Running a business raises many questions you need to answer. What is WFM? What’s the best marketing strategy? How do you convert a website visitor to a customer?

A conversion funnel helps visualize the flow and conversion path of potential customers into paying customers. Potential customers visiting your website may come from SEO, social media, content marketing, paid ads, or cold emails.

By understanding and analyzing your potential customers’ flow through your website, you can start to take action to improve that flow.

Having a conversion funnel is part of a small business management definition.

The AIDA Model

The AIDA model is the most common model of conversion funnel. It looks like this:

It has four main steps:

• Awareness

In this step, your potential customer becomes aware of your business and product. Making people aware of your business is how you pull potential customers to your funnel.

The awareness part of your marketing strategy includes anything that helps a new audience find your brand. There are many options for this step. However, the most effective channels are PPC campaigns and social media.

• Interest

This is the step where you build interest in your product. The funnel gets smaller here as not everyone who is aware of your product will be interested in it. After pulling potential customers into your funnel, you need to generate and build interest in your product or service. Your website is the best tool to do this.

• Desire

In this step, you plant the seed of desire for what your business offers. You need to increase your potential customers’ interest in your product or service. You need to show them why they need the product or service your business is offering.

• Action

The final step is where you ask a potential customer for an action, such as buying something or subscribing to an email list. This step is important as it’s your ultimate goal.

How to Create a Conversion Funnel

If you want to start with a basic website conversion funnel, then you can use the AIDA model. However, the AIDA model has a big flaw. It’s a rigid and quite unrealistic way of viewing how potential customers move through the stages of the sales cycle.

People may loop back to different stages before they’re ready to complete a sale. The sales process isn’t always a straight line, and as a marketer, you need to understand customer behavior and need to convert them to a sale.

Instead, a more flexible conversion-based funnel blended with AIDA can be used. This flexible conversion funnel can be implemented in nine steps:

1.Determine Your Ideal Customer Path and Map It Out as a Funnel

The point of a website conversion funnel is to create an effective sales path and increase your conversions. To increase conversions, you need to identify three things:

• What your current customer’s sales path looks like.
• What your end goal is or what action you want a potential customer to make.
• How you can improve your existing customer sales path in order to increase conversions.

Once you’ve identified your end goal, you can map it out as a conversion funnel.

Conclusion

Just as your customers’ desires and needs change over time, so should your conversion funnel. Your conversion funnel should always be evolving with your goals and strategy to match your customers

Working hard to provide your customers with the best customer experience will allow you to stand out from your competitors and build a loyal customer base, too.

Authored by:

Jessica Day – Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

Jessica Day is the Senior Director for Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications and free live video chat platform that takes every kind of conversation to the next level—turning conversations into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client campaigns. Here is her LinkedIn. She has written for sites such as Recruitee and SendPulse.

Do follow our LinkedIn page for updates: [ Myraah IO on LinkedIn ]

Colour and Consumer Behaviour

Many marketers understand the importance of selecting the right colour for their brand. For example, a company that sells organic products would stay away from using red or blue on their packaging and instead use shades of green.

Because many consumers make purchases on a subconscious level, it is vital to select colours that are somewhat obvious and in alignment with the product.

Colours affect consumer behaviour in various ways, from impulse purchasing to budget-friendly investments. In an article by the Daily Mail, researchers found that the use of the colour red stimulated impulsive buying while navy blue provoked a more thoughtful and budget-conscious buying response.

Colours are one of our basic neurological needs for stimulation. And while this is substantial from a transactional perspective, the impact of colour on marketing has a deeper impact on brand-customer relationships.

In a research study conducted by Qualitative Research agency, brands need to incorporate proper usage of colours to appeal to consumers on an even deeper level, impacting their mood and emotions. For example, the combination of red evokes feelings of attention and urgency, and the colour yellow creates a sense of optimism. The blend of these two creates a sense of happiness, excitement, and grabs the user’s attention.

Although consumer preferences change with trends, their perception and response to basic colour families rarely varies. Memory retention studies concluded that a word or phrase printed in colour is 78% more likely to be remembered by consumers than when it is in black and white. Printed words activate the left hemisphere of the brain and colour activates the right hemisphere of the brain. This combination influences the recall, recognition, and attention of the consumer better. Choosing the right colour can not only attract consumers but also affect their decision making skills.

