Why Should You Care About Brand Names?
If you’re the sort of person who buys weight supplements online, you need to recognize the importance of “brand.” That is, buying from reputable and recognizable companies.
Let’s face it; even in the “let’s-push-the-advertising-claims-to-the-max” world of sports and weight loss supplements, there’s one reality even the biggest, most recognized companies cannot ignore…
If a customer buys a product and receives no measurable benefit from it, s/he is not likely to buy it again. If that customer has the same experience with several products from the same company, it’s likely s/he will move on to a different brand.
“So what,” you say. After all, there’s a huge supply of customers out there.
Well, maybe.
But any credible company knows it cannot always rely on a fresh supply of new customers to sustain itself. One of the fundamental laws of marketing is that it takes much less work (and money) to maintain and keep current customers than it is to obtain new ones. So it makes good sense to create products that will keep your current customers happy, as well as attract new ones.
Additionally, thanks to the Internet, word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful factor. In the old days, if you had a negative experience with a product, you shared it with your close circle of friends; some of your buddies at the gym, the girls at your book club, or whatever. Usually, the damage you could do to the credibility of the product was pretty limited.
These days, however, you can share any negative experiences with the whole world. And, thanks to the viral nature of the Internet, word travels fast. That’s why any smart supplement company with a brand to protect needs to be cognizant of these realities in order to survive.
That means creating products that their customers are happy with.
The problem with many of the products sold online – especially weight loss supplements – is that they do not have a brand. If you check out the “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages of the typical 5-6 page weight loss product sales site, you’ll find an e-mail contact form, possibly an 1-800#, but no real contact data. In other words, there is no “brick and mortar” address for the company and the operating name is not revealed (i.e., the name of the business or company selling the product). And the people behind the business? Their names are certainly not revealed (here’s a product I just reviewed that is a perfect example).
Why should this concern you?
First of all, the absence of detailed contact information makes it extremely difficult to obtain any sort of recourse, should you be unhappy with your purchase. It’s also difficult to determine…
Are you purchasing from a real company, or a couple of teenagers in a basement somewhere who have thrown a couple of thousand dollars at a nutrition formulation company? Frankly, I’m inclined to think that any real, credible company would want its customers to know about its solid track record. There’s no “good” reason to hide this information from consumers.
Additionally, how do you “vote with your wallet” and boycott a company and its products if you don’t even know who they are?
I suspect many of the weight loss products available online are sold by the same group of people, who-once the negative word of mouth about their inferior products and nefarious billing practices spreads-simply create and market a new product. More often than not, it’s the same group of people who are ensnared by the claims of this new product, although it would be a cold day in “you-know-where” before they would purchase again, had they any idea they were buying from the same people who ripped them off the first time.
OK, I’ve rambled on for a while now, so let me get straight to the point.
If you’re looking at buying a supplement online, see if you can find out who is really behind it. If there is no company name, address or real contact data (a online contact form does not constitute “real contact data”), ask yourself…
Does this company have a brand it is proud of?
Why would an ethical, credible company want to hide its identity from me?
That should be enough to answer the question…
“Is the product worth buying?”
I rest my case.
