Recently, we have been discussing about an opportunity to work for a client on an interesting Internet Marketing project. The company currently has five different brands offering different of services. They also have a corporate website which is very new! Now they wish to merge all their brands together to make the composite corporate website so that they get a “big company” look.
I have been discussing with my team to understand the pros and cons of this “merger of sites” from Internet Marketing perspective. This is what we have as of now. Feel free to contribute to the list:
Pros:
1) Critical Mass: A new destination site quickly provides broad, market-spanning coverage that exudes an increased sense of scope and can make your competitors’ sites look ineffectual in comparison.
2) Access: Niche-specific content is represented, but customers have the opportunity to graze content where markets overlap.
3) No More Brand Silos: Corralling content under a broader brand elevates it to a level where more customers can congregate.
Cons:
1) Brand Subordination & Confusion: Sites pulled together under one site may suffer brand dilution. It may also confuse the visitor as to the core service which the company provides.
2) More Work: The new gateway site will be a hungry beast, requiring the constant feeding of new daily content unique to the site.
3) Loss of SEO Advantage: Initially the website will not have a good organic ranking in search engine. We can try to retain current user base and hits as much as possible using permanent redirects and forwarding. This can also be compensated by proper pay-per-click management initially and then toning it down if required.
