There’s nothing remarkable about the fact that I received The Simpsons opening sequence – with real people from four different people. Receiving the link from more than one person means I know more than one person who engages in one of the most common web-enabled applications: forwarding funny e-mails.

 

What is remarkable is how simple and inexpensive marketing on the Internet can be, provided one grasps how people use it and how much value they place on well crafted, humorous and original content.

 

A study by Sharpe Partners revealed that 89 % of adult Internet users in America share content with others via email. The study on viral marketing also found that 63 % of the respondents share content at least once a week and as many as 75% of the respondents forward this content to up to six other recipients.

 

In addition to capturing the frequency of content sharing, the study also showed that the most popular content is humorous material, with 88 % forwarding jokes or cartoons.

 

Content Shared by US Internet Users (%of respondents)
Content	% Sharing
Humorous/jokes/cartoons	88%
News item/article	56
Health care/medical	32
Religious/spiritual	30
Games	25
Sports/hobbies	24
Business/personal finance	24
Sexually provocative content	12
Source: Sharpe Partners, Inc, January 2006

 

The Simpon’s video,a  viral marketing campaign by UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB, was viewed millions of times in less than a week, according to Reuters. Meticulously created by Sky and ad agency Devilfish, the video was intended as an on-air promotion until they had an insight about the viral power of the Internet.

                             

“If we had only showed it on air, you might turn to someone and say that was really cool,” BSkyB communications director Matthew Anderson told Reuters. “Putting it online, there’s a fantastic discussion between millions of people—it’s bringing the Simpsons to them instead of having them tune in.”

 

We all have to monitor emerging trends and technology like social networks and increasingly powerful content management systems. But we can never lose sight of the importance of helping people engage in basic interactions. Like sharing a good joke.

               

Building a brand is tough. And it’s getting tougher. Advertising Age numbers reveal that, for example, the number of brands on North American grocery store shelves has tripled since 1991 from 15,000 to 45,000 products. At the same time, the number of your competitors with websites likely has grown ten-fold (or perhaps even greater) since 1995.

 

On the Web, the power of Google has leveled the playing field between the haves and the have nots – big brands can’t necessarily spend their way to a better brand, and new kids on the block are constantly emerging from seemingly nowhere.

 

A recent McKinsey article (Better Branding; subscription only) highlighted the dilemma for marketers: “Building strong brands isn’t getting any easier. An explosion in the number of brands—as well as a proliferation of ways to communicate them, from hundreds of cable channels to the Internet, product placement in movies, and even mobile-phone display screens—has made it tougher to get messages through,” writes McKinsey’s Nora A. Aufreiter, David Elzinga, and Jonathan W. Gordon in Better Branding. “In addition, converging product-performance and service levels in many industries have made it more difficult to sustain existing brands. Meanwhile, the economic downturn has hamstrung marketers by cutting their budgets.”

 

All of that clutter and competition makes it harder to stand out in a crowd. Cash fueled advertising campaigns may create awareness and recognition, but not necessarily build a ‘better’ brand. The brand is all encompassing – from product to service to perception. Understanding your target audience, your users and their expectations and needs, and delivering accordingly, is tantamount to success.

 

Easier said than done.

 

Understanding the user audience requires an analytical approach to consumer research. Although research itself cannot build a brand, the adoption of both old and new analytical approaches to understanding customer behavior and preferences can build sounder strategies for enhancing the corporate brand and winning the hearts and wallets of consumers.

 

“The solid analytics at the heart of the new approach may not only require new skills in the marketing department but also highlight steps that other parts of the organization—from product development to operations to customer service—must take to help deliver the brand,” say Aufreiter et all. “Moreover, some marketers may worry that adopting more quantitative techniques will compromise their creativity. In our experience, though, getting analytical about customer needs and the brand identity helps channel the imagination into areas in which it makes a difference. And the ability to avoid costly trial and error and to build a better brand more efficiently is too compelling to pass up, particularly in challenging economic times.”

