Keywords (a waste)! Branding Comes First! by: Meredith Gossland / Williams Money Group

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords... establishing an internet presence is said to be all about controling the hot keywords. But the fact of the matter is that establishing your company as an industry leader is much more important.

I did a little research on the keywords used by large companies and found that keywords were really secondary to having a great brand identity.

Coke.com uses a total of 3 key words, Saddleback Church uses just 2. Can you guess what they are?

Building a great business and letting people know about it through traditional methods can drive business to your site and is far more cost effective than pay per click. Pay per click is like having a store on Main Street and being charged for everyone who looks in the window of your shop. Would you let a city do that?
What if the newspapers charged you for everyone who read your ad in the paper whether they purchased from you or not?

Focus on developing your business reputation and customer service, tell everyone you meet to check out your website, then give them services on the site that are useful, entertaining, interesting and are updated frequently.

Why do you have a website? Internet customers are great but they are tremendously fickle. Not only that most are just surfers. What if you owned a business in a mall and the mall charged you for everyone who entered your store would you bid against a similar store in the mall to be charged a higher price for every person who walked by your window?

Just as Las Vegas Casinos are the winners and gamblers are the losers. Search engines are the winners pay per click clients are the losers.

The popularity of Saddleback Church is the result of marketing technique that is totally and completly dependant on building relationships from small groups. The church has 2,600 links on Google, 17,100 on Yahoo (Alta Vista) but these links were not purchased or created on link sites. They come from real people who have heard about the church and are interested in the product. Coke has 10,200 links on Google and 18,000 on MSN do you think they purchased those links. Look for Coke under the key word soda or carbonated drinks they aren't even in the top 50.

These are companies that have worked to create their business first and the website followed.

Go to www.sitereportcard.com and check out the keywords used by Coke and Saddleback Church. I don't think you will be surprised. They have built a name in their respective communities and can be found on the internet by that name. No 499 keywords, no pay per click, no cons or traps.... just good business branding and great reputations.

If you want to see if your keywords are effective check out Wordtracker.com

About the Author

Owner Lasting Impressions 2 - Custom Business gift baskets, greeting cards, Customer Service Tips
Sponsored By Williams Money Group

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©2008 Williams Money Group- All Rights Reserved

Branding Versus Search Engine Optimization by: Kevin S. Kantola / Williams Money Group

Branding versus search engine optimization is a marketing dilemma that larger companies will need to come to grips with on the Internet. Often companies will need to decide whether to promote their own brand name as their main keyword phrase or optimize for a more generic keyword phrase.
For instance, one search engine report states that 1.3 million visitors per month search for the term "Best Buy." This same report states that the term "electronics" is searched for by 1.1 visitors per month. The obvious choice in this scenario is for Best Buy to optimize for their own brand name first and the word "electronics" second.

But take a competitor such as Fry's Electronics. Approximately 95,000 visitors search for the term "Fry's" every month, far short of those who search for "electronics". Does this mean Fry's Electronics (a partner with Outpost.com) should optimize for "electronics" first and Fry's (and/or Outpost.com) second?

Currently, a search on Google for "electronics" will show that Best Buy does not show up in the first two pages. Fry's (Outpost.com) is on the second page. But let's take a further look to see who is in the number 1 position: Sony.

Sony, with 450,000 searches per month for the word "sony", has managed to grab the number one spot for its brand name and the generic name "electronics". A search of the Sony homepage source code will reveal that this page is optimized for both words, "Sony" and "electronics." By optimizing for both words Sony has nabbed a lot of traffic neglected by Best Buy and perhaps even exceeds Best Buys traffic in doing this.

Another issue in branding is trademark infringement. Courts have upheld that websites using another company's branded name in its metatags is engaging in trademark infringement. For instance, a site about cats would be infringing if it put the name Best Buy in its metatags in hopes of gaining traffic from this trademarked word. Large companies have to protect themselves from others stealing traffic that is rightfully theirs. These companies cannot however protect a generic term such as "electronics" as that is fair game for all electronics companies.