Colour and Conversions

With the advancement of neuromarketing, researchers have found a connection between the colour of products and the urge to purchase. In a research study published by Moz, an online slot machine, changed their ‘call to action’ button from green to yellow. This resulted in a massive 187.4% rise in conversion rate.

Everytime we see a colour, a chain reaction takes place in the hypothalamus -part of the forebrain responsible for recognising and expressing emotions. Neurons are released that trigger emotions thus impacting your behaviour. Nearly 92% of users indicated that the first influencing factor that impacts their purchasing decision is visual features. Colour plays an important role in shaping a brand’s perception and can surge conversions by 80%.

Colour and Branding

Colour is used as a strategic tool to establish effective communication. Some products have been re-energized and organisations have been revamped because of colour. For example, Instagram reconstructed its logo in 2016 and changed it to a lens with a gradient using pink, purple and yellow colour. As a part of the process, a research was conducted where participants were exposed to a few shortlisted logos. After exposure to those for a brief period of time, participants were asked to recall and draw a logo in 5 seconds. Almost all of them remembered and drew the current logo. With this conclusion, the logo for the app was finalised that strikes a balance between recognition and design.

Brands have adopted a certain colour/s as a part of their identity, and their simplest of the icons take on a persona. They get identified with colours that may be recognized even though the brand name is not visible.

Brand identity is done to imprint a brand’s name and logo in the minds of users; colour plays a significant role in driving it. For instance, the logo of Coca-Cola is white over red; the bottle caps, merchandise, and even the trucks are red. Consumers have associated the colour ‘red’ with Coca Cola.

Brands like these form colour perceptions in the minds of users. Since they have grown up seeing the Coca-Cola brand around them, they will always recognize it.

When eating a meal, the person will instantly look for a red fridge in the restaurant to ask for a soft drink; or when buying a can of coke, the buyer would look for a red can to distinguish it from many other cans of different colours. The colour red of Coca-Cola is the essence of brand loyalty. This goes deep into human behaviour, and how we perceive and interact with our perception of colour.

When to use which colour?

It’s not a coincidence that so many popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr; and other tech brands like HP, Dell, IBM, and Intel have blue logos. This is because the colour blue encourages communication and interaction.

A logo’s colour can say a lot about its brand. One reason why organisations create a logo in the first place is to help the customers visually recall and retain the organisation. Bright colour research

Let’s take a look at colour meaning as it applies to marketing and evaluate the meaning of colour with examples of branding colours.

• Red

The colour red creates a sense of urgency which makes it suitable for clearance sales or call-to-action buttons. It also kindles appetite and has been frequently used by fast-food chains like, KFC, McDonalds, Dominoes etc. It physically stimulates the body and has been associated with movement and action.

McDonald’s chooses the energetic colour which appeals to children, triggers appetite and creates excitement. Further, it also drives home the message to the users by its tagline- “Lovin’ it.”

• Green

The colour green has been associated with health, power, tranquility and nature. It is usually used in stores to relax the customers and promote eco-friendly and organic products. It stimulates harmony and encourages a balance leading to decisiveness.

Starbucks is one of the major global brands that employs green in their logo. It attempts to promote a sense of relaxation in its cafe, thus inviting customers for a coffee break during stressful days at work.

• Orange

Orange is a combination of red and yellow. It tends to evoke welcoming emotions to website users. It is ideal for designs that need movement, action and energy. Organizations that want to showcase their creativity, especially tech companies or websites that deal with gadgets often choose orange.

Harley Davidson uses orange to communicate physical activity in terms of adventure, excitement and vitality.

1. Reciprocity

Cialdini identified that people tend to perform an act if they feel they have received something first. This concept is known as reciprocity.

It refers to the tendency of users to give or receive something with the expectation of giving or receiving something back. For example, Prachi signs up for a one-month free trial of Amazon Prime services. When her trial expires, she moves forward to sign up for a paid subscription, even though other streaming services provide similar offers. Prachi would also feel a sense of loyalty towards Amazon Prime that she does not feel towards any other providers.

