The Internet highway is just a free medium, just like the roads and all the highways. Somehow there are those who walk on the roads and those who run, some drive taxis other Ferraris or race tractor-trailers. To each his own, they are all free and so are the maps. Thank heaven.

This brings us to two main points, why is 90% of the Internet ever so underutilized and why is 90% of the technology marketing increasingly poor? Is it because this highway is considered free and taken for granted and has lost its power? Or is it because we have exhausted with what we already know and have tried all that, been there and therefore there is nothing further left to do. Or is it because that to most corporations, Internet branding and marketing is divided into three simple parts? A domain name, a website and emails. Let’s explore.

Imagine

Imagine, the web as we know it today, will be invented tomorrow morning. Wow, first we all need a brand new 5th generation site, which is about five steps ahead of what is in use today. 99% of the websites today are almost too old to be fixed, too far off the targets and unfit for the road. Most require a brand new approach under the brand new rules of Internet Branding laws and must address the current needs under e-commerce protocols offering a true access to your products, services and corporate management. This is now very serious, how you incorporate new changes, how you deliver the message and to whom is the real issue.

Without a proper system of having a powerful, unique, one of a kind URL with trademark protection, your long term Internet Branding is going nowhere. Period. Secondly your entire organization must become Internet branding savvy. This can be achieved by bringing in streamlined educational support on various aspects of ecommerce challenges and blending them with new technologies so your teams stays ahead of the curves.

Also imagine, tomorrow morning, the globalization, as we know it today suddenly becomes your entire local market. Why not, customs, borders and passports are only distractions, in reality; the globe is all one giant land of opportunity and a huge selling market. So we need some maps and trade directories but the fact remains there are customers out there searching for you. If you are visible, they will find you otherwise you will be almost there hidden just behind the computers.

Three Challenges of Internet Branding

Message: Technology corporations very often have their marketing messages twisted as they serve several groups of audiences and in this process customers, simply shut out. The reason is often award winning website developers, and branding experts armed with fancy slogans seriously lack the skills to translate the technology issues and its direct impact on the customer’s challenges. Sounds easy, yet it is the art to tell the story correctly. Hence brilliant ideas are collecting dust while the stories betray them.

Colors: Customers are color-blinded. Corporations, often behave like jumping jacks as they promote their ideas in some strange and a preferred choice of a color scheme or a single color motif. Ad agencies use color-specific branding themes as a fix to all marketing problems. Good luck. Customers have no time to remember that every time they see pink it will remind them of a certain circuit board or a router, not at all, but rather kindle the old memories and the darker side of a pink slip encounter. Forget the color schemes just concentrate on the message and the identity. Internet Branding has no room for exclusive colors and spinning flashy sites, rather correct contents and quick accessibility. A correct and a simple text with free and clear URL name identities blended with an overall global name identity.

Universality: Websites are for the world, whether you like it or not, your website is open to the global customer base. Adopt the international rules and standards and develop hassle free corporate image and corporate name identity so you can navigate on the global e-commerce without constraint or restrictions. It is the easiest thing to do. Look out for the big and expensive branding which always whispers about the great difficulties in finding clean universal names and leave you with dead beats. Naming is very easy only when proper laws are applied.

On the road, again. Internet highway is a free gift to our society from our technological side of the brain of our civilization. We must periodically not only thank all the wizards but also learn to drive on this unlimited speed super highway. Not as a learner but rather as a racecar driver.

The light is green now.

Naseem Javed, author Naming for Power and also Domain Wars, is recognized as a world authority on global name identities and domain issues. Javed founded ABC Namebank, a consultancy he established a quarter century ago, and conducts executive workshops on image and name identity issues. He can be contacted at njabc@njabc.com.

(The views expressed here are those of the author and indiantelevision.com need not necessarily subscribe to the same)