So, in order to create the largest return on investment, large companies need to optimize their websites both for their own brand names and for the generic, high-traffic keywords and keyword phrases relevant to their sites. Otherwise, they are letting tons of online business just slip away.
Sponsored By Williams Money Group

About the Author

Kevin Kantola is the CEO of Search Engine Optimization Resource ( and has written many online and offline articles over the past 20 years.

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©2008 Williams Money Group

Articles and Internet Branding: 5 Steps to Success

Are you ready to become an internet marketing expert? Are you ready for a massive conversion rate plus unlimited residual streams of income for your web-based business? Excellent! I'm here to focus your mind on the job at hand. Today you will learn how article marketing is the means to the end, and that end is PROFIT.

Web marketing success happens one project at a time. The formula we're about to discuss works best when your product is information-based. Meaning, if you're an expert in your niche, other people are going to want to learn Your Secrets. You can use this to your advantage- by creating marketable products that deliver information (your Secrets) to customers who are willing to pay for it. You will then use web articles to lure in your prospects.

How will you go about this? Take it one step at a time.

Step 1. Select a niche market. What are your interests? Where does your expertise lie? Wherever that is, is where you will focus your next marketing project. Let's say it's real estate. Your Marketing Mission is: make your name recognizable within the realm of real estate. Build yourself up as an expert in the buying and selling of property.

Step 2. Create an online persona and brand for your business. For continuity's sake, let's go with the real estate example. Suppose you want to be known as the Inside Expert on house flipping for profit. Sounds like a great plan to me! Now grab yourself a web designer and a great copywriter and get going on perfecting that image of you as the Real Estate Go-To Guru!

Step 3. Develop an informational product that readers can buy directly from your website. You've seen those kits that all the Experts are selling, right? Who told you that you can't sell one on your website? Nobody. So, get going. Start pulling all nighters if you have to, just get that kit written and make it powerful so that your buyers will go, WOW! I can't believe what I learned from this guy/girl, and for such little money! Hire a ghostwriter, if you really want to get this project cracking. Either way, as Nike says: Just Do It.

Step 4. Write articles to build your credibility. If you've been reading my "series of internet marketing articles" in order, you'll already be familiar with the concept of article marketing. This is where you use an Article Distribution website like Ezinearticles.com to help deliver quality articles to end users who will feature your articles.

(Note: I listed this as Step 4, but really your articles should be flowing as early as Step 2.) As part of your brand-building strategy, stream a steady flow of web articles to content-hungry webmasters who fall into your topic category, who will then spread your sage advice all over the internet. If you're burdened with time constraints, hire a ghostwriter to do this work for you. At the end of the articles, include a bio that directs them to your website. From there, they can learn more about you and what you can offer them.

Step 5. Direct your customers to a sales letter that teaches them about your product. Again, you can do this with article marketing. An easy scenario to follow: You write an intriguing article featuring five tips on how to gauge the real estate market. At the end of the article is your bio, which directs the reader to a link where a sales letter page opens. That sales letter will then contain certified testimonials from happy clients and customers of yours. All of this will further enhance your reputation as a qualified expert.

The final outcome: clicks to your website, where visitors use PayPal or another easy money transer in exchange for your informational product. The profit's in your pocket. Beautiful! YOU DID IT! Give yourself a pat on the back. Take a vacation!

Of course, if you're going to be an internet expert, it's a smart idea to create multiple areas of expertise for yourself in more than one niche. Again, articles are the means to the end. Suppose now that you're done with your online real estate venture, you've figured out that Copywriting is another God-given talent of yours that can be leveraged for profit. Time to create a Brand New Internet Personality! How will you do this? Easy. Follow the five steps I mentioned above, only replace each mention of real estate with Copywriting.

Do you see the INFINITE POSSIBILITIES? Good! You've got plenty of work to do. So stop reading, and start writing those articles!
For Publishing Articles Visit -- Recommended Site

About the Author

Find out how crisp, targeted copywriting can make a world of difference for your business. Dina Giolitto is a Copywriting Consultant with ten years of experience. Sponsored By Williams Money Group.

