by David Heitman, President of The Creative Alliance

“You can’t win the Masters on Thursday, but you can lose it on Thursday.”

So goes the truism about professional golf’s premier event.

This insightful adage has its parallel in the realm of marketing—specifically, regarding an organization’s website. A great website may not be able to close a sale, but an inferior website can kill a deal before it has a chance to develop.

That’s because an organization’s website is the primary tool for prospective customers/investors/members/donors to perform their due diligence. It’s the first place they turn when referred to your organization or when they find you through a Google search.

Judging a book by its cover, or more precisely, judging a company by its home page, takes place in a matter of mere seconds when someone visits your site for the first time. Good design provides an overall impression of a company’s relevance, intelligence and savvy before the visitor clicks a single link.

Visitors’ immediate encounter with the hierarchy of information they encounter also strongly influences their impression of your company. Do they find order or chaos? Are they able to prioritize information quickly? Is it obvious where and why to click to reach the information the visitor seeks?

So just as pro golfers have to play well for four consecutive days to win the Masters on Sunday, so also successful companies need to market themselves effectively day after day.

And just as the Masters starts on Thursday and can end there for those who stumble, so also companies that leave first impressions to chance or inattention can find themselves losing potential clients before they ever meet them.

by David Heitman, President of The Creative Alliance

When branding as a marketing discipline received its first big wave of analytical attention and discussion in the early 1990s, it became the hot topic of marketing professionals. Not long after it seemed a bit trendy to talk about branding—trendy in a bad way. It already seemed a bit passé in some circles as the Internet began to change everything about how consumers (B2C and B2B) related to companies from whom they purchased goods and services.

But branding has survived. Marketers figured out how to deepen the relationship between consumers and brands online and off. And now in times of economic uncertainty, brands are more important than ever. That’s because brands, ultimately, are belief systems. And in a recessionary economy, people are looking for products, services and companies they can believe in and rely upon.

Companies that pay careful attention to crafting and re-crafting their brands can expect to reap several benefits. A strong brand:

• Provides an advantage when pitching new business
• Confirms customer decision/prevents buyer remorse
• Allows a company to charge higher/premium prices
• Gives employees a belief system through which to filter decisions, attitudes and behaviors
• Makes it easier to launch new services and products
• Makes it easier for satisfied customers to make referrals
• Aids customer loyalty/retention
• Transfers company value from individuals (founders and owners) to the company as a whole

These eight advantages—potentially worth millions of dollars in eventual outcomes—make it well worth the effort to go through a conscious branding or re-branding process. That is why we always include this crucial effort in our work with our clients. All other marcom tactics—websites, social media, advertising, direct marketing—must be filtered through this crucial branding process in order to yield the maximum return on investment of every marketing dollar spent.