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G E T P R O F I T A B L E U P D A T E !

February 1, 2001

The "Get Profitable Update" is an Internationally published

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information, success tips, and business strategies

that you can use immediately to increase your revenues and

profits.

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... Make More Profit!

Published by Clark Marketing Group, Inc. Issue No. 0102-A

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IN THIS ISSUE:

Entrepreneur: Question from My Home Page.

What Is the Difference Between Traditional

Branding and e-Branding?

Marketing: You've Heard of B2C and B2B, But Have You

Heard of P2P?

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ENTREPRENEUR: QUESTION FROM MY HOME PAGE

What Is the Difference Between

Traditional Branding and e-Branding?

This is a great question from a recent visitor to the

GetProfitable.com website. Thank you for your very insightful

question.

Question: What is the difference between traditional

branding and internet branding?

Answer : I am attaching for you a complimentary 'Intro and

Chapter One' of my new book, "How to e-Brand Your

Dot.Com Business." It deals with exactly the

question you asked by explaining branding and then

the differences for the Internet.

Basically, there are a lot of similarities. For

instance, here is the definition I give in my book

"How to e-Brand Your Dot.Com Business."

WHAT IS E-BRANDING?

e-Branding is a white-hot topic these days, especially with

the explosion of companies getting onto the Internet who are

desperate to draw attention and traffic to their business

and their website.

It seems like everyone, both online and offline, is talking

about branding their business to increase sales and rocket

past competitors.

Some say branding is a great logo or catchy advertising but

it is much more. Simply put, branding:

> Is an integrated strategy of individual marketing tech-

niques that you use to communicate to your targeted market

about what result your product or service will deliver to

them.

> Tells your prospective customers why they should do bus-

iness with you instead of your competition.

> Offers them a promise for a solution to their needs, wants

or desires.

> Creates an image of value in their minds that creates

customer loyalty and keeps them coming back to you

over and over.

> Builds a loyal consumer base that becomes a referral net-

work for your product or service and that acts like a

powerful outside sales force.

> Is the value and goodwill that you build in your name and

the awareness that your brand has with your customers and

prospective customers.

> Is the branding image and solution message that you

deliver to your target audience consistent over time so

that you become their brand of choice when they need or

want a product or service in your category. (Consistency

is the key word here.) Consistently expose you brand,

your identity, what it stands for. Consistently deliver

the ultimate customer experience.

So armed with this information, you need to approach your

e-business with a different attitude - a progressive

attitude.

But there are indeed differences and they revolve around the

fact that some things are altered like ... Time, Perception,

and Possibilities. There are indeed differences. The

following is a small excerpt from my book that points some

of them out.

AN ONLINE ADVENTURE

Have you ever purchased anything online? If you have, then

you can understand the feeling that you get when you lock in

on something that you really want to purchase. It's kind of

exciting! At least it was for me when I first started

purchasing on-line.

Now purchasing on the Web is second nature to me. I trust

e-commerce secure server security and have never had any

problem. But I do remember in the beginning it felt a

little adventurous. I felt like there was a leap of faith

involved in purchasing online. And yet, I had been pur-

chasing things by telephone with my credit card for years.

Now let's turn this scenario around. Envision that you are

the online Web site owner. Somebody else is sitting at her

computer with eyes focused on your site and hand on the

mouse. She is studying your content, reviewing your test-

monials and reading your guarantee. She is judging your

credibility, your sales offer and your integrity. With a

deep breath, she decides she's ready to buy.

Now imagine the same person entering your physical enter-

prise: gift shop, service business, or for that matter,

Wal-Mart (OK, where you'd be only part owner) and making

a similar purchase.

Is there really a difference between offline and online

businesses?

Is there really a difference between the two sales

scenarios described above?

The answer to that question is critical to understanding

e-branding and marketing on the Web, as opposed to

Marketing 101 offline.

Perhaps at first blush, no, there isn't a difference.

