Here in West Texas we see a literal example of branding. Some cowboys get a bull or cow down on its side and tie its feet. While a couple of cowhands hold the animal down, another one reaches for the hot iron from the fire and then pushes the red-hot utensil into the flesh of the poor beast. After it’s healed, the remaining scar the brand of the rancher- stays visible on the critter for life. Actually modern ranchers use more sophisticated tracking technologies to claim their herds but the parable is potent.
When you victoriously brand a site or a product you have -in essence- burned your name into the brains of your surfers. When you market your brand correctly surfers remember you without even seeing your ad. When you promote your brand fittingly you become part of the culture around you. In advertising jargon the whole thing is called BRANDING.
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"When you strive for brand-name recognition it becomes necessary to think of your product as more of an experience than a product." |
Branding moves beyond mere logos or clever niche content. When you strive for brand-name recognition it becomes necessary to think of your product as more of an experience than a product. Branding is a concerted effort. With branding you have to be willing to take and give the time required to do the job right. One of the major factors in the formula for true branding is the long run.
Brand names aren’t known to take the money and fly. A real brand has longevity, grows exponentially and knows itself. You can’t just build an adult site with a cute design, a cool logo, a clever domain name and some exclusive content and expect that to carry you financially into the next decade. You’ve got to take all that potential and turn it into the answer to every surfer’s dream of a mythical smutty webpage.
Branding sometimes involves co-branding. If you have a main website and you link all your resulting new sites to it, you are branding unawares. If you instead, presented each of your new sites as an addition to "Your Network". Then you create special buttons that link back to your "Network Home", you’re sort of co-branding except with yourself. If you hook up with another paysite, content provider or design company in order to share traffic and advertising, you’re really just co-branding.
On a TGP, you’ll notice that many TGP operators display a list of sites recommended by the operator. Those listed sites have similar displays on their TGPs and they all track the traffic running around on these lists. This is really just another way to co-brand.
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Of course no one will want to co-brand with you if you can’t get the primary branding right. While Playboy had a brand name in the print and cable markets, it didn’t really do well when it came to the Internet. Other upstart paysites sped far past the bunny and delivered what the surfers were looking for, fast and nasty images. Playboy spent years developing a lifestyle legend that worked well in the leisure of the bathroom or on the living room couch. That glossy, relaxing lifestyle didn’t translate well to the down and dirty net. Only now has Playboy begun to understand that they too must start at square one. They’ve co-branded with sage adult paysite network Adult.Com. Now it’s up to them both to see if the Playboy Lifestyle can survive the conditions of the Internet Highway.
What worked for Adult.com is their flagship site Amateur Pages. AP branded their paysite with consistent content, fast loading pages, reliable payouts and customer retention. Their site name is easy to remember and the URL is spelled exactly the same. The letter "A" puts them at the top of a lot of Search Engine lists and they got into the game before it became a mega-niche. Amateur Pages has so many things going for it and it exemplifies the spirit of adult site branding.
Another paysite/affiliate program that illustrates effective adult branding is Blacks on Blondes. Like Amateur Pages, BOB jumped into interracial content early. While other sites were peppering their image collections with the occasional black/white sex pic, BOB was creating full-length interracial video content with their own actors. Now Blacks on Blonde clips are instantly recognizable. BOB knew the niche and they delivered. They now have possibly the most successful interracial paysite on the web and their feeds are highly desired by other paysite owners.
Branding for the adult Internet ends with the same result as it does in print or television advertising. The customer comes to look at your product as an entity, a solution or a realization of their desire. Take time to look at your adult site. Does it even have a central theme? What makes your adult page memorable? What can you offer adult surfers that will linger in their minds? You can reach people with great banners and text links while they’re on your web. But can you create a mythology around your site so potent it burns in their minds when they’re NOT on the net?