Building your brand identity online is essential, what if your company is offering services that are horizontally based?
E.g. Virgin offer a complex array of horizontal services.
- Virgin Media – telephony, broadband, cable television and mobile.
- Virgin Megastores – chain of high-street stores selling DVD, CD and games.
- Virgin Trains – train network
Virgin is exemplary as their main website is portal themed, yet informative with a strong brand being cast on the user. There is no doubt in the users mind you are visiting a Virgin website. They have managed to also encourage search engines to crawl their website despite their use of Flash with a text based navigation of which has given Google, Yahoo and Live ample reason to place Virgin top for the search phrase ‘virgin’.
What if you are a property developer with a slightly less marketing budget than Branson and co, of which offers vertically based services? Is it worth your while to create a new brand identity online? It depends on how the following questions are answered.
- How large is your marketing budget?
- What proportions are offline and online budget?
- Is the domain new?
- What is the lifespan of the marketing project and brand?
Unlike Virgin, Shell, and large corporates, who swamp the SERP’s for their brand due to global recognition, your comparatively small budget wouldn’t be competing for phrases such a ‘virgin’ or ‘shell’. And there lies the answer with all marketing, does you product/service offer a USP, and if not, you have the internet to make it so.
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