Branding, as a whole, is essential for any serious business because quite simply a company’s brand is what distinguishes it from its competitors. In today’s high techr age, not only is it essential for many businesses to have an internet presence to stay competitive but also to create a brand online that your target consumer market will recognize. An effective internet branding, just like its offline counterpart, helps bring awareness to your unique business offering and drive customer demand.

While Internet branding offers vast opportunities for business, in order for it to be effective one must be able to attract and engage its customers doing this over the Internet is not an easy task. Internet branding is not as simple as putting up a website and adding your company logo and slogan. Your internet branding strategy should make your online brand visible and distinguishable.

Internet branding makes use of technological tools to create an online presence for your business. Graphics and animation, a compelling web copy, and overall website design that reflect your company’s brand are some of the important elements that will bring your online brand alive. Additionally, an attractive website that helps customers easily and quickly find the information they need is the key to get customer interaction and eventually, business. Your Internet branding strategy should incorporate good design elements and ease of use to create an effective overall impression of your company.

A strong online brand image will make the difference whether a customer will buy from you online or switch to your competitors. Remember, that online customers can just leave your site and go to your competitors in a click of a mouse. Therefore, a lot depends on the impression that they get from your site. Internet branding seeks to deliver an immediate unique message about your business to your target clients.

Visibility is also crucial in the online business world. There is no use to having a website if Internet users are not aware of it and because of the vast number of websites, businesses are competing to appear at the top pages of big search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Most customers do not look past the first few search pages when they make a search query so ranking high in these pages gives you better chances of driving customers to your site. That is why optimizing your site is another major consideration in Internet branding.

As you can see, there are many requirements for a successful Internet branding strategy. For small or large businesses, hiring an Internet branding or marketing specialist will be helpful to give you focus on your efforts in creating an online presence that will become a valuable asset to your business.

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example:  Ask, Excite, Yahoo, Bing and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

For additional information, please visit our partner agency at www.ideafolder.com, thank you.

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

For additional help with this and other SEO issues, please contact our partner agency  at www.ideafolder.com or contact me at hector@carrenogroup.com

They use viral marketing by e-mail as a marketing tool… what did you think I meant? Viral marketing can work well for B2B providers, as long as the following is true:

The product or service has to add value for the sender, as well as, the receiver.

1. The offer has to be deliverable. You don’t want to offer a product that you can’t deliver if demand grows rapidly.

2. The offer has to be easily transferable to others. E-mail and Web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this.

3. The vest viral marketing campaigns use existing networks to move the message along.

The basis of viral marketing has been around for a long time. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends. Those that pass on your information get something in return. The something might be a gift or service related to your business.

Using e-mail makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, especially if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet worldwide, the potential for exponential growth is tremendous. The great things about viral marketing are that it is free and works virtually by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility for referrals, viral marketing spreads like… well… a virus…but the good kind.

To implement viral marketing at your business; first, start with your customer base. Incite existing customers to refer new ones. Second, go to your referral sources. Service providers, your outside network and colleagues can be encouraged to provide referrals that lead to business.

If you need help in creating a viral marketing campaign, feel free to contact us at hector@carrenogroup.com.

Media Daily News

March 31, 2009

Coke has launched a new iteration of its “Destapa La Felicidad” (“Open Happiness”) Hispanic-arket campaign.The new effort, bearing the tag “Destapa Tus Sueños” or “Unleash Your Dreams,” includes new point-of-sale, shopper experiences, consumer promotions, television, radio, print and out-of-home advertising, and mobile, digital and music components.

Two TV spots with a “dreams” theme are running on Spanish-language networks, including Univision, Telemundo and TeleFutura. One shows a father drinking a Coke after a long day’s work. He glances at his daughter playing with a stethoscope and imagines her becoming a surgeon.

The “Destapa La Felicidad” effort, itself an evolution of the “El Lado Coca-Cola de la Vida” (“Coke Side of Life”) campaign, began with a promotion on March 1 around its “Telenovela Club” platform. That promotion includes a sweepstakes for the chance to meet two telenovela stars.

Hispanic-market efforts this year also include national advertising and public relations featuring the Mexican National Team in the U.S.

Reinaldo Padua, assistant vice president/Hispanic marketing Coca-Cola North America, says the effort is intended to create “a more personal connection” to Hispanic consumers. “Through ‘El Lado Coca-Cola de la Vida,’ we found the voice of the brand again. People reminded us that Coca-Cola is about optimism, quiet confidence, leadership, fun and wit. This led us to create an updated call to action: ‘Destapa La Felicidad’,” he says.

He says the Coca-Cola Telenovela Club is one of the most successful programs Coke has for Hispanic consumers. “And due to its success, in 2009 we will continue the program.” The promotion will continue to run through My Coke Rewards/Mis Premio, Coca-Cola and participating retailers in Hispanic markets.

Padua says in-store elements include point-of-sale in meat departments and bakeries at supermarkets to Novelas or Fútbol activations in beverage aisles, deli and produce sections.

Do you write a news blog for your site that keeps people coming back for more? If not, you’re missing out on the perfect opportunity to market your site or your product. When people sign up for a newsletter, they’re holding the door open for you.

Before you start your new blog, think through these ideas:

1. What is your goal in writing the news blog? Do you want to market your site, or your services/product?

2. Who will be reading the news blog? Do you have a list of people who have subscribed from your site? What demographic information do you know about them? Your attitude should depend on this.

3. What can you say in your blog to achieve your goal? How do you connect your readers to your services/product?

Writing a good newsletter – one that catches the reader’s attention and appeals to him/her in some way – isn’t a mysterious, difficult thing, but there are a few things to remember as you write.

· First, forget about using exclamation points. Write in a friendly way; don’t sound like you are attempting to sell them something. Read your newsletter out loud, and if it sounds silly, it probably is.

· Readers want to know what you’re talking about. Get straight to the point of what you want to say. Make room for a special tip or secret that they won’t find easily anywhere else – even on your site. This keeps up the interest and keeps you from losing subscribers.

· Link to your site and don’t be shy about it. If what you’re saying interests people, they’ll want more of it. How many times do people read a blog or newsletter from top to bottom looking for a link to the meat the blog/newsletter promised, and give up?

· Don’t give it all away, though, and don’t fill your blog with nothing but links. Give the reader a taste of what they will find on your site. The idea is to whet the appetite, not satisfy it.

· Use a part of your blog to interest the reader, then give them the URL in a clickable form so they can go read the rest of it. Make it as easy as you can for your reader to get from your blog to your site.

· Break up the text into paragraphs of two or three sentences. Long, run on paragraphs are hard to read and most readers will lose interest quickly. Your job is to keep them interested in what you have to say.

· Never write anything that could possibly be construed to be an insult or demeaning in any way to anyone – gender, race, religion and politics included.

· Include things like “Feel free to send/forward this blog to a friend.” If you want to encourage return email, include a clickable return address, thus: mailto:yourname@yourdomain.com

· Spell check – proofread and edit thoroughly! Let it cool for a few hours and read it again. Be meticulous in grammar. If you can, have someone else proofread it. It’s hard to catch your own mistakes.

When you’re satisfied that you’ve done your very best, hit the ’send’ button. You’ve just impressed hundreds or even thousands of people. Isn’t the power of the internet wonderful!