες επισκέπτες, για αρκετές ημέρες απέκτησαν χιλιάδες! Μερικοί το πήγαν και ένα βήμα παραπέρα και έβαλαν και ένα σύνδεσμο με το περίφημο βίντεο, και βέβαια η επιτυχία ήταν ακόμη μεγαλύτερη!

Basic Steps to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing : Thomas' site

Basic Steps to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing : Thomas' site