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Search Engine Marketing & Branding 101
By Deborah Hickey, Brand Marketing Manager, iProspect
Originally Published: September 2004
What Is A Brand?
You've probably heard it defined dozens of ways. So what's the real definition? Well - in its most simple terms - it's a word or symbol. Coke is a brand. The Nike "swoosh" is a brand. The city you live in is a brand. Your name is a brand. A brand is simply a word or a symbol in someone's mind.
The strength and success of that brand is its continuing ability to influence the feelings and actions of consumers. For instance - take your company name. Your company brand should differentiate your company from others in its space. Your company brand should influence customers and prospects to rely on your products or services, and to purchase your products or services rather your competitor's.
In the mind of a consumer, a strong brand increases the positive feeling toward a specific product or service, and therefore influences buying behavior. A brand becomes stronger as the consumer becomes more aware of the brand as a quality product or service and has positive experiences related to the product or service. The consequential associations and opinions the consumer has about that product or service result in how the product or service's quality and value are ultimately perceived. This develops into brand loyalty.
Enter Search Engine Marketing for Online Brand Building
If you're reading this newsletter you already realize how important the Internet is to successful marketing. And you also realize how important it is for your website to easily be found within the major search engines where your audience is searching for your products or services. But you might not realize how critical search engine marketing is to building your brand.
Brands have meaning and recall to your customers. In fact, studies have shown that search engine listings stimulate brand recall by a 3-to-1 margin over banner advertising and other online marketing methods.
Unlike other online advertising and methods such as pop-ups and banners, search engine listings are presented to consumers as they are in the midst of searching for products or solutions. When your site is returned in response to a query, it gives your brand added credibility that it is relevant to the needs of the consumer. As a result, achieving prominent listings within search engines, for keywords that relate to your products or services, is key to creating brand loyalty among consumers. This brand loyalty results in more sales opportunities for you.
As more and more people are using the major search properties to find products and service solutions than ever before, they are finding that top offline brands are not always found easily at the top of the search results. Studies have shown that users expect top brands to appear at the top of the search results, and therefore many searchers believe those companies found at the top of search results to be top brands in their categories. This is detrimental to offline category leaders, with little or no search engine visibility, that have worked tirelessly to build a high-quality, recognizable brand, only to have it slowly eroded over time as consumers turn to resellers and smaller companies to find what they are seeking online.
Branding Examples
1. Aubuchon Hardware, a retailer with 140+ offline stores in the Northeast - but which initially had little national brand recognition - implemented an aggressive search engine marketing campaign back in 2002. Within months, Aubuchon was outranking big offline brands including Home Depot, Ace, Lowes and True Value. These recognized brand names often weren't appearing on the first three pages of search results on many the 400+ non-branded, hardware-related keywords that Aubuchon was targeting. As a result, Aubuchon's online sales have since doubled and their website now generates nearly four times the revenue of their largest offline retail store. This clearly illustrates the power of generating an online brand, as well as demonstrates how large national brands can miss the opportunity to capitalize on their offline brand recognition in the online marketplace.
2. The following hypothetical example illustrates the converse of Aubuchon's branding success. The credit card industry is extremely competitive - companies are constantly vying for top position within search engines where millions of users search for information. If you conducted a search for credit card information using one of the major engines and the top three results were "BobsCreditCardCompany.com," "NoProblemCreditCard.com," and "Citibank.com," which link would you click? Almost certainly, recognizing the brand name "Citibank," you'd probably feel most comfortable choosing that site. And whether "BobsCreditCardCompany.com" is a reputable business doesn't really matter because the quality of an online brand can't necessarily overcome a strong offline brand when they appear one after the other on the first page of search listings. In this case Citibank would have done a good job capitalizing on their offline brand in their online marketplace.
3. Finally, imagine you're researching a category you know nothing about - whose leading companies aren't "household names" (as is often the case in the BtoB marketplace). Suppose you perform a search on "conveyor belts" and the website that shows up at the top of the search results is "International Conveyor Belt Corp." Would you assume that this firm is the leader in its industry? Most people unfamiliar with the category would - and the company would have accomplished exactly what it set out to do in establishing themselves at the leading brand in their online marketplace where the target audience may be unaware of who the category leaders are - either online and offline.
All in all, for any website, being found in search engines when consumers are searching for your products or services creates a positive relationship. As your products and information are made available to searchers as they hunt, this improves their feelings about you (e.g. your brand) and thereby transmits brand equity.
Deborah Hickey is Marketing & Brand Manager at iProspect, the Original Search Engine Marketing Firm and winner of 2004s ClickZ Marketing Excellence Award for Search Engine Marketing.
This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software.
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