People tend to return favours, pay back debts, and treat each other how they have been treated. This leads to a feeling of obligation when someone has given us concessions or discounts. To avoid this feeling, we engage in reciprocity.

Reciprocity can also be used as a negotiation tactic with users. However, it is vital to keep two things in mind for successful reciprocity:

• We need to give the users something
• We need to ask the users for something

In addition, identifying what we have that might entice the user is equally essential. One can:

• Share content by offering white papers, cheat sheets, guides, templates, and research findings.
• Offer product discounts, free shipping or redeemable coupons.
• Giving free upgrades to first time sign-up or on first order.

Further, the organisation should capture the user’s email address and essential demographic details to facilitate follow-up marketing of the product.

2. Commitment and Consistency

As the year ends, the tradition of new year resolutions begins. People decide to have a healthier, wiser and richer life ahead by cultivating a new positive habit, this phenomenon is known as Fresh-Start effect.

But what happens within a few weeks? The honeymoon phase ends, the motivation and productivity eventually dwindle and most of us return to our previous functioning levels, despite our best efforts. But what if I told you that there is a way to influence behaviour – to nudge people in the direction of pursuing their goals?

Behavioural consistency refers to people’s tendency to behave in a way that aligns with their past decisions and behaviours. Behavioural consistency drives our way to take mental shortcuts which, by default, eases the process of decision making. It is easier to make one decision and stay consistent to it than making a new decision every time when presented with a problem.

Consistency acts at both, individual and societal level. These resolutions, when on an individual level, the pressure to follow it is on oneself. This pressure is even stronger at the social level, that is, if the promise is public and involves others. This inconsistency with self might result in some guilt, but inconsistency with other calls for interpersonal risks. These risks create tremendous social pressure to remain consistent. Hence, people try to ensure that their behaviour aligns with their past decisions to avoid undue stress.

According to Cialdini “Once we have made a choice or taken a stance, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.”

Have you ever noticed Mac users who would never dream of touching a Windows laptop? Users are willing to pay more money to stay consistent with their commitment towards a specific brand.

Research indicates that when the original incentive, such as 10% off promotion is removed or the price of the product hikes, buyers would still buy the product since they have already committed and have decided to buy it. Another research found that 87% of the consumers during a purchasing process, even if they notice a small processing fee, will not bother dropping out because of the commitment and consistency rule.

Some of the ways to capitalize on consistency and commitment with your users is by:

• Making public commitments on social media, reviews, message board discussions, and online petitions to your product.
• Offering smaller sales that build into a bigger sale or commitment – Putting smaller products on sale and providing a larger discount on next purchase.
• Creating a profile in the system reflects a commitment that the users have made to use the product.

3. LinkedIn Case Study

LinkedIn is one of the largest social networking services that focuses mainly on professional networking and knowledge sharing. LinkedIn thrives on many concepts of the principle of influence. It provides the opportunity for users to influence each other, get influenced by each other, and influence potential employers.

LinkedIn incorporates the concept of reciprocity by engaging in number of acts including:

• Endorsing skills and expertise of a user
• Providing a testimonial
• Liking, sharing, and commenting on posts

Building a LinkedIn profile is time-consuming and may seem daunting to some users. Once users have built their profile, they are more likely to keep it updated. It serves as a recording of a user’s accomplishment – this would require the user to consistently update their profile as they achieve milestones, hence maintaining consistency and commitment with the website

LinkedIn also attempts to foster commitment by allowing users to login to other sites through their LinkedIn profile credentials, for example, Bloomberg Careers. Users logging in through their LinkedIn profile have created a deeper commitment to LinkedIn as it serves to access additional content through other products.

1.Google Ads takes a lot of time to optimize

You play the long game on Google Ads and for this you must have a big budget. If you are a small company with a small marketing budget and seeking quick results, then this is not the right platform for you. The reason being, initially, the spend to conversion ratio will be very low and might take at least 3-4 months to get optimized. For example, if you have set your budget limit for per click at Rs 40, initially that entire budget would get used up. It takes a lot of time for that Rs 40 to come down to say Rs 8. .

