Essential Ingredients No.1 & No.2 For A Killer Online Brand

One of the most important aspects of a killer online brand is specialisation. We see it everywhere online.

There are sites focused on social networking, sites focused on sport, sites focused on current affairs and sites focused on many possible themes.

This first ingredient is known as contraction. The fact of the matter is that the most successful and well-known sites online are NOT sites that offer a variety of services from different industries or sectors.

The most successful online brands are those that focus strongly on 1 service or 1 product.

A good example would be PayPal. If you have not heard of PayPal, it is an online service to facilitate payment for online purchases. Its main function is an online paying service. Any other products or services that it may offer on its website are simply in support of their main service.

However, you may say that a site like eBay offers more than just 1 product. It's true because it offers literally thousands and thousands of products on a daily basis. Nevertheless, eBay's main specialty is being a marketplace for buyers and sellers.

Both PayPal and eBay are examples of companies that long before they grew and became well-known online brands, chose to contract their brand and focus on a simple product or service.

As a result, their brand has become stronger and hence contraction is what all online brands should strive for if they want to be successful.

Now onto the 2nd ingredient which is Word and/or Phrase Association.

Let me ask you a question.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when I someone mentions the name "Facebook"?

Most likely, the first thing to come to mind would have been the phrase "social networking."

Why is this case? Because most people associate Facebook with the phrase "social networking." You may also associate other words and phrases such as "Top Friends" and "procrastination", however the core phrase that differentiates Facebook from other website is "social networking." Facebook pretty much now owns the phrase.

What should we learn from this? Basically it means that any online business must focus its branding efforts on owning a word or phrase in the prospect's mind. Especially a word or phrase that nobody else owns.

You wouldn't want to be trying to own the phrase "search engine" because Google is clearly the leader and it is unlikely that anyone will be able to take it over.

However, I'm not suggesting that you should completely give up on trying to dominate popular phrases such as "social networking" or "search engine." You could instead for variants. For example, "social networking for homosexuals" may be a phrase you might want to dominate and which nobody owns. Another one could be "search engines for students." There are literally many variants possible.

This requires a lot of keyword research on your part. There are many tools out there to see what's setting the trend. The site I recommend to do this and which I use the most is Google Trends. Why not use the biggest search engine to figure out the trends and words/phrases that you could one day dominate?