Global branding for peanuts

The Internet could offer meaningful branding for small firms.

Given the shoe-string budgets that SMEs work with, branding becomes the last priority. But one can devise a meaningful branding exercise using the Internet.

Let's take the example of a small proprietary unit that does contract engineering work for a bigger player. Let's assume the turnover of the small unit is around Rs 10 crore. Further, it has a sales department (no marketing head), an accounts department (no HR head) and production (operations) and distribution departments with an IT person who handles the networks and ensures the system operates smoothly.

All that the proprietor needs to do is set aside only Rs 15,000 (Yes! You read it right) or 0.15 per cent of his turnover to set up a website. How do you go about this. First, contact an individual or company who provides hosting services. You can either buy a server (not advisable in this case) or lease space on the service provider's server (similar to renting a flat).

Once you lease the space (around 5 MB should suffice), you can comfortably have 5-10 pages of your company on the Internet. The website will have a URL (domain name) such as www.vibuthi.com (presuming that the name of the company is Vibhuti Pvt. Ltd) and will be hosted on a server. You will have to register the domain name (in this case Vibhuti) with a domain registrar such as register.com.

You have to provide the content and the service provider will design the pages for you under subheads such as About us (company information), Products, Services, Clients and Contact Us (your email and mailing address).Your email will now read something like rakesh@vibhuti.com. Doesn't this sound more professional than a rakesh@yahoo.com or rakesh@gmail.com?

Now that you have www.vibhuthi.com on the Internet, you can ask the service provider to market your site on the Internet. He will (at no extra charge), then, submit your domain name to major search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc. The next time anybody searches for "engineering companies in India", there is a great likelihood that the search engine will throw up your domain name too.

Moreover, you can surf the Internet and liaise with potential clients. You can put your URL or domain name and email ID on your visiting card. In case clients ask for details, you can tell them to visit your site. You may get a lot of viewers by word-of-mouth too.