During this time, you will also get a lot of unqualified traffic due to lack of keyword optimization. Google aims to give you traffic to your website through your ads, they don’t care whether the ads lead to any sales/leads or not.

So, if you are losing heart in the initial months from not getting any qualified results from your ads, then understand that you are not alone. In the long run, once you figure out the keywords that do work for your ads, you will get the right audience for your website.

2.Recommendations are designed to favor Google, not advertisers

This is a very common mistake that a lot of advertisers make. Google has this feature which gives you keyword, device and location suggestions for your ads. What novices don’t realize is, these suggestions are all Broad Matched i.e. they will drive very generic and unqualified traffic to your landing page. The keywords that Google suggests are also the ones which have the highest bids on them. Google programmatically recommends keywords on which other advertisers are already bidding. If you accept these recommendations blindly, your cost per click will increase with no improvement in reach.

Don’t rely on Google to set up the ads for you. It is incentivized to have you spend more money and pay more for per clicks. There is an inherent conflict of interest.

3.Quality trumps quantity

Poorly written ad copies that do not match the keywords will get ranked lower in quality scores in effect increasing the cost per click. This will also mean that you will not reach the desired traffic and the bounce rate would increase.The quality scores determine which bidder’s ad gets shown on top. The higher the score, the higher the chances that your ad will get displayed on top when searched.

4.Game of keywords

Google keywords are categorized into 4 types: broad match, phrase match, exact match and negative match.

Broad match targets the widest range of audience. For example, if you used broad match on yellow bags, your ad will be displayed when a user searches yellow bags, yellow dress or how to mend bags. Google may also match your ad to queries using synonyms like bright colored satchels which might not even have any term from your keyword. Because of this, users might click on your ad while searching for irrelevant topics and these costs can add up very quickly. Though it’s useful to get a lot of clicks, the quality of traffic is very low in this type of match. Since it’s the default match type, advertisers must be careful while choosing the type.

Phrase match, denoted by {…}, provides a higher level of control than broad match type. Your ads are only shown to users who have typed in the exact keyword phrase that you have mentioned in the same order. However, there might be other words before or after it. For example, if your key phrase is {digital marketing}, then your ad will be shown to users searching for digital marketing jobs, digital marketing services or courses to learn digital marketing.

Recently Google has included modified broad match into phrase match. This means that your ads will be shown to a slightly wider variety of audience. For example, an ad with the above key phrase will also be shown to users searching for digital courses useful for marketing, digital and website design for marketing, etc.

Exact match, just as the name suggests is the most definitive and restrictive type. With this match type, the users will see your ad only if they have typed the exact key phrase. For example, if your keyword is [green skater dress], your ad would appear to users searching for ONLY green skater dress. The downside of this match type is it gets the least impressions out of all the match types. But it ensures that you get high quality traffic to your landing page.

The last type is Negative match which is used in conjunction with either broad or phrase match types. It is used to eliminate words/phrases that you don’t want your ad to show for. For example, if your broad match keyword is digital marketing and for negative match your keywords are courses and job, then your ad won’t appear for users searching for digital marketing courses, digital marketing job opportunity or best courses for digital marketing. By using negative keywords, you can exclude keywords that aren’t a good match for your product/service. Hence, lowering cost and increasing revenue.

Choosing the correct match type for your marketing goals is very important to convey Google how aggressively or restrictively you want your ads to appear on searches in order to get your money’s worth and achieving a successful PPC campaign. An interesting thing is, about 15% of keywords haven’t been registered by Google yet. What this means is, some of these keywords will be very high quality with low bids on them.

5.Track what you pay for

To some new advertisers, Google Ads might look almost like a sweet gambling joint. You put in money and get the reward of sales/leads. But what they might forget to do is conversion tracking- keeping a record of the amount being spent on campaigns versus the number of sales they are potentially bringing in. Also remember you are here to increase your revenue, not just your short-term profit.

Another important thing to keep in mind is to remember to turn off the campaigns. By default, the campaigns keep running indefinitely until you manually pause/stop it. Before you know it, Google would have exhausted your credit card and they are very unforgiving about a runaway ad spend. Apart from the hefty price you paid, you run the risk of your account getting suspended or banned.

