If I had written a post on branding 12 months ago I would have been explaining my thoughts on why display advertising is an inefficient use of marketing budget and that branding is bound to go the way of the dinosaur.
Brandosaurus?
I would have asked questions such as: “Why would a company spend vast sums of money on display advertising attempting to communicate with people who may or may not ever be interested in their product? Especially now when they can tap into the rivers of people actively searching for their services on search engines such as Google & Yahoo, with their credit cards at the ready.”
I would have also rammed home salient points such as: “Surely only after every last click from all available search engines had been gleened would a company start trying to inform and persuade new customers to consider buying their product via branding!”
However, I have recently changed my views on the importance of branding in the marketing mix, here’s why:
1/ Top Searched Terms
The screengrab below illustrates the most searched terms in Ireland over the last 30 days. We can see that 14 of the 20 entries are brand names. This indicates that people are very likely to search for brands they are familiar with. The user often knows who they want to buy from before they go to a search engine.
2/ Google acknowledged the importance of brands to search earlier this year when they adjusted their search ranking alogarithm to favour brands for generic industry terms. Google CEO Erick Schmidt recently went so far as to describe the current state of the web as a “cesspool of false information”. Google believe brands create credible content hence the favorable rankings for established brands.
3/Specific Media recently conducted a 12 month study which shows display advertising campaigns lift searches for specific brands by 155%. Clickers who had been exposed to display advertising prior to arriving at the site were 22% more likely to purchase.
Here in OnlineAdvertising.ie, we saw further evidence of this recently when a client in the health and beauty sector invested in a display campaign (Google Adwords Content Network) with a budget equal to their Google Adwords Search Campaign. 3 months later the monthly volume of searches on Google for their brand have lifted 56% on their previous level and is increasing month on month.
The 3 points above illustrate that all the marketing activities which the consumer was exposed to before they landed on the site count. Firstly branding will increase searches for, and hence, visits to, a website. Then the website will benefit from an increased conversion rate as people have a prior relationship with, and trust in, their brand.
As with all symbiotic relationships the benefits flow both ways: Display advertising boosts search advertising clicks and conversions while Search gives key metrics for measuring the success of a branding display campaign.
Branding is sowing the seeds which will both increase market size and your market share. Search marketing is the harvesting of demand within your market and for your brand. They skip happily into the sunset hand in hand!
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