We have always thought that most companies are missing the boat in terms of how much their brands are really worth, because they don’t understand how much a small investment in their brand quickly multiplies the perceived value when going public or when attracting growth capital. In most cases a small investment in their brands immediately translates into a competitive edge for products sold off/on the shelf or on the web.

Since all businesses have a number of case studies that are relevant to their target audience, we suggest that you establish a CSS style web site, with a blog and content management backend where posting a new page or new blog is as easy as writing a word document or an e-mail. If you take a closer look at your competition, you will also realize that they aren’t effectively using the social media and other means of SEO friendly web sites, which in turn will send you scores of inquiries from new prospects.

Building a well designed and professional site, writing content and educating you on how to maintain or update the site is fairly inexpensive, and can be done for about $7,500 – $10,000.

Even though our own site www.kompanigroup.com and www.ActiveServe.com are more complex than what you may need, they represent the web 2.0 CSS type of web site we are talking about. Both of these sites are receiving new hits and leads every week, mainly because they both are optimized for SEO and because we are active in posting blogs.

Just read a great article by Jason Falls from Social Media Explorer observing the facts between one way and two way communication in the advertising world of today. This is what Web 2.0. Its not about the design and its not specifically about having something viral. It’s about facilitating the communication of that viral element in a campaign. Listening to what your consumers are saying and responding to them. Advertising agencies don’t get it. They want and continue to shout instead of listening. How did successful businesses of the past promote and conduct themselves before the internet infiltrated our lives? They listened, and reacted to their consumers needs and desires. Before it was a handful, now its thousands at a time. Social media know how to leverage those thousands of users, get them talking to you, get them communicating with each other, and over time build a strong relationship with your company. Maybe we should call it the rebirth of branding.

Check out the rest of the article here. Great read.