Branding through Search Marketing
I've been a long-time advocate of the branding benefits of search marketing. I never had any data to back it up, so I relied on anecdotal evidence and simple logic to back up my argument. I mean, think about it. What kind of branding effect does it have on me if I'm searching for shoes, and I keep seeing this Nike company showing up every time I search for shoes...hmmm...maybe this Nike company knows something about shoes. Maybe that's a poor example because Nike already has a stong brand (and indidentally doesn't show up when I search for shoes), but imagine the branding power it would have for a company that is trying to establish a brand to show up for their keywords. Yes, it only makes sense that people will begin to associate that company with the category of products or services they were searching for.
Yes, you can and should use search marketing for your direct marketing-type initiatives, but don't forget about the powerful influence search can have on your brand.
This article on Multichannel Merchant talks about the braning benefits of search marketing. The author cites a session from the SES conference earlier this year in which Jonathan Mendez from DigitalGrit had some powerful evidence to show the effectiveness of search for branding purposes.
One of the most interesting quotes from the article is the part where Mendez talks about how their display ads actually caused an increase in search impressions on their PPC campaigns. It's not really surprising, but something that I think is often ignored, that other types of advertising (online and off) can actually create demand within the search engines. After people saw the new product in the ads, it made them want to search to find out more info about the product. Pretty cool.
Psst...one last little secret...I believe that showing up in the natural results has an even more powerful branding effect because people know that the ads on the side and top are paid for and the tend to trust the "editorial" listings more. Plus the long-term cost per new customer from the natural search listings is miniscule compared to the sponsored listing costs.
Yes, you can and should use search marketing for your direct marketing-type initiatives, but don't forget about the powerful influence search can have on your brand.
This article on Multichannel Merchant talks about the braning benefits of search marketing. The author cites a session from the SES conference earlier this year in which Jonathan Mendez from DigitalGrit had some powerful evidence to show the effectiveness of search for branding purposes.
One of the most interesting quotes from the article is the part where Mendez talks about how their display ads actually caused an increase in search impressions on their PPC campaigns. It's not really surprising, but something that I think is often ignored, that other types of advertising (online and off) can actually create demand within the search engines. After people saw the new product in the ads, it made them want to search to find out more info about the product. Pretty cool.
Psst...one last little secret...I believe that showing up in the natural results has an even more powerful branding effect because people know that the ads on the side and top are paid for and the tend to trust the "editorial" listings more. Plus the long-term cost per new customer from the natural search listings is miniscule compared to the sponsored listing costs.
posted by Dave @ 3:12 PM
2 Comments:
At 2:44 PM,
gerald said…
I do agree that a good deal of branding does help lift advertisers into the mainstream, but one thing that you may want to be wary of is taht many of these natural listings are paid for to some degree.
At 4:26 PM,
Dave said…
I assume you mean they're paid for in terms of SEO and/or links, but I still maintain that the natural listings carry a lot of brand weight because the end user (the searchers) still see them more as editorial content--theoretically the most relevant pages for the search phrase--compared to the sponsored listings that are obvious paid ads. The search engines do their darndest to keep it this way. They don't want users to be wary, they want them to trust the natural search listings. That's why they've got all their best and brightest engineers working to outsmart the spammers. It's one of the factors that makes SEO a hard game to play.
Post a Comment
<< Home