THE CHALLENGES OF ONLINE BRANDING

While the reach is wide and benefits are many, India is a country where internet usage is yet to penetrate deeper into our cultures. It’s an easy solution to just lift your bag and walk to the nearest store than sit on the internet to order for a product. The following are some of the challenges faced by online marketing and brand managers.

Insufficient use of internet tools: Online marketers are yet to use the many internet tools available to enhance better visits and transactions. Typical is the one to one marketing possible at all touch points on the websites. When a customer logs in, he would give his personal details. Any repeat visit should make the customer feel at home by providing information specific to the customer based on past visits. Amazon includes personalization with every product or service offered. Amazon has truly mastered this art, but there is a large population of online brand managers who treat their website like a common grocery store.

Security concerns: There are still many who are apprehensive submitting credit card details online. While the threat to online theft is always lurking round the next corner, many companies have successfully attracted a lot of customers. Another issue to the personal interaction is customers feeling their privacy violated when the site gives out personalized greetings and offers. IRCTC initially had a lot of issues when the increase in traffic had payment gateways crashing. The issue of failed transactions compelled IRCTC to deploy a process that tells the customer how each of the payment gateways have fared as recent as the last month. Issues like tracking the status of the ticket at any time using the PNR number or getting a duplicate ticket issued by emailing the ticket details as soon as a booking is registered have created a lot of confidence in the minds of the customers.

Merchandise and Supply Chain: A common complaint related to online shopping is that most products are out of stock. Another is the classic late delivery of goods or delivery of damaged or incorrect goods. The merchandise management and logistics of a online store is as important as that for an offline store, perhaps even more so as the door to the competitor is only a few clicks away. Here again Amazon wins hands down.

Lack of understanding of customer expectations: A large number of online companies fail because they fail to understand their customers. Are the target customers looking for price or quality or convenience of home shopping? Is the website easy to navigate? Too much clicking for a single product or transaction would make customers irritated. How many clicks would get them through the purchase? Such concerns are often left unanswered. The website also needs to be consistent in imagery and content. The web is too huge and it’s easy to get lost. Some of the best sites have a reliable site map and links back to home page. All of these centers around the user and this are a challenging factor to many.

Lack of clarity of the brand identity online: The final problem is a lack of appropriate branding strategies online. Most brick and mortar companies have an online presence but they do not have a clear online branding strategy and do not align the online brand to its parent offline store. Barnes & Noble had a little problem with what’s called `customer segment affinity’. Barnes & Noble didn’t bother to innovate. Its initial Web site was difficult even for its existing customers to find. Internet search programs cannot digest an ampersand, and the first Web address, barnesandnoble.com, proved unwieldy.  Eventually, Barnes & Noble created a new, separate brand: bn.com, that was separate yet complementary to the retail channel.( Hindu Business Line)

About the Author

Lata Vijaybaskar is an education and research professional pursuing doctoral studies with MPhil, MBA, MSc in Marketing, Branding and Social Media Marketing, providing educational instruction and research to individuals and corporations which enhance productivity, strengthen responsiveness, improve quality, and drive sustained business performance. This blog has been republished with her permission. You can view the same on her own blog http://brandacadame.wordpress.com