It’s the product, stupid!
2009/11/23
Most companies fail at online branding for a simple reason: they don’t have a good digital product. As in the physical world even the best branding programmes in the world fail if the product isn’t good.
You won’t succeed online without offering anything interesting and substantial. Many companies use banner ads to lure people to their main sites, but their sites often work as pure glossy electronic brochures. It’s like inviting people to a store and then only show advertisement to the visitors who bother to come by. For sure, they won’t return.
Push strategies, that in different formats have served companies well on tv, radio and on the print media, simply don’t work online. All statistics show that people click away from banners, flashy campaign sites and other types of one-way communication on the web. There are too many things to do online to waste time on advertisement when you don’t have to.
So before a company starts thinking about increasing their investments in online marketing, they need to think strategically about their digital presence. Simply put; they need to make sure they actually have a great digital product.
Learn from IKEA, Nike and Apple
Unless you’re not a company with an existing digital product, such as media, music and game companies, the challenge is to develop a product or service that complements and increases demand for your core products (you can of course also sell your offline products or services online at knock down prices, but this is often a dangerous cannibalization strategy).
There are a few good examples of companies who have succeeded in building great online products that increase demand for their other products.
IKEA offers planning tools on their website that empower people to decorate their home in a better way. This indirectly fuels demand for IKEA’s products and increases traffic in the stores. With the intelligent Nike+ service, NIKE offers a free product that helps runners improve and share their running experience. This again fuels demand for Nike’s running shoes.
Apple’s iTunes is a third good example. Contrary to IKEA and Nike, Apple has made a business in itself out of its digital products and services. In the long run this might be the best, but also the most difficult, way forward.
A wealth of opportunities
The good news is that the web offers a tremendous amount of opportunities for developing great innovative products. I have yet to meet a company who doesn’t have a dozen of obvious services they could offer online.
The bad news is that this is a much more difficult, creative and strategic challenge than creating a cool-looking online branding campaign. It requires completely new web competencies. But for companies who want to grow and achieve brand leadership in an Internet dominated world – its the only way forward.