6.Google per day budget works on averages

When it comes to spending, Google’s per day budget is not what it looks like on the surface. Let’s say you created an ad and it gets approved at 11:30 PM. You would discover that weirdly Google would have spent the entire budget in about 30 min. Hence, it’s recommended to never start a campaign towards the end of the day.

Also to add to this, you should never increase your budget towards the end of the month. Let’s say you started with Rs 1000 per day budget on the 1st of the month and changed it to Rs 2000 per day budget on 25th of the month, then Google will in total try to spend 2000 x 30 = 60,000 i.e. Rs 35,000 in the remaining 5 days making the budget Rs 7000 per day. If not taken into consideration, this will break your bank especially in the case of automated payments.

7.Scaling Recommendations are designed to make you spend more money

If your campaign does well, Google will start showing you projections on how much more traffic you can get by increasing your budget. Do not blindly accept these recommendations as it will automatically increase your bid. It is always better to edit your budget manually.

Summary

Successful Google Ads come down to targeting the right keywords, reducing your cost per customer acquisition and driving quality potential customers to your website, all the while remembering your long-term goals and not just focusing on present number of clicks to your website.

Do follow our LinkedIn page for updates: [ Myraah IO on LinkedIn ]

Name is all you have in the Internet world – so choose wisely.

The name of your website is the most valuable asset in the internet world. Please make no mistake about it. Unlike physical brands, your name stands alone on the Internet. It is one of the significant differences between the Internet brand and the Physical brand.

There are many clues to the company’s purpose in the physical world: location, window displays, even the size and architecture of the building. For example, a hotel looks like a hotel, a bank looks like a bank, and a restaurant looks like a restaurant.

On the Internet, however, the name stands alone. So until you get to the website, you won’t find any clues to what the site does.

A mediocre name can sometimes work in the physical world because the physical clues establish the company’s identity so that a consumer doesn’t even notice the name. For example, the customer remembers that a car repair shop is situated next to the Reliance Mart. But she doesn’t remember the name of the shop.

In the internet world, there are no clues. There are no books on the window that tells you that Amazon.com is a bookstore. No travel posters to say to you Ixigo is selling airlines tickets.

It is one of the reasons why mank internet companies got trapped in the generic trap. The lure to generic is so powerful that some companies have paid enormous sums for generic names.

Wine.com sold for $3 Million

Internet.com sold for $18 Million

Privatejet.com sold for $30 Million

Vacationrentals.com sold for $35 Million

and Cars.com sold for $872 Million

And so on. Are any of them are internet brands? The answer is NO.

When it comes to building a brand online – Proper names always wins.

The data shows the early winners on the Internet; AOL.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com, Amazon.com, Ebay.com and so on are all proper names.

And recently, most of the digitally native direct to consumer brands have proper names rather than generic ones.

Away, a travel brand is valued at $1.4 billion + not travel.com

AirBnB is valued at $75 billion, not vacationrentals.com

When you choose a brand name for your website, the first thing to ask yourself is the generic name for the category is? Then that’s the name you don’t want to use for your site.

So how “proper” should your website name be? It depends. First, and most foremost, you want your website name to be perceived as a proper name; then hopefully, you would like your name to be more “proper” than competitors. At the same time, you should also consider other factors. But before we go there, let’s clear a big myth.

Myth: Common name helps build search engine ranking.

As we make a case for proper names, many of you must be thinking; but common names elevates our SEO and gives us a higher position in search results.

Yes, that was true in the ancient Internet. Now it’s just a myth.

When a search engine such as Google started, they didn’t have the technology to understand the content of the web. Hence they give importance to the use of keywords in the website/domain names. However, now Google is powered by Artificial Intelligence, which allows it to evaluate the complete content and context of the site. So it no more relies on the keywords. It has evolved to become a semantic search engine.

Here is what Google has to say about this :

“Google’s John Mueller advises SEOs and site owners there’s no ranking benefit associated with having keywords in a domain name.”

Having got this myth cleared, let’s move on to other factors.

The website name should be short.

In general shorter the name, the better. Shorter names are even more important for an Internet brand compared with physical brands.

