Is Your Brand Making The Most Of Search?

Search has historically been viewed as a ‘direct response’ channel – driving website visibility and visits which lead to sales.

This emphasis is changing – increasingly in the US, search is now being used as support to brand building…….and experience suggests that what happens over there will happen over here.

Advertising.com’s ongoing survey of leading American advertisers makes interesting reading: in 2005 19.2% of advertisers cited branding as their primary online objective – in 2006 that figure has more than doubled to 41.5%. Over the same time period, direct response as an objective has dropped from 80.8% to 58.5%.

In the UK and Europe, search is primarily used for direct response, but we believe the shift in the US, partly as a consequence of rising bid prices for some Pay Per Click keywords, may be replicated here.

Whilst search will undoubtedly remain an essential tool for direct response, and is the entry point for increasing numbers of consumers, marketers are discovering that search can also help them control and manage perceptions of their brand.

A recent Hitwise study revealed that, of the online brands reviewed, 15% of traffic went to competitors sites. Over the year from Feb 2005 – Feb 2006, brand search term traffic, for example “Easyjet flights to Barcelona” or “Sony TVs”, increased by 17%.

So what does this mean for online marketers?

Firstly, it means carefully reviewing and checking your keyword list, and including multiple spellings for words which search engine users tend to misspell. Second, it makes commercial sense to buy your own brand names or brand terms if you haven’t already done so. If your brand has a phrase that you want customers to associate you with, then use this too – when Norwich Union Direct discovered that “Quote Me Happy” which appears on their TV and press ads was being searched, it was essential for them to ensure their site also appeared at the top of the search engine listings for these keywords.

The search engines are already responding to the trend towards building brands online – Google has launched video ads on its content network, and is making moves to bring some brand impact into the AdSense platform and letting advertisers target specific sites.

At a strategic level, consider the value to your brand of being at the top of search listings – in the mind of the consumer what do you want your brand to be associated with? This may mean using more generic terms/keywords in order for your site to appear high up in search listings, to then draw visitors in.

This, of course, is only part of the customer journey – we think it is a wasted investment in search engine marketing if once the prospective customer lands on your site they don’t find what they are looking for. Effective, creative and targeted landing pages are crucial - a study by digital consultancy Logan Tod revealed that at two-thirds of the sites clicked through from a search, 20% of visitors left after looking at just one page – and for some of the sites visited the figure was as high as 47%. This is a real wasted opportunity for brand engagement, as that user has now had a negative experience.

A Spannerworks search marketing and brand building campaign for baby nursery equipment online retailer Kiddicare has led to the brand consistently gaining higher levels of visits from search engines than the industry average. By extending the list of search terms used by consumers at different stages of the buying cycle, then ensuring the landing pages on the Kiddicare.com website were targeted and relevant, conversion rates from visits to sales soared, and cost per acquisition has dropped by 59%.

Advertising guru Maurice Saatchi, writing in the FT on 22 June, says that the future for brands is ‘one word equity’. Simply put, this means that in an age of media fragmentation and the growth of online communities such as MySpace, blogging, and devices such as iPods, BlackBerry’s, and mobiles which are all now part of the landscape, consumers have much more choice and control about what information they want and how they want to receive it, and are screening out all but the most relevant propositions. For brands, Saatchi believes, this means being able to sum up in one word what they are about, then applying this across their entire marketing communications strategy – in which search should be a key element, integrated alongside more traditional marketing tools including planning, market research, PR, advertising, and so on. This is a common-sense approach, which ensures that search can deliver its potential as both a powerful direct response and brand-building tool.

Arjo Ghosh, Spannerworks CEO, says "As search tries to leverage its global reach and huge popularity talk of CPM based banner impression deals and brand-led advert creative is being resurrected. Combined with the potential to engage customers through social media we expect the US trend to be mirrored in Europe."