An Online Branding Opportunity

By Adrienne Gaines, Paid Search Coordinator, Advertising Solutions

For those of you who were unable to make it to comScore’s webinar on Wednesday, Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist, gave an excellent presentation on branding in the search environment. This presentation hit really close to home for me and think it’s important information that we often overlook when creating branding campaigns.

Just the Facts
According to the comScore webinar, when referring to the entire advertising industry, 37% of the total budget is spent on direct response campaigns, while about 63% of total budget is spent on branding campaigns. Although when just looking at the total online media advertising budget, the tables turn quite a bit, about 75% of the budget is focused on direct response campaigns and the remaining 23% is left for branding. The conclusion, online dollars are simply not getting their fair share of branding campaigns. It is up to us, as digital marketers, to change that.

TV vs. Online Ads
It has been said that TV advertisements are great for creating awareness, as they allow viewers to achieve a deep emotional connection and ultimately impact behavior. Meanwhile, text ads are meant more for direct response and a strong call-to-action. In conclusion, text ads simply aren’t great for branding. WRONG. This couldn’t be further from the truth, in a few case studies presented at the webinar, there were strong examples of nationally renowned brands that effectively used interactive links and keyword research, amongst other initiatives, to interact with their consumers and increase brand awareness, plus these actions and results can be easily tracked.

Lessons Learned
Digital branding can be incredibly successful if marketers leverage keywords, search engines and relevant content specific to their audience. Brand your company with existing ideas and keywords people are currently searching for and have an emotional connection with. Encourage consumers to search in ways they are comfortable with and encourage your marketers to embrace already existing consumer search techniques and find ways to harness and maximize those techniques. Rolling out new ideas to consumers is well and good, however sometimes, depending on your consumer base, sticking with what people are familiar with is the best strategy.

As new innovations pop up left and right, marketers are finding more reasons to transfer branding budgets from traditional media to online media spend. The digital marketing landscape is growing. With trackable online actions and insights derived from consumer-driven data, online advertising allows for effective and efficient audience targeting and tailor-made branding opportunities.