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©2008 Williams Money Group - All Rights Reserved

Importance of Branding: What's in a Name?

Branding is perhaps the most important facet of any business--beyond product, distribution, pricing, or location. A company's brand is its definition in the world, the name that identifies it to itself and the marketplace. A model may be beautiful, but without a name, she's just "that girl in that picture." Where would Norma Jean be without Marilyn Monroe, or who would imagine Coca-Cola as just a soft-drink manufacturer? A brand provides a concrete descriptor to customers and competitors alike, a name for a product or service to distinguish it from anything else. Bob may run a hobby shop, but trying to advertise as "The hobby shop a guy named Bob runs down the street a ways" is financial suicide. Each customer will have to describe the shop, who Bob is, and what the shop does every time someone asks about it. This makes the process of recommending a good hobby shop too much work for the average customer, and far too much work for a user looking for hobby shops on the Internet. A customer looking up Bob's hobby shop will have an easier time of it if he or she knows to refer to it as "Bob's House of Hobbies," and the customer can then refer others to Bob's hobby shop by name, increasing the potential advertising exponentially. Developing a brand involves more than just picking a catchy name and placing an ad in the newspaper--a brand is more than a unique string of letters denoting a particular product; a successful brand is a mnemonic trigger that makes a consumer feel a certain way when the brand is thought of. For those who drink cola-flavored soft drinks, which is more appealing on a hot day: a cold cola soda, or an ice-cold Coke? Coca-Cola has spent 100 years developing their particular brand of cola-flavored soda as a refreshing beverage and a seminal representation of a market segment. Coca-Cola has used a combination of direct marketing, give-away techniques, and multi-product cross-branding to achieve maximum brand recognition and visibility in not only its immediately competitive market, but in markets as diverse as Coca-Cola branded race cars and housewares.Brand loyalty is an integral part of building a brand, as consumers usually have a choice of products in the same market segment, and so a successful company will come up with a way to keep consumers re-buying their product or coming back to their location rather than going to a competitor. These brand loyalty-building efforts may come in the form of coupons, incentives such as many grocery chains' technique of "grocery discount cards" or "loss leaders," meant to draw consumers into the store, where they will hopefully buy products along with the discounted fare at a higher profit ratio. In exchange for these discounts and grocery cards, many companies collect information about buying habits and average spending amounts, the better to tailor advertisements and better-focus future promotional efforts. Once a consumer is hooked, brand loyalty tends to result in higher sales volume, as well as loyal customers being less sensitive to price changes of their favorite brands (within reason, of course), as well as less sensitive to competitors' incentives. Studies have shown that it takes 5 times as much money to gain a customer as it does to retain one. That's 5 times as much money as could have been spent on other things.A brand is who your company is, and what it is selling--it is as important as naming a baby, and should require the same amount of effort to develop it, but if done well, can mature into a successful and profitable adult. Sponsored By Williams Money Group© 2008, Wholesale Pages UK. All rights reserved.
About the Author
William King is the director of All Wholesale UK, Wholesale Pages and Wholesale-Canada. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.

©2008 Williams Money Group- All Rights Reserved

Branding Fiasco -- Better Be Who You Say You Are! by: Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE / Williams Money Group

Our experience as customers offers great instruction into the concept of branding. Come with me on a recent "experience" and you'll see what I mean. Here's the situation:

I want to order an 800 number. On my AT&T bill is a customer services number. I call it. A voice mail gives four options. None of which I want. Just TRY to get a representative. I am instructed to dial another number. I am given three options. Hit 0 for operator and the disembodied voice says I have called after hours. The hours are 7am - 10-pm Monday- Fri. Eastern Standard Time.

Fine. It is now 4am Monday in California. They should be open. By 4:30am in CA I have called repeatedly and punched in all the prompts until I am ready to punch someone. I am still told by a disembodied voice that the offices are closed. I try another number. This time, I reach a computer voice.

