A brand cannot have a static set of qualities it must change swiftly with time based on the times and characteristics of the target market (consumer’s needs and desires). This is volatile at times and to steer through these waters one must sail the ship “brand in question” through a trend process. You as a marketer should recognize the qualities the consumer identifies with when buying your product or service. To help evaluate the trend of your brand you can have the following steps.
A brand cannot have a static set of qualities it must change swiftly with time based on the times and characteristics of the target market (consumer’s needs and desires). This is volatile at times and to steer through these waters one must sail the ship “brand in question” through a trend process. You as a marketer should recognize the qualities the consumer identifies with when buying your product or service. To help evaluate the trend of your brand you can have the following steps.
The first insight is what the trend signals are. You can seek professional’s views and stay future focused. A new discovery can be the next trend. It can come from mainstream research or a chance finding. Trends are often rooted in culture. You need to look at key influencers in architecture, design, media, art, technology, social media, politics, religion, the economy, even healthcare. A look at signals in a few disciplines could help find the right trend. One needs to know if the trend has peaked or is new. You do not want to have a trend that is dying. The trend storyline should be infused into the brand essence. It should be an experience, evoking touch, taste, smell, and sounds. All of these will enhance the brand experience.
Next is the name of the brand. It plays a role in the marketing based on trends. You need to have an audience for your brand. It is the consumer who will help a brand through their purchase power live or die. The segment chosen will decide this. They will have an emotional connect with the brand. You need to align your brand with the demographics for the new trend. This is done by doing extensive and good research.
Keeping your eye open you need a dedicated group of trend spotters in your team for good results. You need a view from the top to bottom to define your brand category. You do not want to be the chaser but the leader. If you find a valid trend try to be the leader and stick to your positioning firmly. It can reap great rewards. Do not run away from the battle in the midst of your trend positioning. It will spell disaster if you do so. The next step is application of the brand into the living space of the consumer. This is a challenge, as the marketer must understand their brand’s essence and visual positioning. He or she must zero into the consumers’ mind or risk and then adapt them.
Trend analysis and application can be an exhilarating process to explore. These are an important part of the marketing process. The trend through method can be very helpful in the branding process.
How to keep Brand Loyalty in High Luxury Segment
It is easier to reward a customer who buys luxury in the $200,000 segment than to serve one who spends a million dollar plus. To serve such a customer requires sincere eloquence. It can be a problem at times. Identifying such a person is not difficult but to satisfy them is a real challenge. You have pressure on you not to lose them and you have to make their experience out of the world. They will usually spend time with associates and build close relationships with them over time. You need to make a loyalty system that serves these customers that is unique.
What is the solution? You need on-the-ground intelligence with shopper data to identify a loyalty reward the luxury consumer finds of real value. These are shoppers who can literally afford anything they want, remember; there is no question of need. Rather, it comes down to delivering a one-of-a-kind service or experience that falls squarely within their values.
Luxury loyalty programs need to be escalated with the value of the shopper earning them. The higher perks and package make the customer feel rewarded and unique. After all these people are not in need of simple things they can afford all most anything.
The ultra-luxury segments the game is different. The customer in this segment defines the game. Some examples of this reward for shopping are given below. The shopper wants to be the only one and would not like someone to wear the same dress or have the same bag. There is a rough competition for gaining, wooing such a shopper.
A retailer can for example partner with a gourmet chef to serve a charity only dinner for people who donated a million dollars for a plate. The meal would be one of a kind and the publicity of being seen at the 100 people dinner would be priceless.
Top retailers should not just rely on standard incentives to engage the luxury good buying class for their loyalty is far more important. They can get important insights from the store staff that was collected and use the information to make the shopping experience of the special class divine. The sales associate who can gauge the shopper’s values, her social calendar and the circles with which she socializes.
A thorough understanding of the merchant’s loyalty program throughout the store, from the stock room to the register is needed. The store should train its best associates on just how their good actions benefit the entire company.
An example of this is a luxury suiting and dress shop may match what the celebrity’s wear with a social calendar in the area where all the high-class affluent people will come. The suiting and shirting selected and matched to the social calendar for the persons who shop will be one of a kind and help him maintain their loyalty with this insight.
The use of unique distinguished rewards for the high class luxury spenders by retailers will effectively recognize the top 10 percent of their clients and will also allow them to expand at shopping segment to represent 15 percent or 20 percent of the total.
If a service or an experience is unique it can causes the luxury shopper to shift his/her spending from one retailer to another. Just giving reward points will not necessarily do the trick – they may simply be used toward buying an item she would have gotten anyway. But imagine giving an invitation only evening with the city’s top designer! It is priceless!
“Thank you” to a shopper who just spent $1 million at your stores would require creative currency. The shop and its associates would have to do all you can to ensure his/her loyal business. They would have to offer a one-of-a-kind reward. They would have to do something that cannot be duplicate and repackaged by the shops competitor a few paces in the store next door or online.
