It’s no secret. Online consumers have redefined the principles of traditional branding. Customers demand more control of the sales process. They publish their own blogs. They use social networks to learn about and discuss your new products. What others say about you, your company, and your products is given more credibility than the content you provide on your website. 

Traditional branding doesn’t work anymore. It isn’t made for a world where consumers create, connect, and share freely. Today, we need interactive branding that redefines how connections with your customers are developed, managed, and measured.

New and emerging sources of trusted online information

Consumer-Generated Media describes a broad range of new and emerging sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated, and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities, and issues. These platforms — which include blogs, message boards and forums, public discussions, discussions and forums on large e-mail portals (Yahoo!, AOL,  MSN), online opinion/review sites and services, online feedback/complaint sites, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer-rating websites, and social networking sites — are all owned and controlled by consumers, and often carry far higher credibility and trust than traditional media.

Online Brand Defense

The best defense against negative consumer opinions is launching a strong interactive marketing campaign early in the game. Here are seven core strategies you can use to fortify and defend your brand:

1. Don’t procrastinate. Begin seeding primary interactive channels with positive opinions that have been strategically obtained, crafted, and seeded within search, blog, and social networks. Gather testimonials and develop ambassadors for your products or services.
2. Position your brand within the social media space. Implement an early warning monitory system to facilitate rapid response against early stage negative opinions.
3. Be ready to defend your brand when a search trend is directionally negative. Neglecting to purchase defensive marketing today will make it much more difficult to initiate a timely response when needed. Purchase keyword phrases quickly and link to “get the facts” sites to help shape opinion.
4. Build your Brand using SEO. This is a viable long-term strategy to build your brand, since a successful SEO program may take 12 months or more to produce good “shelf-space” results within primary search engines.
5. Develop a definition strategy for Wikipedia, as it is highly ranked and utilized. Negative press, deserved or not, often leaks into definitions and becomes hard to dislodge.
6. Provide objective, referenced content from your company website. If possible, offer your prospects and customers their own social community to build and develop affinity.
7. Use blogs to your own advantage, to supply positive information as well as to act as a sensor for how to calibrate your messaging.  

The best online brand defense is to embrace, master, and proactively control how consumer generated media influence on your brand.

Conclusion

The stakes are high. Companies who implement interactive branding strategies to engage online customers will gain market share. Those who follow traditional brand strategies will lose market share.