In both cases, you the owner, are striving to:

> Select a business name and logo that conveys you business

> Make a strong statement about what your business stands

for and how it differs from the competition

> Establish your enterprise for optimal appeal to your

target market

> Use the best marketing tactics you know for attracting

customers

> Tend to the needs and wants of your customers

> Develop a strong focus on quality customer service

Now, let's think again about the bricks-and-mortar business

that sets up a website either:

a) to build a complimentary e-business, or

b) to extend the marketing channels of an existing enter-

prise.

Whether or not you actually set up that Web site wouldn't

matter from the perspective of being in business. You are a

business - physically doing business regardless of whether

you have an Internet presence or not.

Internet or not Internet, you'd still be a business -

be in business.

But in the case of companies born on the Web - the "pure

plays" - many of them wouldn't be businesses without the

Internet, in other words - in a Web milieu.

POSSIBILITIES ARE ALTERED.

The Web levels the playing field. You can be sitting there

in your robe and slippers, operating a site featuring greet-

ing cards. Your customers won't ever need to know you're

not as big as Hallmark.

Let's look at an example. I know of one company that is a

nationally recognized leader in its field. Unbeknownst to

any of the visitors to the site, the owners are working from

their home. Where? Basement? Den? Does it even matter?

As far as their online customers know they could be in a big

building in the middle of downtown. This example is repre-

sentative of many e-companies. The point is that this is

the great equalizing effect of the Internet.

PERCEPTIONS ARE ALTERED.

In leveling the playing field, the Internet puts you in

control of your business in a way you aren't in a physical

enterprise. You might be perceived as more/less formidable

than you actually are.

How do you envision Amazon.com? Is it a vision of a massive

department store where you can wander up and down the aisles?

Maybe you see a huge warehouse where employees are madly

racing along on skates to keep up with all the customer's

requests.

It's all about perception. For Amazon.com's premium online

store, super-reliable shipping and delivery, and renowned

customer service promises the best of all worlds. Amazon

has created this perception and, more, has turned that

perception into reality.

TIME IS ALSO ALTERED.

The Internet business is open 24 hours a day, seven days a

week and 365 days a year (24/7/365.) Another time-oriented

alteration is speed of change and development on the Web.

Three months in a Web-based business equals a year in the

bricks-and-mortar enterprise.

With those alterations (possibilities, perceptions, and time)

in mind, let's meet the e-customer. We'll do that by

revisiting the scene at the beginning of this chapter, the

individual sitting at his computer, mouse in hand - your

potential e-customer.

Unlike the customer in the bricks-and-mortar enterprise ...

the e-customer DOESN'T:

> see you, your staff, or your physical surroundings.

> have anything tangible to go by, like a store, goods on a

shelf, workers who help choose an items or close the sale.

> have any knowledge of you or your business - whether or not

it's big or small, good or bad, new or old, legitimate or

not, etc. - and probably doesn't care until they are ready

to buy something.

> have anything to judge your credibility by except the

presentation of your Web site and the quality of your

content.

the e-customer DOES:

> rely entirely on his perception of you and your business,

a vision gleaned from an electronic medium that is other-

wise a clinical world of words on a screen that reaches

each perspective customer one at a time.

> come to your e-business at any time of the day or night,

weekday or weedend.

> care about security of purchasing online and what is being

done with their personal information.

> demand timely delivery of products and services.

> expect competitive pricing.

> care about personalization or, in other words, being

remembered personally from one transaction to the next.

> spend as little as a fraction of a second visiting - one

click of the mouse and he is gone. On average, visitors

spend a mere 6 to 30 seconds at a new site unless they get

hooked with something that piques their interest. In a

physical store, a minimum would be at least a minute, a

geometric multiple of the microsecond. Figure the time it

takes to walk through the door, gaze about, turn around

and walk out.

Now, let's pit the e-customer against the five basics of

Marketing 101: naming your business, crafting what you stand

for and what makes you special and different, laying out the

business environs (store or site), greeting customers and

keeping customers.

All of these basics need to be altered - rethought and

reshaped - as Marketing 101 is put through the looking glass

that is the brave new world of Internet-based commerce.

In summary, what's been lost is the credibility that comes

from the tangible: the physical store, the workers behind the

counter, the visible owner. The e-business must compensate

for that loss.