In the case of Internet brands, you need to type in the website name in the browser. That’s why the site name should be both short and easy to spell.

Let’s start with some bad examples of website names. They are long, hard to spell and hard to remember.

buyautoinsuranceonlinenow.com

buygiftcertificates.com

interactiverealesate.com

indianstrologyreports.com

A long website name can also limit your potential growth since you never know how big your company can be or what other services or products you will be selling in the future.

If you want to build a strong brand with a national or global reach, you should focus on finding a short, brandable name.

One way to arrive at a shorter and unique website/domain name is by starting with a generic name of the category and then shortening it. With this trick, you can create a proper name that’s also short and easy to spell. CNET.com is one such example where the generic term is ” computer network “

Misspelling the name and address on your physical address can still work, and postal services can still deliver your mail. However, in the internet world, you can’t drop one of the periods or hyphens. Hence, short names works.

How about these names:

Walgreens Boots Alliance

DuPont de Nemours

Procter & Gamble

Archer Daniels Midland

Goldman Sachs Group

Charter Communications

United Continental Holdings

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance

Publix Super Markets

Hayes Lemmerz

Smurfit-Stones

These are big companies ranked by Fortune magazine. These companies, however, will find difficulty in transferring their names to the Internet. The Internet has forced many companies to take another look at their names. This is even true for companies for which the Internet is a medium and not a business.

So, for example, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance on the Internet becomes massmutual.com.

The website name should be simple.

Simple is not the same as short. Simplicity has to do with the alphabetical construction of the website name. A simple word uses only a few letters of the alphabet and arranges them in the combinations that repeat themselves.

For example, Coca-cola is both a short and simple name. Although the name has eight letters, it is formed by using only four letters of the alphabet.

Mississippi is a long name consisting of eleven letters; it is also a simple name because it uses only four letters, which is why most people can spell it.

The website name should be unique.

Uniqueness is the key characteristic that makes a website name memorable. But, of course, it is also true for any brand name.

By definition, a common name or generic name is not unique. It does not refer to a specific person, place or thing as a proper name does. Therefore, a common name used as a website name for a generic category is not memorable.

Of course, no name is unique unless created from scratch, such as Toyota, Kodak, Xerox, etc.

The website name should be pronounceable.

Word of mouth is the most effective medium in your marketing arsenal. Most people buy products or services because they hear about these things from friends, neighbours or relatives.

You can build an effective word of mouth only when your website name is easy to speak. Unfortunately, too many companies use unspeakable website names. And many others are common names that discourage word-of-mouth usage. Consider this conversation.

“where did you buy your new phone?”

“It was onsale”

“I know you got a good deal, but where ?”

“Onsale”

Onsale.com looks like a good name, but it creates confusion because it’s not a proper name. Amazon, Flipkart or Myntra is better.

The website should be easy to remember.

Why do people find it easier to remember their phone numbers than their license plate numbers, even though they are both about the same length? Because license plates use both numbers and letters, which makes them much more challenging to recall.

Quite a few Internet brands make this mistake: 123tel.com, 123regi.co.uk,Net2phonedirect.com,Click2buy.com etc.

One of the reasons many start-ups and companies select unspeakable website names is the wrong process they use to choose their names.

Most website names are selected visually, usually from a list of names printed on the screen or paper.

But, that’s not how a consumer or prospect deals with website names. They usually hear them verbally from friends, neighbours, relatives or co-workers. Even the media exposure of brand name is heavily weighted to verbal rather than visual.

Also, the website name needs to sound like a proper name or a word that conjures up a particular website, not just a generic category.

In the case of a physical product or store, you don’t need to remember exactly how to spell the name to find a store. Is it Abrecadhabra or Abreckadabras . It doesn’t matter in the case of retail stores or mail. But it does matter on the web.

The website name should be rhyming.

Jack & Jill

Block Buster

Coca Cola

Donald Duck

Mickey Mouse

Marilyn Monroe

Johnson & Johnson

Why do children move their lips when they read? They convert the visual symbols represented by letters and words into sounds that brains can quickly process.

Our mind is designed to work with sounds of words, not with visuals and symbols.

