When something goes wrong and you need a product that will fix it, experts say that generally one to three brands of products will come to a customer’s mind due to perceived value and advertising. If your brand is not one of the three brands to come to mind, you won’t see the loyalty or the sales that will come to those top three brands. This is why it is crucial that your product has a strong brand attached to it. People attribute value, benefits, and prices to brands.

At a speech to Utah State University, VP of Marketing, Rick Haskins, on the CW network talked about the importance of branding. “Trying to be all things to all people will fail, because it is impossible.” That is why it is so important to establish yourself as the best at something in your niche.

Haskins went on to talk about the first time CW auditioned women for “America’s Next Top Model.”  Few could handle a runway walk or talk about their reasons for applying. Now, applicants can walk the walk and talk the talk, declaring themselves as “the smart one,” “the fun one,” or “the one who is going to win.” Young people who grew up watching reality television get the concept of self-branding, Haskins said. ( Nancy Van Valkenburg)

What should your company be branded as? Look at your strengths as a company and the benefits you can offer. If you don’t plan on competing on price, something else should set you apart. Quality or speed of delivery may be your strengths. Find them and stick to your guns.

Your brand should dictate all your company does. Your brand should seep into the way your business is run. When it does your customers will have no trouble identifying what you stand for and what they can expect to receive.

Redbox's Ingenious Branding

Redbox is a great example of extensive branding. Convenience is one of Redbox’s most important benefits. They position their products in convenient locations like grocery and retail stores, gas stations, and pharmacies. Considering customers are always present in these locations, picking up a movie is that much easier. It’s just one less stop they have to make.

They continue to make the movie rental process easier by listening to their customers and participating in social media. For example, “Consumer requests for a more convenient return program, for instance, spurred Redbox to launch its ‘rent and return anywhere’ program.” Refusing to stop at that, they’ve encouraged online registrations that reserve your video and let you know which Redbox location has the dvd you want to rent. This eliminates the disappointment of arriving at a location and finding out that none are available.

The very design and vending system of Redbox screams convenience. The movies are easy to find and quick to rent, and their kiosks are easy to identify in stark red. They even incorporate their brand onto the dvd cases that are encased in simple packaging with clear directions on how to return the dvd. Ingenious! The branding is incorporated into everything!

What benefit does your company, or you as a seller, want to be known for? What will resonate with your customers? How should you portray the benefit? The answers are different for every business. However, a strong brand adds value, trust, and eventually profit to any business. Think of all the value a strong brand could add to your business.

For more tips about selling online and building your business, please follow us on twitter: @gogodropship or visit our blog.

If you’d like to sell well-known brands, consider drop shipping with GoGo Dropship. With millions of brands to choose from you’re sure to find something that interests you.

http://adage.com/article/print-edition/redbox-america-s-hottest-brands-2010/147056/

Setting up a website without paying attention to how it will be found by your customers, is like paying for space on an expensive billboard and then finding out it’s been blocked from view by a newly built skyscraper. The skyscraper is like all of the information competing for your customer’s attention. Customers may want to see your billboard, but with a building in the way, it’s impossible! Because you can’t move the skyscraper, you’ll have to advertise in other perhaps smaller, more visible locations to help people find your business.

As you set up your website remember that keywords related to the products you sell, should be the pillars of your website creation. Put keywords in everything from your domain to the text on your site. Help customers find your product.

Another thing to remember is that content is king. Putting keywords on your site without posting good content won’t get your products sold. It will only make visitors angry when they visit. Good, relevant information will help build your brand and help you getting higher rankings on Google.

Taking on SEO may feel like a daunting task, but start small. Here are a few articles on SEO and starting an online businesses, that I found helpful.

Here are a few articles that have great tips about basic SEO:

http://webprojectscebu.com/blog/

http://www.2createawebsite.com/money/product.html

For more tips on SEO and starting an new business add us on twitter: @gogodropship

Always Keep a Log

The way in which you log is not as important as it is that you are logging your results. Be it in a spreadsheet that you will track results, or in a notepad, the important thing is you find something that works for you. The spreadsheet is the ‘normal’ answer, but if you’re not comfortable with it, don’t use it! Write by hand if that’s better for you, write it in a simple word processing document. This has to be something that is easy for you, or you are going to think of excuses not to do it.

A lot of marketing is going to boil down to running PPC campaigns, changing text on your homepage, and a host of other seemingly small, similar things. If we do not take the time to analyze what our efforts are actually doing, then there is no point in doing it. We cannot throw money or time into a machine, and expect results. We have to see in what areas our advertising is succeeding, and where it is failing, and change things accordingly. There are no hard or fast answers that can be given; your market is unique, and you have to work within it to be successful.

But with a little bit of extra planning, and weekly due diligence, we’ll be able to take full advantage of all that advertising gives us. Running a business is work, but if we take that little extra effort day to day, we’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results!

Make certain you are sending the “right” message.

As part of this rule, the tense of the word is also important. You want to have the proper suffix for the job; -ing and -ed are our friends. It looks like we’re lazy and may drive away traffic when “We Are Have A Great Sale This Month!” on our website.

Making a mistake like that sends a message to your potential customers that you wrote things quickly, and may not have caught the mistake. We want to present ourselves as professionally as possible, so in addition to using the ever handy spell-check, read your sentence out loud before you submit the change. If it sounds wrong to you, change it until it sounds right!

A wise person once said, “You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be in business tomorrow.” Basically, your business strategy must change. There are businesses which believe that change is not necessary but how long do they actually stay in business? We see this with the movie rental industry. After NetFlix and Red box got going, movie rental stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video had to adapt in order to stay competitive. Many Video Stores have actually gone out of business because they are unable to make a sufficient profit while competing with such low cost alternatives.

If that didn’t convince you that change, in business, is a necessity maybe this will. Can you imagine if Gateway would have decided that they didn’t want to go through the hassle of coming out with new products to stay competitive with the industry? I would imagine that they would not have lasted very long if they were still selling old machines with floppy disk drives. You see what I’m trying to get at? Without change in your business strategy your business may go extinct and become an item of yesterday.

I read this African Proverb a while back and I think it can be useful in business related topics. It reads, “Every morning in Africa, an antelope wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest antelope, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or an antelope – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” To me this says, if you don’t prepare today to be running when tomorrow comes, you’re already in big trouble. It also means that no matter where you stand in the food chain, whether you are a Mom and Pop store or a big corporate entity, you had better hit the ground running every morning.