 

The good news, however, is that the web is still a relatively new media, when compared to, for example, the ultra competitive retail world. Yet the Internet, as we are coming to know by experience, can propel no names and young kids working in garages into branding superstars.

 

Brand building

 

It goes without saying that building a web brand is far more complex than marketing. A number of key contributors must be carefully mixed and executed to create a valued resonation:  

 

• Site design
• Usability
• Site layout
• Content quality
• Product value
• Order fulfillment
• Customer service

 

Of course these are not the only contributing attributes to the web brand. Some attributes, what Mckinsey calls “antes”, are auxiliary or added benefits that some customers might, for example, expect from a competitor. Think of Amazon.com’s free deliveries – now commonly offered by many of its competitors. Or a hotel website that offers 360 degree pictures of their rooms and property.

 

Successful brands deliver on both customer expectations and also differentiate from the competition.

 

 

Those web brands that have high relevance and a high degree of differentiation from the competition include Ebay, Google and MySpace.

 

Understanding your users

 

Notwithstanding more complex methodologies such as pathway modeling (see Successful Brand Repositioning: Aspirations vs. Achievable Strategies) and conjoint analysis that you may not be looking to digest in a 45 second blog read, there are a number of key measurement tools you should know and use…

 

• One on one interviews
• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Usability testing
• Call center tracking
• Market segmentation
• Benchmarking
• Etc.

 

A multiplicity of tools is recommended using both quantitative and qualitative tactics. Depending on your site’s position in the evolutionary curve, some tools and tactics are better than others (see When to use what research tools and Measure your efforts).

 

Moments of Truth

 

Brand is built and reinforced at web touchpoints or moments of truth. Moments of truth would include the initial impression of the site (color and design), product information, checkout process, search engine use, etc.

 

It goes without saying that there are a lot of touchpoints in a standard web transaction – whether or not e-commerce is involved. So, to leave on a practical note after many wasted paragraphs on Mckinsey influenced brand theory, here are some practical suggestions for reinforcing you web brand:

 

•         Prominently display your organization name/logo (upper left corner is now considered standard)

•         Organization’s “tag line” or “value proposition” should also be prominently featured

•         Design that differentiates from competitors

•         Emphasize the most frequently used and high-priority tasks/information

•         A single “Home Page” that is clearly distinguishable from all other pages

•         “About Us” and “Contact Us” sections are clearly labelled in the global navigation or footers on all pages

•         Sections and categories designated with customer-oriented language

•         Site offers multiple navigation paths to priority content and tools

•         Primary navigation area is prominently situated and similar items are grouped closely

•         Straightforward, informative language

•         Succinct grammar, with consistent capitalization and design standards

•         Concise instructions for necessary tasks

•         Search engine optimization (strong page titles, active links, keywords, etc.)

•         Clearly communicated and supported customer service and privacy policies

•         Deliver on your promises

 

Last word of note: branding is not a one-off exercise. Web branding is a continual, fluid journey that requires constant attention, tweaking and care.

 

Here is some additional reading (all the articles are more than a year old but all have offer good lessons – both implicit and explicit):

 

Don't Shout, Listen (Fast Company)

On the Web, Branding Is Back (Business Week)

Web branding is more than skin deep (Gerry McGovern)

Controversial, perplexing for marketers and beloved by their users, social networking sites have become a critical trend for web strategists to monitor.

 

In an article called “Social Networks as a Marketing Channel,” eMarketer provides powerful stats on the popularity of the sites and helpful links to articles about companies that are developing business models around collaborative publishing.

 

The article contains comScore Networks data showing that the two leading social network sites, MySpace.com and Facebook.com, attract more than five million unique visitors a month. The number of visitors to Facebook.com increased by 14% in December 2005, while MySpace.com saw a 34% increase.

 

Such growth, and the seismic shift in online behaviour it represents, is sure to attract the attention of mainstream media. Along with the skepticism for which big media is known. ABC News Radio, for example, is conducting an in-depth series of reports on social networking. Included in their coverage is an interview with Nate Elliot, an analyst for Jupiter Research.

