I then ask if people have telephones. Everyone raises their hands. I ask if people have ever had a problem with their phone company. Most people keep their hands up! You probably have same experience. Phone companies have bad reputations for customer service.

Good companies create good brands by creating trust.

Do you need a lot of money to create trust?

No way!

Yet hundreds of companies have blown through more than a billion dollars on TV ads during Super Bowl and other major events trying to build a brand image.

I attended a top-level seminar on branding and a venture capitalist on panel said a consumer company must spend $50 million dollars to build a brand identity today.

However, in my seminar on branding at Stanford, I asked participants - all brand managers at major companies, to name 10 search engines, 10 consumer web sites, 3 pet supplies sites and 10 business-to-business web sites.

No one could!

And these are very people who are in industry, and are exposed to millions of dollars of advertising to create brands!

What does this mean?

Buying your way to brand awareness does not work!

The net is littered with those failures: Dr. Koop, Priceline's grocery service and Boo.com stand out as highly publicized failures.

So, as a small company, you don't have to worry about not have a treasure chest full of cash to buy a reputation - because it doesn't work!

How do you create a great brand? That's where brand assets come in to play. Brand assets are your slogans, advertising, publicity, promotions, characters, spokes people, as well as your customer service and sales people! These tools help create a meaningful identity that creates an emotional bond with your audience that compels them to take action - and provides logic that justifies their choices.

The Internet has a treasure chest of tools to create brand awareness, brand identity and brand loyalty including your e-mail address, website name, signature file. You also need to transmit your own personality and identity to create trust.

When you build trust, you build a great brand. If you can do that, then you will build sales and create customers for life!

You can also write a small signature of 4 to 5 lines that can and must include your company name, contact address, phone and fax numbers, email address, website URL and your slogan. This way every email that goes out from you will carry your message and complete contact details and will generate more traffic to your web site.

Generating Traffic From Search Engines

We all know that most of web traffic is routed through Search Engines. But, all search engines list not all sites and it takes anywhere between 8 to 12 weeks for listing. There are many services that provide Free submission to search engines and shockingly enough we found that most of our members have not even taken benefit of Free site submission tool provided to them. The Search Engines do not know existence of your website unless you submit it to them and unless you submit it to them they will not index your web site even if you made a very classy web site.

Let us take simile a little further. You will find that Financial Giants and Corporates in USA would want their offices to be near Wall Street or in Manhattan area in New York. Similarly, other industries or trades would like to have their office or establishment in proximity of area where similar units are existing or wholesale market for that commodity is situated. Why does this happen? People know that when a prospective buyer wants to buy something he will come to main market for that commodity and if you are located right in front of his or her eyes, client might visit you. The same principle applies in listing with search engines also. If some one searches for your products, he might be presented with search results that contain a link to your web site only if you have submitted your site to search engines, otherwise you will never be found.

And, it is said that if you are away from sight, you are forgotten. So, start printing your full contact details including URL and email id on everything that goes out of your office and you will start building traffic to your web site. To summarize your web site URL and email address must be included in all of following:

1.Letterheads 2.Envelopes 3.Visiting Cards 4.Invoices 5.Delivery Notes 6.Thank You Notes 7.Press Advertisements 8.Press Releases 9.Brochures 10.Price-lists 11.Email Signature Lines

I hope this starts bringing some very well targeted traffic to your web site. Happy Online Marketing!