How to Brand IT Outsourcing Services

The most common and least understood marketing barrier facing outsourcing service providers is the absence of a strong brand. Most brands associated with IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies are chosen on the basis of criteria relevant to where outsourcing firms are based, rather than where they intend to do business.

In the outsourcing industry, branding challenges are most acute for companies based outside of their target market -- that is, based in locations with competitive cost advantages. Companies in these locations commonly face branding challenges due to incumbent brand selection and deployment practices.

Most offshore call centers, BPO (business process outsourcing) firms and software service companies are located in economies where major purchasing decisions have traditionally been made on the basis of longstanding personal connections -- rather than on the qualifications of a seller -- and where buyers face fewer competitive choices than in the U.S.

In other words, most offshore outsourcing companies choose brands as if they were in a sellers' market. It was a sellers' market during the first five years (2000-2004) of the Indian call center boom and from 1995-2000 in the market for software services from India.

Now outsourcing is a buyer's market, thanks to increased competition from emerging destinations and the commodification of numerous types of outsourcing services.

In a buyer's market poor brand choices become marketing handicaps. A good, persuasive brand can provide competitive advantages, especially in a buyer's market. A brand can and should encourage buyers to make positive associations with a vendor.

In its broadest sense, the definition of "brand" can extend beyond the name of a company or service or product line to include brands expressed as graphic logos, slogans and color schemes. Here we focus on brands as names of companies and product or service lines.
The Ten Commandments of Branding

Failure to follow any one of the following 10 rules makes it difficult to market a company successfully. Any company that violates one of these rules needs to spend more money on sales and marketing to compensate for poor branding choices.

1. Focus on Target Markets

The first commandment of branding is that a brand has to work well in a company's target markets. This rule is often ignored in favor of brands that confer status in locations where a company is based.

2. Don't Covet Another's Brand

A brand should not borrow or approximate a brand name from a firm already known in a target market, regardless of whether service offerings are dissimilar.

3. Match Brands Exactly With Domain Names

A brand should be identical to its corresponding domain name. For example, a brand for news and services to protect against software vulnerabilities could be expressed as SoftwareVulnerabilities.com, not Software-Vulnerabilities.com or iSoftwareVulnerabilities.com. The dash can help in mirror sites put up for search engine optimization, but not for the primary brand. Unless streaming video is involved, only dot-com and dot-net names should be used for international and North American markets.

4. Don't Use Silly Prefixes

Unless a company has been in business for more than five years, its name should not contain the prefix 'i' or 'e.' eBay has built up immense brand equity. Other companies with other lower-case prefixes in their brands have not.

5. Escape the Background Noise

Avoid overused words such as "global," "tech," "soft," "serve" or "solutions."

6. Obey Rules of Grammar

Do not violate rules of grammar, including the use of capital letters. When your company becomes bigger than eBay, then it can break this rule.

7. Avoid Negative Connotations

Brands should not carry confusing or negative connotations for people in target markets. This extends to sexual and religious connotations.

8. Make Brands Memorable and Easy to Spell

9. Obtain Internal Understanding and Acceptance

The exact name of a company and its brands need to be accepted within and communicated throughout the company's organization. At an Indian call center company and a software services firm in Pakistan that I'm working with now, there are disagreements and uncertainties among top managers at each firm about what their companies are called. This is not uncommon, especially at small Indian call centers that operate locally on a largely cash basis.

10. Test Prior to Deployment