Computer:"I'll try and help you. Tell me in your own words what you want."

Me:"Toll free service."

Computer:"I'm sorry. I did not understand. Let me tell you what services we offer..."

Me:"I want a person"

Computer:"Tell me, in your own words, what you want."

Me:"Toll free service!"

Computer:"I am sorry. I do not understand what you want."

Me:(screaming) "I want a person."

Computer:"I am sorry. I..."

SLAM!!!!

I call 00 in frustration. "Operator!!"

Operator: "How can I help?"

Me:"I have been trying without luck to get someone in customer service. I have been caught in a voice mail hell with an atavistic voice. How do I talk to a person?"

Operator:"I am sorry you are having problems. You can talk to a supervisor."

Supervisor:"Can I help you?"

Me:(heatedly) "I want to ask about a toll free number. I have dialed three numbers and cannot get in. It says the offices open at 7am and now it's almost 8am EST!"

Supervisor:"Oh, sometimes they forget to turn off that message so the phones can ring through. We have to call and tell them."

Me:(incredulously) "You mean the PHONE company has employees who do NOT know their first order of business is to turn on phones to answer customers!"

Supervisor:(calmly) "I am sorry. Let me give you a different number than the one you have been calling. You need to call the office for AT&T 1-800 Easy Reach.

"Easy Reach?!??!?" Who are they trying to kid! I call this "Impossible to Reach".

Branding Lesson #1: Your name sets up an expectation. Live up to it or suffer.
There is a promise established in what we advertise and name things. Southwest Airlines had thought to create a baggage claim delivery time slogan. Then they realized that due to the configuration in a few of their terminals, to quote such a time was almost impossible. They dropped the campaign even though it would have been true in MOST of their sites.

Branding Lesson #2: Your business sets up an expectation. If you don't deliver for yourself - how can you deliver for the customer?
A phone company that doesn't answer the phones is a scary thought. We'd expect it of any other business, but the phone company!! If you own a paint store and your store is in sorry need of paint, what does that say? If the waiters in a restaurant cannot tell you about food on the menu because they never get to eat it, what does that say? Look at your business with critical eyes. Would you do business with you?

Branding Lesson #3: The past never counts. The present creates the brand.
It is the actual in-the-moment experience that creates a brand in a customer's eyes. Brand is a living entity that is re-earned, renewed, or revoked with every interaction. Advertising only creates awareness. I am convinced the very best, most unique, most competitive maker of a "brand" is the well-trained, empowered employee who can disregard systems and procedures in order to continue a human interaction. As more organizations substitute technology for people, the company that answers its own phone and get humans connected in short order will win the day.

(c) 2008, McDargh Communications. All rights reserved.

Reprints are appreciated and must include byline, contact information and copyright.

About the Author

Eileen McDargh is founder of McDargh Communications, a consulting and training company specializing in inner and interpersonal skill development for the purpose of improving the life of a business and the business of life. Sponsored By Williams Money Group

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©2008 Williams Money Group- All Rights Reserved

What is Branding and Why Do You Want It? by: Susan Dunn, Internet Marketing Coach

Talking about branding is like talking about leadership. There are coaches and courses which purport to “teach” leadership, but as we all sense – that’s why we want so badly to learn it – leadership comes from character and inner qualities. It’s an extension of beliefs and values the person holds and then acts out in their life, an integral part of their personality. You can’t pick up “character” in a seminar. It comes from years of reading, work on yourself, exposure to great literature, great art and great people, and plain out experience.

Leadership isn’t going to a seminar and coming back saying, “Let’s do a mission statement,” it’s being so devoted to mission yourself others can’t wait to get around you, find out what it is, and partake of it.

Leaders lead because other people want to follow them. There’s no other reason. Not the paycheck, not the stick … just that feeling when we get with someone – “Hey, I want to go where they’re going. Count me in!”

Leadership isn’t a surface thing, and neither is branding. It’s what you stand for, your personality. It’s your soul and what you’re about.