Black Hat Tactics and White Hat Tactics
The black hat system in SEO is like playing a game. Those who adopt black hat tactics are gaming the entire system. The System’s game is Google. Usually, Google, I hope, tries to present the best search result to whoever uses Google when they search the net. But are you sure, always sure, that it comes up with the best results? Google wants to present the best results to its users so that it helps Google rake in revenue.
As a professional SEO, we try to do everything that is white hat or a bit black hat to get Google to see our page as being more relevant than our competitor’s pages. But is it more relevant? Who decides? Google uses a secret algorithm and countless examples of Google not find optimal page in the SERPs can be located over the years. So Google is not the best arbiter.
Considering a black hat tactics: a company can acquire old well-indexed websites, and then infuse it with back links to their web page. The old links were NOT part of the original content of the site and perhaps they are also not even relevant to the content of that old well-indexed site. This is a black hat tactic using Google’s system cheat a bit so that you get ahead in the game.
People cheating in small incremental ways often believe they will not get caught. In game theory this is known as the “Tragedy of the Commons” – people take a little bit from the group to benefit themselves much, but hurt the group in a tiny way. What the problem is those little hurts add up to one big sum for the entire group.
Emphasizing a key phrase in Meta tags, H1’s, links, etc, is ALSO like the game theory. The gaming is in a lesser sense than acquiring a large site. Judging the ethics of this, can one really talk of the degree of ethics in these two methods to score in the game with Google?
With Google one tries to play the game to rank higher than others. The black hats are simply trying out methods to be ranked higher than the white hats; they are in comparison doing what most SEO professionals are doing only in a greater degree.
SEO’s should discourage use of various unethical black hat techniques as they can simply put, their site at risk of being penalized deserving a Google cleansing. In my opinion it will be foolish to put a website at risk by adopting black hat technique. This issue is a matter of risk management and not involving morals.
If you notice over the years the SERP have died a long and painful death. Google comes up with new additions to its secret system of enhancements causing SERP to be less relevant: like instant search, local results, etc. The only sites which tend to ride the wave are those that have good content rich (phrases and content). The results are based on the searcher’s demographics or behavior. Hence one should as a SEO focus more on creating content that is rich in relevant clouds of words and phrases. One should try to play the game and be more relevant rather than being perceived as relevant. This will take you out of the realms of black hat and be white hat.
To Do or Not to Do: Slaying the Cash Cow
The market today is highly competitive and is not static. New and fresh ideas come from an alertness of new possibilities that may arise in the marketplace. It is very challenging for iconic brands to take advantage of new opportunities and still be considered relevant in the market. Iconic brands have been known to lose their shine a long time before their cash generating ability dies. Once the iconic cash cow brands lose it appeal in the market it is very difficult or even impossible to revive itself.
Here are a few examples of iconic brands that held on to their heritage at the expense of innovation. They should have slain their cash cow earlier.
Sears was once the leader in mail order. It stuck to the old redundant system (its cash cow) but the future changed with the internet coming through and Amazon.com adopted new technologies to become the new leader leaving behind Sears the leader of past. If Sears killed it cash cow and had adopted net selling it too would have been a dominant force.
Another example Xerox corp that invented laser printing it stuck to this as company positioning (as it was its cash cow). HP exploited the technology and became the industry leader in laser printers. If Xerox had slain the cash cow for a new exploration they would have been like HP a formidable force.
Yet another example is Kodak the inventor of digital photography, but glued to its dying film business leads to a dying firm with less profits (it failed to slay its cash cow). Other companies took advantage of the technology and innovate to become the new leaders e.g. Cannon.
It seems
successful companies are the ones who have no problem killing their cash cow brands. An example is Apple Inc. it has done this over and over again. Killing cash cow product brands has been the hallmark of every Apple product innovation since the Macintosh. There may be many more like Apple, whose marketers routinely reinvent, reposition and realign their brand innovations at the expense of their most sacred cash cow brands.
The blade and razor manufacture Gillette is a good example of this–first killing its highly successful single-edge razor blades in favor of the TRAC II, then killing that with another innovation– the adjustable twin blade Atra brand.
The marketplace with numerous brands is moving too rapidly to rely on the momentum of scale and history. There so much choice today. Evolving the meaning of an iconic brand is a tricky business. Managers of iconic brands are naturally boxed in by the heritage the brand represents in people’s minds. When heritage represents “old and tired”, it’s nearly impossible to change that perception in people’s minds.
Brand managers with enlightened management and the insight stay the course, can leverage their iconic brands and pave the way for newer and more relevant expressions of the original value that people continue to care about. With all the revenue pressures facing marketers today, the difficulty to know when to slay the cash cow for a new cow.
Brand Consistency Maintenance
Some companies are capable of differentiating their brands well, and continue to do so in the volatile market space. Take the brand Apple. They have the following differentiation:
- They have a history of innovation (iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.)
- They use clever simple user interfaces in their products.