Hope this helps to answer your question.

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MARKETING:

You've Heard of B2C and B2B, but

Have You Heard of P2P?

There is no question about the volatility of the dot.com

economy we are in. The focus has shifted hard from driving

traffic to profitability as I predicted it would in June 1999

as recounted in my new book (How to e-Brand Your Dot.Com

Business available at: http://www.GetProfitable.com and at

http://www.BookLocker.com/BookPages/KevinClark01.htm)

As we have all watched, some pretty big names have taken hits

and fallen and folded - names like Pets.com and Garden.com to

name only a couple. Now it seems that the remaining dot.coms

have rushed to the basic principle of brand building.

Everyone is now reverting back to the view that it's all

about the customer proving one of marketing's oldest and

truest fundamentals: "It's all about them, it's not about

you."

It has now become incumbent on companies to survive and to

succeed and especially those seeking venture capital funding

to place emphasis on the online customer experience. And for

online entrepreneurs to prove that their businesses are on

the "path to profitability" (P2P). B2C and B2B have yielded

to the quest for P2P no matter who you are and what your

e-business is.

As quoted in Blink Magazine, "The focus of PR on driving

customer adoption (rather than simply financial community

awareness)" is also confirmed by a Forrester Research report

entitled, "Branding Divorces Advertising."

The article goes on the talk about the importance of Public

Relations (PR) as a valuable tool in increasing awareness,

brand building and ultimately profitability. I couldn't

agree more. However, I want to see you take advantage of the

PR opportunity for free without having to hire a firm to

handle it for you. Unless of course, you are large enough

to need it or to warrant it.

If not, then you can get tons of publicity yourself that will

get your message out for free and expose tons of new traffic

to your website for free. See my tape interviews with both

Mark Strelzin, Sales Manager PR Newswire and Joan Stewart

from PublicityHound.com at

http://www.GetProfitable.com/BooksandTapes3.html.

The article goes on the support the tremendous value and

necessity of building your online brand by delivering on

your branding promise. The conclusion basically is this,

no one can "dispute the value of the customer brand as the

key to P2P. In the end, focusing on the customer brand is

a priority" because, "the strongest customer brands

ultimately become the strongest financial brands."

That's what I've been saying all along and that's what the

focus of this entire website is all about - Getting and

Staying Profitable. See past issues of the GetProfitable

Update:

http://www.GetProfitable.com/SpecialReports.html

where I talk about "e-Branding, on the Threshold of Explosive

Growth." The bottom line here is that you must be customer

centered in every aspect of your Internet venture - from the

professional look and feel to the marketing strategy you

employ to the online customer experience you deliver.

If you have an opinion, story or question about this topic,

let me hear from you.

kevin@getprofitable.com

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If you have a question about how to "Brand Your Business"

call 1-877-854-5963 toll free in the United States or

call 1-801-459-9589 outside the United States or

email kevin@getprofitable.com or

visit our website GetProfitable.com for more free

information.

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++ Kevin's Hot New Book ++

NOW PUBLISHED and AVAILABLE as an eBook and Hard Copy

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"How to e-Brand Your Dot.Com Business"

Revolutionary Breakthrough Branding Formula

Shows Every Internet Entrepreneur

How to Differentiate Your e-Business

Gain a Competitive Advantage and

Turn Your Web Site into an Internet Moneymaker!

Which would you rather have ...

a one-time customer or a lifetime customer?

Discover the Five Simple Steps

to Successfully e-Brand Your Business Online!

Check it out at either:

http://www.GetProfitable.com/BooksandTapes.html

http://www.BookLocker.com/BookPages/KevinClark01.htm

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FREE ARTICLES FOR YOUR PUBLICATIONS

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Kevin M. Clark is an Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Recipient

and small business marketing consultant, branding specialist,

and speaker to many nationally acclaimed groups. Sign up for

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Written by Kevin M. Clark.

"Entrepreneur of the Year Award" Recipient (Regional Winner)

and President of Clark Marketing Group, Inc.

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