Fiddling around with your logo and business card are superficial things. They make an impression on your consumer, yes, but they don’t have power; they only have “veto” power. No one ever booked your services because of your business card, but someone may have vetoed you because of it. There are some terrible business cards out there, and people DO form immediate and initial impressions. I’m thinking of the therapist I know who – believe it or not – has a neon fuschia business card. This is not the person I want doing therapy on me or anyone I know.

On the other hand, I never looked at an attorney’s business card – they’re all the same, even the same font – and said, “This is the man I want to represent me in court.”

The way you get your brand across is projecting your personality – who you ARE – in every aspect of your business. What your webpage looks like, the wording, the inclusion of quotes or not, graphics, the way you handle your customers, how well you deliver products, promises and services. Your products and your style.
We bond with businesses the same way we do with people – through their personalities.

When I think about Dave, God rest his soul in peace, and Wendy’s, I think ‘just a comfortable place to be.’ Actually I knew Dave, our kids played soccer together, and he was just the same way in person as he was on the t.v. screen. Now THAT’S branding.

Branding means starting with your values and beliefs, projecting these into everything you do, and going forward from there.

EXAMPLE

When I went into coaching, I did so because I wanted to help people, but in my own way, according to my beliefs and values. Coaching is not therapy, but one thing that frustrates me about therapy is the tight scheduling. You can be in the middle of “And then the man put a knife against my throat…” and your session is over.

I wanted to remove this element from my coaching practice. I wanted to be known for exceptional service, commitment and connection. I wanted to be a place people could come in their warp-speed lives and know they would receive the time and attention they deserved.

How we handle “time” is an important part of our personalities. Here are some of the ways I play with time to project my brand:

–My website is loaded with information that takes a long time to read.
–My website takes a long time to load. We are not in a hurry here.
–Each of my Internet courses comes with the opportunity for unlimited email with me. Learners are free to respond, react, question and dialogue with me for the duration of the course.
–I answer each email individually.
–I don’t use autoresponders anywhere in my practice.
–I don’t arbitrarily limit the time of the coaching session.
–I don’t require a contract. The time is open-ended
–I don’t ordinarily book clients back-to-back. This isn’t an assembly-line.
–I offer the Don’t Die at 50 Weekly Organizational Calendar© but wait til you see it. It isn’t talking about “polish your shoes.”
–I deliver my ebooks personally, that is by email with a note. Sure this could be an autoresponder thing, but that’s not my style. If someone has the courtesy to buy something from me, they deserve the courtesy of a personal note.

Everything I produce and the way I deliver it is branded.

How about you?

BUSINESSES HAVE PERSONALITIES

Paul Temporal, author of “Advanced Brand Management,” asked people to describe two competing companies’ personalities “as if they were people” and here’s what he got.

People defined Company A as “sophisticated, arrogant, efficient, self-centered, distant and disinterested.” Company B, the competitor, they defined as “easy going, modest, helpful, caring, and approachable, and interested.”

Not surprisingly, 95% of the people said they’d rather do business with Company B, and, not surprisingly, Company B was way ahead in the competition.

START WITH YOUR VALUES & YOUR BELIEFS

When you think about branding your business, sit down and think about what’s important to you and what you want to project. Then make sure everything you do speaks of this. In other words, walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk

If it’s your intent to treat customers with respect, operationalize the term and make sure you’re actually doing it. Respect isn’t a concept; it’s an action.

Modernizing your image (logo, collaterals) “won’t effect a change in brand values,” says Temporal. “The heart of the brand remains the same – what it stands for or its personality.”

Consumer perceptions of quality, service and other intangibles are your brand, and what keeps them coming back for more. Are you approachable? Are you interested? Do you care? Do your actions show it? Your customers won’t be fooled and they have choices.

About the Author

©Susan Dunn offers personal and professional development coaching, Internet marketing and article-writing services (www.webstrategies.cc/articles.htm ). Visit her on the web at www.susandunn.cc and mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE ezine.