- All the products have a uniformly consistent “look and feel” — Apple icon, styling, and metallic color.
- They are served by a company’s well-known co-founder and CEO in Steve Jobs
- They are as a company a very viable alternative brand to Microsoft-based PCs, and have a cult like following among its users and patrons.
The tactics needed to maintain brand consistency:
In the first instance the product/service must have a brand promise that is clear, compelling, unique and believable. It should be found at all the points and delivered to the customer where ever he or she may come in contact with the brand. This should be a deliberate effort on the firm’s part.
- What is needed is a highly thought through brand identity system that should be distinctive yet flexible, and that can be used in a variety of ways in the future.
- The Identity standards should be maintained by strict protocols in place which is an enforced brand identity which can be done through a digital asset management system.
- The company can have a brand identity manager who works round the clock to oversee a brand identity council
- The firm should have very strict brand licensing requirements that should include the requirement of a strict fit with the brand promise, identity and quality standards.
- The company should have a crafted specific brand personality, brand archetype and brand voice and visual style that can be applied to the brand as appropriate in its presentation.
There are numerous companies that seem to have a bunch of products competing with themselves (toothpaste or shampoo are examples). How do they manage with so many products?
The execution of the branding in such cases is what will help and help them keep brand consistency. First off importantly, the brand needs to be differentiated at the parent or umbrella level. This achievement allows separate sub-brands to be successful and appeal to different user segments. Each segment will have different sets of needs.
An example is the cola industry. There are several Coca-Cola variations (Diet Coke, Coca-Cola zero, etc.) as there are for Pepsi-Cola. In order to be a success in the market, they both need to be differentiated at the parent brand level. Looking at the credit card industry you will find the same tactic being done Visa versus MasterCard versus Discover versus American Express. While all credit card brands may now have gold or platinum cards, there still needs to be a perceived different from American Express and Discover for example.
How can a company create a brand identity that is applied across a varied product line?
- The brand could have a distinctive color coded banding
- The products could have an odd size.
- The products could be all related in some way, perhaps all their written introductions could start with the same words
- They can have the same color banding and same type fonts of the same size
- They could have the same caps/covers laid out in a formulaic way, with similar visual elements.
- The products could have similar cover material, often of the same distinctive texture.
This approach could be used to any brand that needs to have its identity applied across a variety of products and services. In this way brands can maintain their brand consistency and do well in an ever competitive and changing marketplace. If you have any comments do add them below our blog.
Keyword Search
This article is a basic article where Google keyword search use is explored in basic searches. The start of keyword search is quite easy you need words that describe a product being sold, an area of business or service provided. The example used in this discussion will be Santa Costume for Xmas! Examples of keywords will be “Santa suit”, “Santa costume” or “Santa costume shop”.
You can make a list of your keywords after brainstorming then use Google keyword tool you can choose the current system or old one by clicking on the options. The keyword can be entered in this case “Santa costume” then press the get key word button.
You get numerous words, change “Match Type” to “Exact’ and hide “Advertiser Competition” and “Global Search Volume”. Since I am looking for local sites I will click on “Local Search Volume” sorting to them in order of most searched. This gives a list of keyword ideas and their volumes “exact” gives a better idea of those offering the same service or costume you are looking for. The hidden advertiser and competition information will come handy only if you are designing an Adwords Campaign. You can use Seomoz’s Open Site Explorer and manually record the Page Authority, Domain Authority, the amount of linking root domains for each of the sites in top positions. This tool will let you know of sites rank any rank below 25 can be potentially overtaken by correct SEO tactics. You will find the top 10 sites with keywords this is the real challenge. They have the keywords of high rank.
You can look at the content of the websites ranking high and judge the content. You will get an idea why the key word rich content is ranked high? You can see what keywords are needed for “Santa costumes”.
Now you may have a fair idea about the keywords which are popular and give good ranking. But Santa suits are a seasonal thing hence using Google insights will tell you the months of the year your keywords are in demand. Restrict it to the country you are in and data of last 12 months only. Santa suits are popular in December. You will find other keywords which are not found in the ranking pages these are used by people to get the sites they are gems (words that have less competition). They will give you high conversion rates.
Take these keywords from the final list and put them in your site and content you may have on your page. Santa costume cheap Santa suit and Jolly Santa costumes for example. You want to limit the keywords to 70 characters or less. Remember to put content that people would want to read all of these should help your Santa site rank higher, be linked more and do well with your SEO effort.
Canonical Tag: An Issue
The implementation of the canonical tag is a bandage for duplicate content issues. It may be a quick fix and is a hot topic with SEO’s today. This article examines the using it. Many SEO experts feel that it is too easy and can be used improperly. They also feel webmasters will screw up entire websites when they use it
Should it be stopped or used? – I do not feel it is the best solution. It is like a temporary dressing on a wound. It will not heal the wound just help a bit. What will its impact be on Google Analytics? That is question explored in this article.
