National Media Exposure
March 25th, 2008 by KenricYesterday I wrote a post about branding my store name. There was a reason that I have been contemplating that in the past week. The obvious reason is that I don’t want confusion between my store and my competitors. I also want to create a recognizable store and a brand name so my customers can remember it when they come back.
Last week I received a call from a national magazine that has over 2,000,000 subscribers and is one of the Top 40 magazines in the country by circulation. I did a short interview on the phone and they will be mentioning my store (maybe a photo) in their next issue.
I made sure they spelled my store name correctly and told them to add dot com to the end. This was very important. I’m glad that when the fact checker called me that I made this distinction. Going back to my wicker baskets example from my previous post, if my store was WickerBasketStore.com, I was afraid that they were going to put “Wicker Basket Store” in the text. This would have been no good at all. So I told him to put WickerBasketStore.com, all one word. I hope they get it right!
Again, I was worried that this exposure would go to my competitors and not my store. If I had named it GorillaWickerBaskets.com instead they would be writing Gorilla Wicker Baskets, and there is no way for that to be confused with my competitor. It would also be easier for a reader to remember. As it is, I’m sure my little mention will give all the stores in the niche a traffic bump as I think readers will remember “wicker baskets” and type it into google later instead of remembering my store name. This probably happens alot anyway and would be the case even if I had named it Gorilla Wicker Baskets.
My next step is to slightly upgrade my hosting service. I don’t know what kind of bump I will get from print media but if 1% of the 2,000,000 decide to visit the site, that’s 20,000 visitors!
Posted in Ebiz | 3 Comments »
Stumble it!
Oh, how awesome! Congratulations! Let us know how much traffic you receive after the article.
By Trisha on Mar 25, 2008
Kenric,
I think branding is very important. It allows you to differentiate yourself from other sellers of your product and allows you to (hopefully) extract a premium. When you have a strong brand, it sets an expectation of the buyer’s purchasing experience: lowest price, best customer service, highest quality, quickest shipping, etc.
You are already beginning to brand your company, probably without knowing it. You offer free shipping, you return phone calls, you ship orders out same day… might as well give your company a unique name so its easier to get referral business. Grab as many generic urls as you can, but point them to a snappy, easy to say/remember site so that you can increase your profit.
By RealOG on Mar 25, 2008
Wow, that’s a great opportunity Kenric…Congrats! I wish you luck with your further plan.
By Alyn on Mar 27, 2008