 

“Certainly there are a large amount of people spending a large amount of time on this site,” says Elliot. “When you look at the huge numbers they throw out there — 50 [million], 60 million registered users — those are a mirage….”

 

Elliot says that 12 percent of Internet users in the United States say they’re registered at an online networking site, but over half say they don’t go back and only 18 percent visit networking sites weekly or more often.

 

Those who have been following the growth of social networking know that pesky analysts poking holes in their numbers has not been the main concern. Predators, scam artists, employers and campus authorities have discovered that the sites contain a treasure trove of personal data that can used against the social networkers.

 

In “Big Brother is Reading Your Blog,” BusinessWeek provides a number of examples of how this private information can be abused, and how the sites’ users are responding. These include:

• Avoiding getting “dooced” (fired for comments on blogs) by adding fictional information to postings to throw employers off the scent.
• Aggressively using the privacy controls supplied by the sites.
• Searching sites for evidence that campus police are monitoring them, baiting the authorities with bogus events and then surprising them when they show up.
• Moving to sites that promise greater safety, such as YFly.com that has a “report the creep” button on every page. If users suspect an adult is on the site, they refer complaints to a team of volunteers at the high schools represented on the site who will verify the person’s identity.

 

Whether or not these social networking sites are actually delivering the numbers they claim, there is no disputing two important facts:

1. The hardcore users are making innovative use of technology, their imaginations and fundamentally important social models to make them work.
2. People are already monetizing the opportunity, whether it’s the vendors of social networking software products or services, or the founders of MySpace who sold it for US$580 million.

If anyone doubts that content is king on the Internet, they have obviously been ignoring the rapid emergence of Consumer Generated Media (CGM). Whether a company has built its business model on content creation and dissemination, or selling deodorant, it must incorporate an understanding for CGM into its web strategy.

 

Not that getting it right is easy.

 

The New York Times reported that, after proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo’s Media Group, Lloyd Braun, is sharply scaling back those efforts. He said the group would shift its focus to content acquired from other media companies or submitted by users.

 

“I didn’t fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like,” Braun a former Hollywood executive told the Times. “This is not about creating one-off hits like in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term.”

 

His answer? CGM. “I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work.”

 

In an article in CRM Magazine, Alexandra DeFelice provides a number of interesting case studies of major brands who are not only excited about CGM, they’re making it work.

 

For example, Kao, the manufacturer of Ban deodorant, created a contest asking, “What would you ban?” It generated roughly 50,000 website visitors, about 10 percent of whom entered ads they had created online. Nine semifinalists were selected and given promotional materials to try to get people to vote for their ads. Within two weeks, those nine individuals generated 150 percent more traffic than all the company’s advertising had in the previous few months.

 

“As consumers are inundated by ads, marketers will need to stand out by finding better ways to reach them. Simply put, companies must develop methods that are interesting and compelling to consumers,” writes DeFelice.

 

She also offers seven tips for fostering creativity:

 

1. Stay grounded, but consider alternatives. Alternate channels are a complement to other forms of marketing and rarely can be used as a standalone effort.

2. Get buy-in. Make sure your corporate culture will allow you to experiment.

3. Set goals. Have a sense of what you want to accomplish before trying it. Understand overall ROI versus return on brand equity, which helps build future consumer loyalty or shift customer attitudes. Know how to put the metrics in the context of your company’s broader measurement strategy.

4. Budget. Allocate roughly 10 to 15 percent of the overall marketing budget for innovative techniques and alternative channels.

5. Test, test, test. It’s imperative to know what works and what doesn’t as well as which metrics work and which don’t.

6. Keep watch. Get proof of performance so that you know if things are going according to plan.

7. Think strategically. Don’t get caught up in cool ideas. Choose alternate channels that make sense based on your strategy.

 

 

RELATED ITEMS

Six Strategic Resolutions for 2006

Complete Prescient’s CMS Study and Win

AOL’s success not failure