I found it to mess up the analytics. There are issues with duplicate content. On large sites, the duplication of content is nearly impossible to avoid. A good Content Management Systems also will not solve every issue. At some point either you or some other website links to a page that exists in two places. For all the reasons pointed out in articles above, you need to fix this. Should one use a 301 redirect, or the (rel canonical tag), that is the question?
Canonical doesn’t fix the issue. Sure, the search engines might use it to figure out that they are the same page and rank only 1 of them so you’re not competing with yourself. Even though you used the tag, two distinct pages still exist. Since both are linked to from somewhere on the Internet, visitors will be visiting two different pages.
This means your Analytics data is splitting the data between pages. It doesn’t realize that they are the same page. It can’t read the canonical tag.
E-commerce websites often have duplicate content, and it has been a huge issue for years. Sometimes a product sits in two different categories, like a tomato being both a fruit and a vegetable. Ecommerce platforms like to know how visitors found the content, so that leads to:
ourfood.com/vegetables/tomato.html
and
ourfood.com/fruits/tomato.html
The tomato.html page is the same, just found in two different URLs. It should be noted that many of the most popular e-commerce platforms have solved this issue by not using URL path tracking. The custom platform all of our clients live on are still a little old and have not fixed this issue yet. Different sites on the platform have numerous pages that are duplicates.
When one wants to go look at page specific data, I can’t just look at 1 URL. In this case with the tomatoes, I have to look at 2 still.
One of the ways I look at long-tail traffic is through total number of keywords bringing traffic and total number of landing pages. This does not fix the real issue behind duplicate content.
Suppose there are only 5000 products on the site and fewer than 100 category pages. How do I know which products are actually being indexed? Is Google indexing the same 5000 products 7 times each and ignoring 1000 of them.
In this case, canonical tags have not solved the problem. One will see that landing page numbers are unusually high. This means Google is still not entirely able to figure out whether or not a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable or both.
Clearly, in our case the root of the problem is with our platform. Implementing canonical tags has seemingly reduced the number of indexed pages by about 25%. Whoever thought one would be hoping for fewer pages indexed? It is a temporary fix; to solve our duplicate content problems we need to fix our platform and use 301 redirects on all the duplicate pages. The (rel canonical tag) has made is a major issues with Google Analytics. It should not be one’s solution to duplicate content issues.
Branding Gambit
What is a brand? What is the difference between brand vision and organizational vision? What are brand values and organizational values?”
If the brand is the organizational brand, there is no difference between the brand vision and values and the organizational vision and values. If the brand is not the organizational brand, then its vision and values could be different from the organization’s vision and values.
A brand has
elements:-
The target audience/customer who can be at a
primary, secondary, or tertiary.
The brand essence which is in the form an adjective, or noun.
The Brand promise so and so brand name delivers an one or two relevant, unique and highly compelling benefits to target niche customer in the product/service category because of these proof points.
The
Brand archetype is a pioneer, achiever, or advocate.
The
Brand personality which is 7 to 12 adjectives that best describe the brand as if it were a person. Often, the
brand positioning statement is crafted into a (2 to 7 words) tagline or (20 to 50 words) “elevator/praising speech” for the brand.
Organizations have their
missions,
visions and
core values. For organizational brands, missions, visions, core values and brand positioning statements are related to one another and it is advantageous for them to be approached together. One should keep the mission statements to 7 to 25 words, vision statements to 7 to 15 words and core values to 5 to 10 values in total. This approach often helps to give good results and is very effective.
Is a brand just one word in the mind of the consumer? What is your definition of a brand?
A brand happens to be a personification of an organization or its products and services. A brand can stand for something. A brand can make a promise to a niche group of target audiences. It can possess a specific character and a personality and should create an emotional connection with its customers.
For a person a brand means one thing; they only associate one or two things with any given brand. Some association examples are: Clorox with bleach for cleaning and Bayer with aspirin for pain relief and Sunkist with citrus fruits and McDonald’s with fast food.
Branding managers will ask questions: “Does that primary brand association in people’s minds cause people to want to use our products or services?” They also ask is it unique and purchase motivating? Or is it neutral? Or worse yet, is it negative?
The main purpose of brand positioning is to get people to primarily associate the one or two things that will most cause them to want to purchase and use your brand over competitive alternatives.
Brands should strive to deliver on those promises. They need to do that through their actions and the way they treat their customers.
A very good brand example is the Disney Inc. brand it stands for “fun family entertainment.” Family is a code word for wholesome, something you could feel comfortable doing with your children or your grandparents. Disney Inc. is known to give this brand promise with its movies, theme parks, cruises and other types of products. The coherence of its brand is to must make sure that all of its products and services deliver on the promise of “fun family entertainment.” If you like our blog do write in comments section what your thoughts may be?!
Branding through Trend Process
A brand cannot have a static set of qualities it must change swiftly with time based on... 
