Recently I had the experience of a client asking me to create a brand message without any research or significant client direction.

We’d been meeting regularly to review the development of the marketing plan and the various components including sales support tools such as direct mail and sales-call leave-behinds. Early on it had been decided that the marketing effort would be two-pronged: direct sales complemented by Internet marketing – in large part because of the client’s somewhat limited marketing budget.

Obviously, a key element of the renewed marketing effort is to be a re-focused / expanded website, which would contain the majority of the revised / amplified marketing message. In preparation for developing my client’s message I’d done some extensive research into the competition messages – mostly by gleaning what those other companies chose to put into their own websites.

Early on in the relationship with this client I had suggested a small amount of market research targeting a segment of that client’s clientele who are crucial collaborators with and often referrers of my client’s services. The research was vetoed. Likewise an internal workshop designed to tap into the consensus of key personnel.

With the marketing plan more of less complete that client asked me to proceed on writing the brand statement absent any direction save the competition research and my experience with like companies up to that point.

“Sounds like heaven,” you say. “A client that let’s you do whatever you want? Stop complaining and get to work.” Or even better, “Give me their name and I’ll give them a brand they won’t forget…”

Okay, laugh if you will at my expense, but I take the responsibility of creating a brand for a client very seriously and beyond just delivering competent work within the scope of their budget.

The air waves, print pages and Internet ether are filled with brand statements, most of which are mere hyperbole. “Hype” has become synonymous with marketing language for this very reason. If one is to punch through this fog of jargon, over-promise and outright bovine byproduct, you better have something to say that resonates with the various audiences: target customers, influencers and employees.

Furthermore, that brand message best reflect the sponsoring company’s actual behavior, not just company jargon or wishful thinking.

As part of this particular brand-development process I read the book “Built to Last” by Jim Collins. The main point that I took away from the book was that long-lasting, successful and meaningful companies are always “about” something valuable to their employees, their customers and the society they inhabit. Ideally, the job of brand marketing is to reflect what a company is about…their greater vision for good.

However, if the brand message that a company puts out doesn’t resonate – folks don’t buy it because it doesn’t reflect the company they already know – then the branding effort is worse than a waste of time and money – it can actually undermine whatever positive feelings people have about the company by making it appear arrogant, out of touch or dishonest.

Left to my own devices I created a brand message that was founded on principles that I felt would – if delivered by my client – be meaningful to not just the customer, but to professional partners and the employees. I based these recommendations on my work with a number of other companies, some recent conversations I had – as well as some of the problems identified in the SWOT (Strength / Weakness / Opportunity / Threat assessment) that the client had conducted a year or two earlier.

At the end of the day what I presented was my opinion. If the client agrees with me…fine…we move ahead in the hopes that I’m good at my job. And if the client disagrees…?

Well, maybe that’s a subject of another blog…without naming names of course.

My point is that it’s dangerous to build a brand on assumptions drawn from a limited pool of information or worse, mere opinion. However, it’s equally important not to build a brand purely on the ingrained beliefs of a company since – in my experience – every company is a legend within its own walls.

So, that’s why one of the first things I always ask to as part of a branding assignment for a new client is some objective research which in a perfect world (…and what world is that, you ask?) is accompanied by an internal workshop where I can glean the collective impressions of key members of the company. Put the two together and you have a place to creating a message that will resonate with the outside world, and do the client some good.

In previous posts I’ve rattled on about the importance of having a contemporary, professional website, and that owing to the need for regular updating, a website is not a discrete effort but is an on-going, challenging and ever-evolving project. Not unlike raising a teenager.

And, as with teenagers, every website not only offers unique and difficult challenges, they almost always demand the very resources that the parents lack. But don’t despair. Like parenting a teenager developing a website is a learning experience which…eventually…has its rewards.

No, the website will not someday call you up and sheepishly tell you that you were right about not getting a tattoo on her forehead, but it will – if done right – return benefits to much greater than the time, effort and resources you put into it.

By the way, if you’ve raised a teenager, I understand if the prospect of revisiting all that pain and doubt seems off-putting. Just bear in mind that you can always abandon a website without concern that it will spend its entire adult life complaining to a therapist about having rotten parents.

Back to business. Tucked into that phrase about the great benefits that a website can return is the caveat, “if done right.” By this I mean going further than just building a great site, because mo matter how well-designed, hip, state-of-the art, your website is, a website solves just one part of the Internet puzzle, and that’s not even the most important part of the solution.

The MOST important part of any website is the thinking behind it or, if you consider the process of developing a website, the thinking that should precede the development. As befits the context of this blog, I’m referring to the marketing strategy kind of thinking, the “who, what, why.” Briefly, “What are you selling?” “Who are you talking to” and “Why should they care?”

And for those of you who wouldn’t soil your virtual hands with anything so crass as commerce…you know who I’m talking to: political activists, non-profit utopians, my fellow bloggers – you ARE in the business of selling…your philosophy, your goals, your wit. So, listen up.

Let’s assume that you’ve done your homework and actually know what it is you are selling, who really needs it and why they buy it. That’s part one.