Sponsored by Williams Money Group

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©2008 Williams Money Group - All Rights Reserved

Corporate Branding and Professional Logo Design by: Ray Smith / Williams Money Group

Any business with the minimum interest to be successful should concentrate on developing their corporate image and when I say “any business”, I mean it, absolutely any business—even if it’s a mom-n-pop shop. “Corporate image” might be a big word for such small ventures, however, what I meant by that is how the business wants themselves to be perceived by their customers. Irrespective of the size of the business it is very important to determine how do you come across to your potential customers? How do you compare to your competitors? These factors are largely determined by your branding and marketing strategies. Branding tools like logo designs, business cards etc goes a long way in creating your corporate image. Any marketing communication material should ideally have your corporate logo on it, which would give more credibility for your business as well as help your client to perceive your business as a professional enterprise.

Logo design is an absolutely indispensable part of corporate branding strategy and should always be assigned to professional logo designers. A professional logo designer is not just a graphic designer but he should also have ideas about branding and positioning of business. Depending on your requirements he will create a logo that would successfully exude the nature and attitude of your business. He also needs to understand the media in which you are going to use your logo; it can be web, print, electronic media (TV commercial etc) or a mixture of all of these. The logo should be compatible and equally attractive wherever you might choose to use them. While working on any of our logo design orders we ( http://www.mycorporatelogo.com/customlogodesign.htm )always try to capture as much as information possible, from the client.

Basically there are 4 types of logos, glyph, alpha-glyph, alphanumeric or a combination of any of these. There are a number of factors that should be looked into to determine what would be the ideal solution for you. A professional logo designer or a specialist logo design firm can definitely help you with decision making in this aspect.

Types of Logos
Glyph: This includes symbols, icons, pictures etc that represents your company. These are most widely used for secondary communication rather than business logos, except for few like, Apple. Glyphs though used rarely as logos, if created properly by talented logo designers can be extremely sophisticated and create a deep impact as a corporate identity. However, we need to be careful that glyphs need to be done by well experienced professionals, an amateur attempt can simply male your logo unattractive and useless and might even cause loss of credibility to your business.

Alpha-Glyph: An alpha-glyph logo uses a letter from the name of the company to graphically convey the nature of the business. At times picking the first letter of the company name and designing it in a particular way also do this. Ideal examples of this type of logos can be seen with Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), IBM, Honda, Motorola, and Oklahoma State University. This type of logo is also not used very commonly and shares the same advantages and disadvantages as the glyphs.

Alphanumeric: This is a very common type of logos and is also used by some of the most reputed and well-known companies in the world. To name a few, Microsoft, Sony, Fed Ex etc. These logos are nothing but the name of your company written in a unique way with typographical effects. The typographic treatment gives a unique look to the logo and there is generally no issue with getting a Trademark. These logos are comparatively easier for amateurs to create however to get the best effect from an alphanumeric logo it’s always better to work with a professional logo designer. Choice of font, color, letter spacing etc can make big difference in creating an impressive corporate logo.

Combination Logos: This is the most common type of logos and is found everywhere. Most of these are actually glyph or alpha-glyph with an alphanumeric company name. It is the arrangement of the company name and the image and their color combination that plays the most instrumental role in the effectiveness of the logo. Some good examples of combination logos are UPS, Red Hat Linux and Intel.

Placing your corporate logo on all marketing collaterals including business cards, brochures, flyers etc helps you to mark those collaterals as your company property and establish your corporate identity.

Logos and marketing materials are integral part of a company’s brand establishment strategy. A logo done by an amateur can ruin the credibility of your business in no time but when done by a professional logo designer can definitely add value to your business. A professional logo designer can help you to decide which type of logo is best suited for your business and can make people perceive your company as a huge corporate house with much credibility even when it might be just an one man shop.

It’s the image of the company that matters, if you intend to portray a positive and impressive image of your company go for a professional logo design today.

About the Author

Ray Smith is a marketing Expert with years of experience in different industries and specialized knowledge on branding and internet marketing.
Sponsored By Williams Money Group

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©2008 Williams Money Group - All Rights Reserved