How to keep Brand Loyalty in High Luxury Segment
It is easier to reward a customer who buys luxury in the $200,000 segment than to serve...
Black Hat Tactics and White Hat Tactics
The black hat system in SEO is like playing a game. Those who adopt black hat tactics are...
To Do or Not to Do: Slaying the Cash Cow
The market today is highly competitive and is not static. New and fresh ideas come from...
Brand Consistency Maintenance
Some companies are capable of differentiating their brands well, and continue to do so in...
Keyword Search
This article is a basic article where Google keyword search use is explored in basic...
Canonical Tag: An Issue
The implementation of the canonical tag is a bandage for duplicate content issues. It may...
Branding Gambit
What is a brand? What is the difference between brand vision and organizational vision?...
The first insight is what the trend signals are. You can seek professional’s views and stay future focused. A new discovery can be the next trend. It can come from mainstream research or a chance finding. Trends are often rooted in culture. You need to look at key influencers in architecture, design, media, art, technology, social media, politics, religion, the economy, even healthcare. A look at signals in a few disciplines could help find the right trend. One needs to know if the trend has peaked or is new. You do not want to have a trend that is dying. The trend storyline should be infused into the brand essence. It should be an experience, evoking touch, taste, smell, and sounds. All of these will enhance the brand experience.
Next is the name of the brand. It plays a role in the marketing based on trends. You need to have an audience for your brand. It is the consumer who will help a brand through their purchase power live or die. The segment chosen will decide this. They will have an emotional connect with the brand. You need to align your brand with the demographics for the new trend. This is done by doing extensive and good research.
Keeping your eye open you need a dedicated group of trend spotters in your team for good results. You need a view from the top to bottom to define your brand category. You do not want to be the chaser but the leader. If you find a valid trend try to be the leader and stick to your positioning firmly. It can reap great rewards. Do not run away from the battle in the midst of your trend positioning. It will spell disaster if you do so. The next step is application of the brand into the living space of the consumer. This is a challenge, as the marketer must understand their brand’s essence and visual positioning. He or she must zero into the consumers’ mind or risk and then adapt them.
Trend analysis and application can be an exhilarating process to explore. These are an important part of the marketing process. The trend through method can be very helpful in the branding process.
How to keep Brand Loyalty in High Luxury Segment
It is easier to reward a customer who buys luxury in the $200,000 segment than to serve one who spends a million dollar plus. To serve such a customer requires sincere eloquence. It can be a problem at times. Identifying such a person is not difficult but to satisfy them is a real challenge. You have pressure on you not to lose them and you have to make their experience out of the world. They will usually spend time with associates and build close relationships with them over time. You need to make a loyalty system that serves these customers that is unique.
What is the solution? You need on-the-ground intelligence with shopper data to identify a loyalty reward the luxury consumer finds of real value. These are shoppers who can literally afford anything they want, remember; there is no question of need. Rather, it comes down to delivering a one-of-a-kind service or experience that falls squarely within their values.
Luxury loyalty programs need to be escalated with the value of the shopper earning them. The higher perks and package make the customer feel rewarded and unique. After all these people are not in need of simple things they can afford all most anything.
The ultra-luxury segments the game is different. The customer in this segment defines the game. Some examples of this reward for shopping are given below. The shopper wants to be the only one and would not like someone to wear the same dress or have the same bag. There is a rough competition for gaining, wooing such a shopper.
A retailer can for example partner with a gourmet chef to serve a charity only dinner for people who donated a million dollars for a plate. The meal would be one of a kind and the publicity of being seen at the 100 people dinner would be priceless.
Top retailers should not just rely on standard incentives to engage the luxury good buying class for their loyalty is far more important. They can get important insights from the store staff that was collected and use the information to make the shopping experience of the special class divine. The sales associate who can gauge the shopper’s values, her social calendar and the circles with which she socializes.
A thorough understanding of the merchant’s loyalty program throughout the store, from the stock room to the register is needed. The store should train its best associates on just how their good actions benefit the entire company.
An example of this is a luxury suiting and dress shop may match what the celebrity’s wear with a social calendar in the area where all the high-class affluent people will come. The suiting and shirting selected and matched to the social calendar for the persons who shop will be one of a kind and help him maintain their loyalty with this insight.
The use of unique distinguished rewards for the high class luxury spenders by retailers will effectively recognize the top 10 percent of their clients and will also allow them to expand at shopping segment to represent 15 percent or 20 percent of the total.
If a service or an experience is unique it can causes the luxury shopper to shift his/her spending from one retailer to another. Just giving reward points will not necessarily do the trick – they may simply be used toward buying an item she would have gotten anyway. But imagine giving an invitation only evening with the city’s top designer! It is priceless!
“Thank you” to a shopper who just spent $1 million at your stores would require creative currency. The shop and its associates would have to do all you can to ensure his/her loyal business. They would have to offer a one-of-a-kind reward. They would have to do something that cannot be duplicate and repackaged by the shops competitor a few paces in the store next door or online.
