Small Business Marketing Consultant and Branding Specialist

Freeport iNK
December 28, 2000

e-Branding a Prophet

Kevin Clark of Clark Marketing Group, Inc. tells the future of the Internet and how to turn an e-business into a profit-maker.

by Abbie Reese
Freeport iNK staff writer

Entrepreneur Kevin Clark, whose marketing expertise can be seen at GetProfitable.com is publishing an ebook, "How to e-Brand Your Dot.Com Business." Clark considers himself among the pioneers of the Internet, starting the website TransIndex.com (which catalogued all forms of transportation) in 1996 with two relatives.

"The Internet was new", he said, "and business models were few."

"No one knew how to convey this neat thing into dollars and cents, into profits," Clark said.

Other duties called on the three and they gave up the venture — a move he obviously regrets. While others were basing their Internet profits on an Advertising Model (selling banner ads at high fees to large organizations), the three had planned to diversify revenue by selling some ads as well as subscriptions to a CD and up-date service.

"Our idea, see even back then," Clark said, "was different."

The Advertising Model failed miserably — mainly because sites weren't diversified. Portal ads weren't clicked and demand decreased.

"They didn't understand the way to make money," he said.

"Now," he said, "there's a website (DotComGraveyard.com) that tracks folded ebusinesses (and predicts sites on the way to failure.)

In his e-book, Clark lists a sampling of these sites, including Garden.com, founded in 1995. Clark flipped through a print copy of his book and read the site has lost $67 million since 1998. The website announced in November it would begin shutting down.

This failure, and the fact it's so prevalent, was one motivation for Clark's ebook. "With the explosion of dot.com companies creating a tidal wave of new Internet entrepreneurs," Clark wrote in the preface of his book, "I have observed a wild and wide range of techniques being used to gain the attention of a prospective market. Along the way, I have seen, in my opinion, a lot of time, money and energy wasted."

Clark has spent between 16 and 18 hours a day for the past year researching and writing his ebook while carrying on his consulting work with Clark Marketing Group, Inc.

"My motivations are to help people," Clark said of writing the book. "I'm an entrepreneur. I'm sharing knowledge. I feel if I share knowledge, it'll come back to me."

The idea for "How to e-Brand Your Dot.Com Business" came to Clark in the form of what he deems an epiphany. In 1993, Clark was named regional Entrepreneur of the Year for his work with Asche Transportation. For several years after, he served as a judge of the awards. He describes in detail (in an interview and in the book) a "tussle" in June 1999 with another judge about the standard of judging the success of an ebusiness. Clark thought the gauge should be profits. The other judge thought it should be Internet traffic — the number of people who visit a website.

"I being an entrepreneur know my clients and I will live and die by profits," he said.

The other judge's view prevailed and Clark describes the scenario as "losing the battle but winning the war because," he said, "he made an accurate prediction of the Internet's immediate future."

"I came to an epiphany," he said, "this really was about to crash … I was right. In the first quarter of 2000, the crash came. The Internet fell out of bed with Wall Street."

"The missing premise with the Internet," Clark said, "is that it is like all other industries — it will go through three phases of growth. In the first phase, demand is created. This was also the effervescent stage," Clark wrote in his book, "during which venture capitalists were literally throwing money at practically any halfway viable dot.com venture."

"The second phase brings about 85 percent of growth. The first quarter of 2000 signalled the start of this phase," Clark believes. And his ebook coincides with this phase. "Typically," Clark said, "the phase can last between one and 10 years." He thinks most growth for the Internet will occur within the next two to three years. "Key to success," he said, "is carving a niche for oneself now. And fast."

In the third phase, the demand for a given product tapers off and, investors hope, remains constant.

That's with the help of branding.

Clark's Five Simple Steps for e-branding include creating a name/logo for your business, an underlying branding solution message, a site that sings, a campaign to get people to your site and an understanding that building relationships is what e-branding is all about.

"Many off-line companies have successfully branded themselves," Clark said. "Wal-Mart's brand, ‘Always the lowest prices' has been shortened to ‘Always'," he said, "and everyone thinks Wal-Mart with that one word."

When the Internet was novel, websites could get away with (and actually made their mark by) bizarre names. For example, Amazon, Yahoo, Monster. "Those names were acceptable when the Internet was young," Clark said.

"Now in a more mature marketplace, one should opt for a more descriptive domain name," he said.

"The right name is extremely valuable to you on the Internet," Clark said. "The domain Business.com sold for $7.5 million," he said.

In 1999, Clark was debating on a name for Clark Marketing Group, Inc. He thought of ways the name could imply a benefit to the site's visitors. He decided on GetProfitable.com then reserved another 19 names, including BrandYourBusiness.com for the ebook. (Clark said 6,000 domain names are reserved daily.)

Clark's ebook will first be published online, available at GetProfitable.com. He's also working out a contract with BookLocker.com. "CDs of the book will also be available," he said. "and Clark Marketing Group, Inc. will be publishing a print version."