Part two is creating a compelling, memorable message: the words and the images that will capture the eyes, hearts and minds of your target audience. You did that as well? Great!

Part three is building an easy-to-use, comprehensive, rich (in content), interactive and…interesting website. Why did I add the word “interesting?” Because I’ve seen all too many websites that meet the first four criteria but seem bland and conventional.

Part four is assembling the site with an eye towards how the Internet works. Use lots of keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to choose when they are searching for your product (“concept,” “philosophy,” or “cause” for those of who don’t sully your hands with commerce). You’ll find these keywords, phrases, etc., through research and testing. Testing? Yep. Remember in the beginning when I was that a website is an on-going, ever-changed, yada yada project? Part of the evolution of your website is trying out ideas to learn what works.

Put a feature or function in your site that is designed to provoke a measurable response, e.g., you want the visitor to ask for something so you can gauge the effect of said feature or function. Repeat as necessary until you’re confident that everything on the site meets the goals you established in Part One.

Finally – no you aren’t done yet – you need to “market” you’re the site to the Internet. Bid on those very keywords and phrases that your research told you to build into the copy. Promote your blog, podcast, newsletter to other like-minded websites and individuals. Send out letters or postcards to your customer list (don’t you dare tell me that you don’t maintain a current customer list) letting them know about the cool stuff you just added to the website. Submit press releases to every online and analogue (paper) publication you can find with the slightest interest in your product.

For the “techier-than-thou” set, yes, I know that the jargon for this process is “closed-loop-marketing.” But here’s the deal: effective marketing is “closed loop,” namely you try something, if it works keep doing it, if it doesn’t stop.

Please notice I didn’t say “death.” There are types of business for which the Yellow Pages (Yellow Book, Valley Yellow Pages, whatever) are essential – what I call the “24/7 plumber” category. If some Sunday afternoon, your toilet starts spewing effluent out the bathroom door on to your parquet floors, I don’t care how Internet savvy you are, you don’t rush to the computer and start Googling plumbers.

This category includes virtually all emergency / occasional-but-crucial service providers like the guys who come out in the pouring rain to dismember the fallen tree that threatens to crush your double-glazed solar porch. The list includes auto body shops, appliance repair…persons, electricians and the like…for now at least.

But that’s changing…hence the “decllne” part…because people are increasing going online – at least when they’re hair’s not on fire – to search for almost everything they used to find in the Yellow Pages…and a lot more.

One of great challenges one faces when using the old, traditional, four-inch thick YP is their limited choice of categories and the fact that the green paper “search engine” is printed once each year and remains unchanged for the next 360 some days. Whereas Google is updated constantly…stuff you couldn’t find in yesterday’s search will jump out right at you when you search for it tomorrow.

No one knows the challenge faced by the Yellow Pages from the Internet better than the folks at the Yellow Pages, who are madly scrambling to stay relevant with the “on-line” Yellow Pages or similar efforts, which they will gladly bundle into your upcoming year’s print Yellow Pages contract. Such a deal! That is until you break out the cost and compare it with the cost of creating your own on-line search efforts.

This problem is rooted in the categories that the Yellow Pages insist on forcing businesses into. Now understand, as in the print book, on-line they’ll gladly put you into as many categories as you think you belong in…for an additional fee for each category listing you choose. The more categories you choose, the better…for them.

Now consider this, the Internet doesn’t work like the Dewey Decimal System…what you don’t remember how libraries are organized? For those of you without a library card the DDS (also called the DDC) is a means of classifying books by category that was invented in the 19^th century. The Internet doesn’t classify your business, idea, concept, song, whim by any category except the words you choose to use in the afore-mentioned idea, concept, song, etc.

What this means is that compared to a rather finite (for some businesses maddeningly so) number of categories, the Internet offers an infinite number of ways of placing your message in front of the possible customer.

Yes, I know that the Yellow Pages have their own Internet functions. Okay? Try this simple test. Google anything and count how many times you get a search result by way of the Yellow Pages…unless you first go to the Yellow Pages. Of course, if you do that your search will be limited by the YP’s choice of….business categories.

So, if you do business in one of the emergency / occasional-but-crucial lines of work by all means place your ad in the YP. And if you just won the lottery splurge on an eye-grabbing quarter page, high-visibility ad. But make sure the production folks at the YP get all the details right because if they don’t you’ll have to live with the results for the next year.

Or, you can buy a Yellow Pages ad that’s just large enough to spell out your service, your 24/7 phone number and your website and put the money you saved into a website that offers a detailed description of your non-emergency services, a full-color picture of showroom and watch a video of your state-of-the art processes which are available during reasonable working hours. And if you don’t like the message, or you want to add a new service you don’t have to wait until next year to make a change…you can do it today.

And with the rest of the money you saved – Yellow Pages ads are expensive and getting more so every year – you can complement your website with a search engine marketing program this will insinuate your message throughout the Internet, making you easier find in large part because you won’t be pigeon-holed into an (often arbitrary) business classification.