Black Hat Tactics and White Hat Tactics
The black hat system in SEO is like playing a game. Those who adopt black hat tactics are gaming the entire system. The System’s game is Google. Usually, Google, I hope, tries to present the best search result to whoever uses Google when they search the net. But are you sure, always sure, that it comes up with the best results? Google wants to present the best results to its users so that it helps Google rake in revenue.
As a professional SEO, we try to do everything that is white hat or a bit black hat to get Google to see our page as being more relevant than our competitor’s pages. But is it more relevant? Who decides? Google uses a secret algorithm and countless examples of Google not find optimal page in the SERPs can be located over the years. So Google is not the best arbiter.
Considering a black hat tactics: a company can acquire old well-indexed websites, and then infuse it with back links to their web page. The old links were NOT part of the original content of the site and perhaps they are also not even relevant to the content of that old well-indexed site. This is a black hat tactic using Google’s system cheat a bit so that you get ahead in the game.
People cheating in small incremental ways often believe they will not get caught. In game theory this is known as the “Tragedy of the Commons” – people take a little bit from the group to benefit themselves much, but hurt the group in a tiny way. What the problem is those little hurts add up to one big sum for the entire group.
Emphasizing a key phrase in Meta tags, H1’s, links, etc, is ALSO like the game theory. The gaming is in a lesser sense than acquiring a large site. Judging the ethics of this, can one really talk of the degree of ethics in these two methods to score in the game with Google?
With Google one tries to play the game to rank higher than others. The black hats are simply trying out methods to be ranked higher than the white hats; they are in comparison doing what most SEO professionals are doing only in a greater degree.
SEO’s should discourage use of various unethical black hat techniques as they can simply put, their site at risk of being penalized deserving a Google cleansing. In my opinion it will be foolish to put a website at risk by adopting black hat technique. This issue is a matter of risk management and not involving morals.
If you notice over the years the SERP have died a long and painful death. Google comes up with new additions to its secret system of enhancements causing SERP to be less relevant: like instant search, local results, etc. The only sites which tend to ride the wave are those that have good content rich (phrases and content). The results are based on the searcher’s demographics or behavior. Hence one should as a SEO focus more on creating content that is rich in relevant clouds of words and phrases. One should try to play the game and be more relevant rather than being perceived as relevant. This will take you out of the realms of black hat and be white hat.
To Do or Not to Do: Slaying the Cash Cow
The market today is highly competitive and is not static. New and fresh ideas come from an alertness of new possibilities that may arise in the marketplace. It is very challenging for iconic brands to take advantage of new opportunities and still be considered relevant in the market. Iconic brands have been known to lose their shine a long time before their cash generating ability dies. Once the iconic cash cow brands lose it appeal in the market it is very difficult or even impossible to revive itself.
Here are a few examples of iconic brands that held on to their heritage at the expense of innovation. They should have slain their cash cow earlier.
Sears was once the leader in mail order. It stuck to the old redundant system (its cash cow) but the future changed with the internet coming through and Amazon.com adopted new technologies to become the new leader leaving behind Sears the leader of past. If Sears killed it cash cow and had adopted net selling it too would have been a dominant force.
Another example Xerox corp that invented laser printing it stuck to this as company positioning (as it was its cash cow). HP exploited the technology and became the industry leader in laser printers. If Xerox had slain the cash cow for a new exploration they would have been like HP a formidable force.
Yet another example is Kodak the inventor of digital photography, but glued to its dying film business leads to a dying firm with less profits (it failed to slay its cash cow). Other companies took advantage of the technology and innovate to become the new leaders e.g. Cannon.
It seems
successful companies are the ones who have no problem killing their cash cow brands. An example is Apple Inc. it has done this over and over again. Killing cash cow product brands has been the hallmark of every Apple product innovation since the Macintosh. There may be many more like Apple, whose marketers routinely reinvent, reposition and realign their brand innovations at the expense of their most sacred cash cow brands.
The blade and razor manufacture Gillette is a good example of this–first killing its highly successful single-edge razor blades in favor of the TRAC II, then killing that with another innovation– the adjustable twin blade Atra brand.
The marketplace with numerous brands is moving too rapidly to rely on the momentum of scale and history. There so much choice today. Evolving the meaning of an iconic brand is a tricky business. Managers of iconic brands are naturally boxed in by the heritage the brand represents in people’s minds. When heritage represents “old and tired”, it’s nearly impossible to change that perception in people’s minds.
Brand managers with enlightened management and the insight stay the course, can leverage their iconic brands and pave the way for newer and more relevant expressions of the original value that people continue to care about. With all the revenue pressures facing marketers today, the difficulty to know when to slay the cash cow for a new cow.
Brand Consistency Maintenance
Some companies are capable of differentiating their brands well, and continue to do so in the volatile market space. Take the brand Apple. They have the following differentiation:
- They have a history of innovation (iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.)
