I have a little something to say about this topic, because I have built 3 of my own successful e-tail brands from the ground up. Each one of these brands were built solely via the Internet. Today, 1/4 of our daily traffic to these sites comes from searches looking for our actual brand name in search. So, this brand creating topic is a big deal and can equate to huge money for those building brand correctly!
It’s a given that powerful brands like Coke will automatically have large numbers of people searching for the company brand name. But, since the executives of Coke are probably not reading this post, the question becomes at what point can you expect to start getting traffic from your brand name? This can be quite a trick, and not necessarily an easy one. You must follow a process that takes time and often times makes the “get rich quick” groupies want to give up rather (no pun intended) quickly!
Trademark and Copyright your own brand
Because web shoppers can easily compare sites selling the same product, you can easily be price shopped right out of business if you happen to be selling a product that 1000s of other people are also selling. One way you can overcome this unfortunate phenomenon is to find a supplier offering a product that you can self brand (or private label) and then trademark. If you are willing and able to actually spend the time, money, and effort to do a custom photo shoot of this product in a unique setting, featuring your trademarked brand name, people will no longer be able to price shop you as easily. Why? Because, they will never find someone else selling your same brand or using the same images.
Scenario 1 – Let’s say you are selling jewelry. Like many others, you found a supplier with a huge selection and their prices seem ok. They are willing to provide you access to their product descriptions and images. You put them on your website with high hopes of making big money. The problem with your strategy is that you are using the exact same images and product descriptions that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other hopefuls used before you.
Not to mention, the huge duplicate content issues that will arise by using this strategy, and thereby not ranking well on Google. This strategy makes your site very easy to price shop. Guess what? The price shopper will almost always go with the lowest price! The person with the lowest price will generally be the person that has been using this supplier the longest, with the most success (and corresponding leverage to demand better prices) and for those reasons they will get the sale.
Scenario 2 – Let’s say you spend the time, money, and injury to get all of your inventory, take new pictures in new settings, hire a professional writer to come up with new product descriptions, create a new name for your product line that can’t be price-shopped. You will now be brand compared, and not price-shopped out of business. This is where your images, your product descriptions, your website (trust – look – feel) will all come into play. You will have created a brand name that cannot be price shopped. You can be brand shopped, but that is a different story.
In Conclusion:
(Keeping with the example) Now people will be looking for your jewelry brand name and comparing it to Jared, The Shane Co. and other big jewelers online. Rather than comparing you to the thousands of other “Brand X” resellers. Scenario 2 really gives you the ability to create some separation online. If done properly, people will begin searching for your brand name. And now you have the ability to rank and be found for something that you created.
How long does all of this take? It depends on what market you are trying to penetrate, what type of budget you have, and how good you are at what you do! Remember, you can still (and should) be pursuing all of the general keywords related to your industry, but the real money comes when you are able to self brand. You will find that eventually people will be searching for your brand online – and this is where the highest percentage of converting traffic can be found.
Matt Siltala, owner of Dream Systems Media shares his love and passion for SEO and all things social on his Internet marketing blog. You can follow Matt on Twitter here – http://www.twitter.com/Matt_Siltala