When we grow up, we learn not to move our lips while reading. But this doesn’t change the way our mind works. Instead, it works with the sound of words.

If you want people to remember something – choose rhyming names.

The website name should be shocking.

An element of shock makes a name more memorable because it puts the power of emotion to work. To a certain extent, you remember events in your life based on the degree of emotional involvement.

You may have taken dozens of vacations in your lifetime, most of which remain in your mind as fuzzy memories. The holidays you will never forget, however, are the ones that contain solid emotional elements.

You will see the pattern on the Internet. Familiar names such as jewellary.com or furniture.com are bland and carry no shock or emotional involvement. They are hard to remember.

The names that have a bit or bite of them will be a better name on the Internet. Names like: MailChimp, PepperFry, Zomato, Yahoo, FCUK stir up some emotional responses.

The website name should suggest a category.

Here’s the paradox. To become a big brand on the Internet, you need a proper name. But, on the other hand, the name should suggest the category without falling into the generic name trap.

It is not an easy feat to achieve. However, shortening the generic name is one way to accomplish this — for example, CNET, Yahoo etc.

Another approach is to add off wall words to the name of the category—for example, ToysRu, PlanetRx etc.

The website name should be personalized.

Last but not least. When possible, you should try to consider naming your website after an individual.

It has several advantages. First of all, it assures that your website has a proper name. Second, it enhances the publicity potential of your website.

Many real-world brands have evolved from individuals. Ford, Tata, Birla, Dell, Chevrolet, Calvin Klein, Boeing, Bloomberg and Gillette, to name a few.

Initially, Dell computers sold its products under the PC Limited brand name. But ultimately, the company realized that the proper name ( Dell ) was much stronger than the generic – PC Limited.

You enhance the publicity potential when you use the founder’s name as the brand name. Brands are cold, silent and lifeless. Only a person can articulate the brands’ positioning. And media wants to interview the CEO, not the brand manager.

Byju’s is the latest following this strategy.

In Summary :

All branding starts with the name of your website. So if you pick a name that matches most of these naming strategies, you will be on your way to a successful brand. However, I understand every Internet brand cannot accomplice all the naming strategies mentioned above. But one should try and use as many of them as possible.

To make things simple, we have an algorithm that can help you find a good domain name. Do check them out :

Generate unique brand names:

AI Brand Name Generator

Generates easy to spell, pronounce and memorize – domain/website names:

AI Domain Name Generator

Why build a brand?

Most of the small businesses and start-ups rely on short-term marketing efforts. Unfortunately, in this digital dominant marketing world, we become obsessed with ROI, metrics and measurable goals.

As savvy digital marketers, we think of marketing as more of the bottom of the funnel optimization. If we spend X, how much Y do we get? How many leads, how many closures, how many sales? All measured and accounted for. The best part is that digital advertising platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads make it simple.

There is nothing wrong with it but, this leaves you at the mercy of advertising platforms such as Google, Facebook etc. Once the bidding war starts between many advertisers for the same audience, all the advertisers pay higher and higher prices. The only winner in this war is the platform itself. It can shoot your per customer acquisition costs through the roof.

And then you think – maybe we could have made an effort to build our brand earlier.

Let’s step aside for a moment and observe.

We see some of the largest brands like Freshworks or any of those big companies; they spend a massive amount of time and energy just building the brand, right? So they’re not talking about selling you a CRM or asking you to join a demo; they’re just investing in brand awareness.

Why brand? Though it takes longer to build brand awareness and affinity, it acts as an accelerant through the rest of the marketing and sales processes. Prospects go directly to Google and search for your brand name and enter your sales funnel. And indeed, these prospects have very high conversion rates, lowering your per customer acquisition cost.

And don’t get intimidated; it doesn’t require a massive advertising budget but only consistent effort and planning.

So let’s jump right in.

FIRST: Build Trust by Offering Valuable & Insightful Content

Music is content. A piece of good music is a valuable content. A blog article is content. An insightful blog article is brandable content. A social media post is content. Shareable social media is valuable content. You get the idea. In the content world, quality wins over quantity.

Valuable content builds brand affinity. It builds trust and makes people choose you over competitors. Leading with valuable and educational content can create an everlasting marketing machine.