- They use clever simple user interfaces in their products.
- All the products have a uniformly consistent “look and feel” — Apple icon, styling, and metallic color.
- They are served by a company’s well-known co-founder and CEO in Steve Jobs
- They are as a company a very viable alternative brand to Microsoft-based PCs, and have a cult like following among its users and patrons.
The tactics needed to maintain brand consistency:
In the first instance the product/service must have a brand promise that is clear, compelling, unique and believable. It should be found at all the points and delivered to the customer where ever he or she may come in contact with the brand. This should be a deliberate effort on the firm’s part.
- What is needed is a highly thought through brand identity system that should be distinctive yet flexible, and that can be used in a variety of ways in the future.
- The Identity standards should be maintained by strict protocols in place which is an enforced brand identity which can be done through a digital asset management system.
- The company can have a brand identity manager who works round the clock to oversee a brand identity council
- The firm should have very strict brand licensing requirements that should include the requirement of a strict fit with the brand promise, identity and quality standards.
- The company should have a crafted specific brand personality, brand archetype and brand voice and visual style that can be applied to the brand as appropriate in its presentation.
There are numerous companies that seem to have a bunch of products competing with themselves (toothpaste or shampoo are examples). How do they manage with so many products?
The execution of the branding in such cases is what will help and help them keep brand consistency. First off importantly, the brand needs to be differentiated at the parent or umbrella level. This achievement allows separate sub-brands to be successful and appeal to different user segments. Each segment will have different sets of needs.
An example is the cola industry. There are several Coca-Cola variations (Diet Coke, Coca-Cola zero, etc.) as there are for Pepsi-Cola. In order to be a success in the market, they both need to be differentiated at the parent brand level. Looking at the credit card industry you will find the same tactic being done Visa versus MasterCard versus Discover versus American Express. While all credit card brands may now have gold or platinum cards, there still needs to be a perceived different from American Express and Discover for example.
How can a company create a brand identity that is applied across a varied product line?
- The brand could have a distinctive color coded banding
- The products could have an odd size.
- The products could be all related in some way, perhaps all their written introductions could start with the same words
- They can have the same color banding and same type fonts of the same size
- They could have the same caps/covers laid out in a formulaic way, with similar visual elements.
- The products could have similar cover material, often of the same distinctive texture.
This approach could be used to any brand that needs to have its identity applied across a variety of products and services. In this way brands can maintain their brand consistency and do well in an ever competitive and changing marketplace. If you have any comments do add them below our blog.
Keyword Search
This article is a basic article where Google keyword search use is explored in basic searches. The start of keyword search is quite easy you need words that describe a product being sold, an area of business or service provided. The example used in this discussion will be Santa Costume for Xmas! Examples of keywords will be “Santa suit”, “Santa costume” or “Santa costume shop”.
You can make a list of your keywords after brainstorming then use Google keyword tool you can choose the current system or old one by clicking on the options. The keyword can be entered in this case “Santa costume” then press the get key word button.
You get numerous words, change “Match Type” to “Exact’ and hide “Advertiser Competition” and “Global Search Volume”. Since I am looking for local sites I will click on “Local Search Volume” sorting to them in order of most searched. This gives a list of keyword ideas and their volumes “exact” gives a better idea of those offering the same service or costume you are looking for. The hidden advertiser and competition information will come handy only if you are designing an Adwords Campaign. You can use Seomoz’s Open Site Explorer and manually record the Page Authority, Domain Authority, the amount of linking root domains for each of the sites in top positions. This tool will let you know of sites rank any rank below 25 can be potentially overtaken by correct SEO tactics. You will find the top 10 sites with keywords this is the real challenge. They have the keywords of high rank.
You can look at the content of the websites ranking high and judge the content. You will get an idea why the key word rich content is ranked high? You can see what keywords are needed for “Santa costumes”.
Now you may have a fair idea about the keywords which are popular and give good ranking. But Santa suits are a seasonal thing hence using Google insights will tell you the months of the year your keywords are in demand. Restrict it to the country you are in and data of last 12 months only. Santa suits are popular in December. You will find other keywords which are not found in the ranking pages these are used by people to get the sites they are gems (words that have less competition). They will give you high conversion rates.
Take these keywords from the final list and put them in your site and content you may have on your page. Santa costume cheap Santa suit and Jolly Santa costumes for example. You want to limit the keywords to 70 characters or less. Remember to put content that people would want to read all of these should help your Santa site rank higher, be linked more and do well with your SEO effort.
Canonical Tag: An Issue
The implementation of the canonical tag is a bandage for duplicate content issues. It may be a quick fix and is a hot topic with SEO’s today. This article examines the using it. Many SEO experts feel that it is too easy and can be used improperly. They also feel webmasters will screw up entire websites when they use it
Should it be stopped or used? – I do not feel it is the best solution. It is like a temporary dressing on a wound. It will not heal the wound just help a bit. What will its impact be on Google Analytics? That is question explored in this article.
