Brand Wimps?

Any blog post with a title Brands are for Cattle that starts out with "Marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps," is bound to get my attention -- and fast!

I have to agree that putting the brand above the needs of the customer/buyer/visitor is a mistake.

Marketers who obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the color scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers' needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers. They research color schemes instead of the market. Countless marketers got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of an organization's brand--including logos, image ads, and tchotchkes—all at the expense of buyers and what they need to understand the company—especially the content found on the company’s site. Well, they are flaky wimps if that's what they do.

What's really at stake—in fact what branding's really about—is a focus on the buyer. As each buyer builds an emotional response to a company, that emotion becomes the brand-image for that person. Fortunately, some great marketers understand that the provision of quality Web content does more to build brand than pretty logos, cool Web design, and hip color choice.

But I can't put the blame entirely on the marketers; sometimes it has to rest with the client -- the site owner.

I can't count the number of times clients have been more worried about what their web site looks like than what it says. That's great if you're a web designer, but not so good for the site visitor. And ultimately, not great for the web site owner.

Effective web sites focus on what the visitor wants and needs, their experience of the web site, and their emotional connection to the company through the web site. If their online experience is frustration, they will connect that emotion with the company.

Marketers aren't the only flakey wimps; some clients are too.

Read the entire post at Web Ink Now.