Nowadays, creating videos, building a Youtube channel, and building a podcast has never been easier.

It always helps to think about what value a user can extract from your content. Be it insight, save money, or even a laughter. We as a company create so many tools like visual mind AI, AI brand name generator, AI logo maker and our Youtube channel, anything that we can do to provide value to our audience.

Don’t worry that the sales cycle is long. Play the long game. Provide value to your audiences, and they will reward you.

SECOND: Get Brand Collaboration to Reach Your Target Audience

Let’s be practical; creating a decent amount of good content takes a lot of effort and time. Furthermore, it will take months before you can build your audience.

So here is what you can do. First, identify influencers, bloggers and marketers who already have your target audience and collaborate with them. It will give you a head start.

You can call this whatever you want, kind of influence or marketing or affinity marketing or partnerships or anything like that. But my idea behind it is to take the same approach. Partner with somebody else either in your industry or serves the same industry or has the attention of your industry. You can do anything to piggyback on someone else’s audience, essentially.

Also, look for synergies and complimentaries. For example, if you sell mobile accessories, you can partner with tech and mobile bloggers and Youtubers. There are many synergies here, they are not competitors, but they can provide value. We can bring an audience to them that they wouldn’t have been able to reach before, and they can get an audience to us that we wouldn’t have been able to reach before.

It works when both the partners benefit equally. So I think it has to be that way that there’s an equal benefit or very close to similar use for both parties.

THIRD: Build Organic Social Channels With Deep Content Strategy

It is no surprise that organic social is usually underutilized.

In digital marketing, paid social channels can be so effective that businesses often lack the patience to invest in an organic social. Instead, they choose to run Facebook ads or Linkedin ads to increase reach, drive traffic, generate leads or sales quickly.

But building brand awareness and brand affinity needs a different strategy. Owning and building followers on organic social channels is highly rewarding in the long run.

Writing a blog post for SEO purposes and then sharing that blog post on organic social won’t work. To build your brand, you will need to attract your audience with the right content concepts.

Additionally, if your competitors are not big on organic social, it is a huge opportunity. Double down on organic social and see your cost of customer acquisition goes down. Promising content compounds and creates an everlasting competitive advantage.

FOURTH: Build A Community

The idea here is to build brand affinity by building a community. A community is something interactive and engaging – consistently. That’s what I mean by community.

To build a community, have a discussion. For example, do a webinar rather than uploading pre-recorded videos. Then, your customers or prospects can join the conversation, contribute questions, and you can answer and discuss.

Most software companies host user events or annual conferences. Something that builds discussion builds a community, even if that’s only once a year — it’s a big way to build brand affinity.

Suppose you are a manufacturing company or a technology company. In that case, there are many ways you can start a discussion because there are people in your industry who want to grow and discuss ideas.

The marketing team has to start somewhere to promote an idea. So, for example, show what you’re doing with your equipment or ykjbgfvcvfvour product. Where do you integrate? How does this work? How does it save you? And people will show you different use cases of leveraging your product than you ever thought was possible. Because people always find new solutions. So having that sort of thing not only helps you identify your customers better but also propels your brand forward.

If leveraged correctly, your customer is your best salesperson, but how can they sell on your behalf if those people don’t have a microphone? Right? So it’s always been that case studies, referrals or testimonials are what people want at some point of their buyer’s journey. They want to see that they want someone to instill confidence in them. So a conversation led by your customers talking about how happy they are with your product or service or how they’ve leveraged your technology to impact their business can make a huge difference.

FIFTH: Events and Webinars

The fifth idea is events.

Suppose you are hosting events, whether they’re small or big, intimate conversations that helped build that community. Seek collaboration with industry experts and speakers that inherently brings some brand awareness and credibility to the brand.

And then you mix in the rest of these components that we’re talking about, of adding value by creating a sense of community that is going to be something that takes you to the next level. So it’s an engagement that matters.

Create a positive experience. And it’s something that, frankly, you know, as marketers, you might not be able to measure, but you certainly can see the impact over time.

Well, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

There are tons of other things you can do. These are just five ideas that I came up with, but I’ve seen work.

All the best.