I found it to mess up the analytics. There are issues with duplicate content. On large sites, the duplication of content is nearly impossible to avoid. A good Content Management Systems also will not solve every issue. At some point either you or some other website links to a page that exists in two places. For all the reasons pointed out in articles above, you need to fix this. Should one use a 301 redirect, or the (rel canonical tag), that is the question?
Canonical doesn’t fix the issue. Sure, the search engines might use it to figure out that they are the same page and rank only 1 of them so you’re not competing with yourself. Even though you used the tag, two distinct pages still exist. Since both are linked to from somewhere on the Internet, visitors will be visiting two different pages.
This means your Analytics data is splitting the data between pages. It doesn’t realize that they are the same page. It can’t read the canonical tag.
E-commerce websites often have duplicate content, and it has been a huge issue for years. Sometimes a product sits in two different categories, like a tomato being both a fruit and a vegetable. Ecommerce platforms like to know how visitors found the content, so that leads to:
ourfood.com/vegetables/tomato.html
and
ourfood.com/fruits/tomato.html
The tomato.html page is the same, just found in two different URLs. It should be noted that many of the most popular e-commerce platforms have solved this issue by not using URL path tracking. The custom platform all of our clients live on are still a little old and have not fixed this issue yet. Different sites on the platform have numerous pages that are duplicates.
When one wants to go look at page specific data, I can’t just look at 1 URL. In this case with the tomatoes, I have to look at 2 still.
One of the ways I look at long-tail traffic is through total number of keywords bringing traffic and total number of landing pages. This does not fix the real issue behind duplicate content.
Suppose there are only 5000 products on the site and fewer than 100 category pages. How do I know which products are actually being indexed? Is Google indexing the same 5000 products 7 times each and ignoring 1000 of them.
In this case, canonical tags have not solved the problem. One will see that landing page numbers are unusually high. This means Google is still not entirely able to figure out whether or not a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable or both.
Clearly, in our case the root of the problem is with our platform. Implementing canonical tags has seemingly reduced the number of indexed pages by about 25%. Whoever thought one would be hoping for fewer pages indexed? It is a temporary fix; to solve our duplicate content problems we need to fix our platform and use 301 redirects on all the duplicate pages. The (rel canonical tag) has made is a major issues with Google Analytics. It should not be one’s solution to duplicate content issues.
Branding Gambit
What is a brand? What is the difference between brand vision and organizational vision? What are brand values and organizational values?”
If the brand is the organizational brand, there is no difference between the brand vision and values and the organizational vision and values. If the brand is not the organizational brand, then its vision and values could be different from the organization’s vision and values.
A brand has
elements:-
The target audience/customer who can be at a
primary, secondary, or tertiary.
The brand essence which is in the form an adjective, or noun.
The Brand promise so and so brand name delivers an one or two relevant, unique and highly compelling benefits to target niche customer in the product/service category because of these proof points.
The
Brand archetype is a pioneer, achiever, or advocate.
The
Brand personality which is 7 to 12 adjectives that best describe the brand as if it were a person. Often, the
brand positioning statement is crafted into a (2 to 7 words) tagline or (20 to 50 words) “elevator/praising speech” for the brand.
Organizations have their
missions,
visions and
core values. For organizational brands, missions, visions, core values and brand positioning statements are related to one another and it is advantageous for them to be approached together. One should keep the mission statements to 7 to 25 words, vision statements to 7 to 15 words and core values to 5 to 10 values in total. This approach often helps to give good results and is very effective.
Is a brand just one word in the mind of the consumer? What is your definition of a brand?
A brand happens to be a personification of an organization or its products and services. A brand can stand for something. A brand can make a promise to a niche group of target audiences. It can possess a specific character and a personality and should create an emotional connection with its customers.
For a person a brand means one thing; they only associate one or two things with any given brand. Some association examples are: Clorox with bleach for cleaning and Bayer with aspirin for pain relief and Sunkist with citrus fruits and McDonald’s with fast food.
Branding managers will ask questions: “Does that primary brand association in people’s minds cause people to want to use our products or services?” They also ask is it unique and purchase motivating? Or is it neutral? Or worse yet, is it negative?
The main purpose of brand positioning is to get people to primarily associate the one or two things that will most cause them to want to purchase and use your brand over competitive alternatives.
Brands should strive to deliver on those promises. They need to do that through their actions and the way they treat their customers.
A very good brand example is the Disney Inc. brand it stands for “fun family entertainment.” Family is a code word for wholesome, something you could feel comfortable doing with your children or your grandparents. Disney Inc. is known to give this brand promise with its movies, theme parks, cruises and other types of products. The coherence of its brand is to must make sure that all of its products and services deliver on the promise of “fun family entertainment.” If you like our blog do write in comments section what your thoughts may be?!
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Internet search leader Google has developed an image format called WebP, which promises to make transfer of images over the web faster by reducing the size of files, a company executive said.
