Online marketing is the way to go for companies which want bang for their advertising buck and those who ignore the power of the web will lose out, says brand consultant Joji George.
Many online brands like networking website MySpace created mindshare and brand recall without having multi-million dollar publicity budget, observed the business director of Global Brand Forum in Singapore.
The Global Brand Forum has brought together some big names in business branding and marketing such as best-selling marketing authors Al Ries and Jack Trout.
The success model for marketing on the web is not much different from the strategies for offline, except that the execution can be much cheaper, Mr George, 39, told AsiaOne.
"If you can get the online community excited, they will become your brand ambassador without asking for any money in return. This is good news for SMEs who want to brand themselves but don't have the budget for offline ads. As online marketing catches on, ad agencies that does not provide creative digital solutions will lose their relevance," he said.
"Word of mouth is a very strong medium among net users. That's why 90 per cent of worldwide online ad budget goes to only 30 per cent of websites. There is no fixed formula for marketing except to use a hybrid of both online and offline solutions."
An Indian national who came to Singapore to work in 2001, he has worked as a consultant in Singapore marketing Yahoo! South East Asia and at Astro, an integrated cross-media company in Malaysia.
"To get net users' attention and conviction, you need to differentiate your product very precisely. Precision is power - the more you focus on your niche, the more people know what you stand for. Product diversification or brand extension should come later," he added.
"Right now, Yahoo! is more of an aggregator offering a suite of services. It doesn't stand for anything. In contrast, Google focuses strongly on its search functions, thus developing a competitive advantage.
"It is unlikely that Yahoo! can succeed in competing with Google to be the search engine. Perhaps Yahoo! can consider building itself as the best email service provider or having the best user interface, and then branding that. A brand cannot survive without a good product."
Asked about how local companies are responding to branding, Mr George says there is still a lot of hesitation, and the misconception that product is all that matters, that branding is smoke and mirrors, and it will all costs too much.
"This is the era of connectivity. If you are not branded, your chances of global competencies are limited. It's really brand or die."
