Branding keywords

[detlev]

Hello everyone,

I came across this article (http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_searchinsider.cfm?artid=258090) discussing branding early in the sales cycle on keywords that do not necessarily have a high conversion rate.

"Branding matters- and introducing your company to a prospective customer as early as possible in the buying cycle is key to keeping them away from competitors."

It seems we beginning to get more exposure on the branding benefit of SEO. I would love to know what people are doing to measure the benefit of keywords that may have a high branding yield and a low relative conversion rate compared to more specific queries with their high conversion rate.

Rules-based tools might be neglecting this part when managing millions of keywords. How does Efficient Frontier (http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3370791) differentiate from Atlas in this regard? Are either (or any toolset) thinking of incorporating branding keywords into the equation?

-detlev

[Mike Sack]

Detlev makes a great point. Efficient Frontiers and Inceptor's Bid Optimizer both rely on sophisticated algorithms to measure the performance of keywords and adjust bidding. GoToast has a Campaign Optimizer tool for this as well.

Performance is almost always associated with Revenue or ROI. But, for Branding campaigns that is not the case.

So, what are branding metrics? Impressions? Share of Voice? Deferred Sales? Offline sales? Stock price? Major offline brands actually measure the impact of their "unmeasureable" advertising by their stock price. If it is up, branding advertising is working. If it is down, the advertising isn't working. Forget that the price of the stock probably has loose connection to any specific advertising - the point is that branding is so hard to measure, people grasp at straws.

So, to make this work, you have to pick a metric that is meaningful to you. One ideal goal for online branding is simply "New Visitors" - not new customers, but new people to whom you have successfully introduced your business. Another measure might be impressions. Does a significant lift in impressions in July result in more sales in September?

Finally, Share of Voice is becoming a very hot buzz word. What is it? Roughly speaking, it is understanding what percentage of searches done are applicable to your business and then what percentage of that subset of searches are you visible for....a bit tricky to really understand the universe of search applicable to your business. Afterall, that could be 10's of thousands of key phrases for some industries. And, then being able to measure how visible you are for those phrases as well as your competitors is equally difficult. Lycos Insite offers a new Search Ranking Report (http://ranking.lycos.com) which allows you to run such a report. If you successfully increase your "Share of Voice" you will most likely be able to see a commensurate lift in brand awareness.

Let's hear some other comments on this topic.

[AussieWebmaster]

Branding is becoming a popular term these days in the search area... don't know if it is the term used to describe PPC spending that does not convert ("hey at least we got some branding")... or an actual goal.

One point I see mentioned is if they click on you they are not going to the competition (while this could be partially true) - guess I am the only one who goes back to the SERPs and looks at other results.

I do think branding is an element - but you may have to be a little creative with the creatives etc.... if you have a catch phrase etc then place it in the creative... work for a short one and use it in the title for Overture and if real small Google...

[NFFC]

>don't know if it is the term used to describe PPC spending that does not convert

Almost. I would say it is the term used to describe PPC spending/SEO that does not convert by people who are looking to sell a procuct. It may or not be worth noting that the person who dropped the url to "Lycos Insite offers a new Search Ranking Report" may indeed work for the company that Lycos are reselling for.

Now not to say that the branding effect of an SEO campaign can be just ignored, but it has been a staple of the professional SEO's offering for a long time now. I don't think we need any fancy [and wow expensive] reporting tools; take increase in traffic, extrapolate the awareness factor from that, present to client.

[detlev]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the responses.

It is true that branding was overused in the early dot com boom to generate sales for ad agencies. There is real branding happening out there originating with search marketing though. If we can actually get some metrics behind it that make sense, (even better sense than some offline metrics), then there may be a whole lot of brand equity to be won for clients that are educated and willing.

-detlev

[AussieWebmaster]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the responses.

It is true that branding was overused in the early dot com boom to generate sales for ad agencies. There is real branding happening out there originating with search marketing though. If we can actually get some metrics behind it that make sense, (even better sense than some offline metrics), then there may be a whole lot of brand equity to be won for clients that are educated and willing.

-detlev
What are the metrics? Offline sales? Email addresses? Direct to website sales? Demo registrations? The elements need to be broadened.

[Clicklab]

What is branding? Branding is an attribute of a product or a service that differentiates it from the competition in the mind of a prospect. How do you measure that? Definitely not by the number of impressions.

The purpose and measures of a branding process (at least, the only ones that in the end matter) are:

o Increase in sales
o Market share

Your web analytics solution would need to be able to track the time elapsed between the very first visit and the sale to answer the question whether a spike in sales in September is due to an ad campaign that ran in July.

Individual sales cycle varies by the industry and type of products sold. If you're shopping for flowers or for a replacement battery for your cellphone, you will probably make your purchase the same day. If you receive a good service at a good price, that store will become branded in your mind. Next time you need flowers, you will likely go there directly.

Companies shopping for SEM services are likely to ask around, take some time to do their due diligence, including this very forum. My guess the sales cycle here is a few months long. But you can still measure immediate results, such as newsletter subscriptions and inquiry forms, and make predictions based on your knowledge of your offline sales cycle.

[James Colborn]

Branding via search is often as a direct result of perception or size of company. I've spoken to and worked with companies that have stated that we need to be prominently placed on terms, often regardless of cost, because we are 'expected' to be there.

As this is the case the conversion metric or metric of success is ranking, share of voice (i.e. how often did I show up against that search term in any given time period for any given click volume) - not necessarily clicks!

Most of this discussion has looked at distinct conversion points on a site, conversion windows or new visitors but in the instance mentioned above only receiving the minimum number of clicks (to overcome click index issues) is enough to ensure success.

Has anyone else come across instances of branding via search using these types of methods or though rationale?

[NFFC]

>Has anyone else come across instances of branding via search using these types of methods or though rationale?

All the time.

We think it is important to explain to the client that "branding" [but really we are talking share of voice/visability] is a FREE by-product of a good and professional SEO campaign. We explain that they need to realise that_the_www_is_different and adjust, with our help, their way of looking at it.

I know its me that is being the dumbo here but if I had to pitch a client on the basis that "only receiving the minimum number of clicks (to overcome click index issues) is enough to ensure success" I'd jack the game in.

You can dress up non-converting traffic in whatever emperors clothes you like, it's still traffic that sucks.

[James Colborn]

>
I know its me that is being the dumbo here but if I had to pitch a client on the basis that "only receiving the minimum number of clicks (to overcome click index issues) is enough to ensure success" I'd jack the game in.

You can dress up non-converting traffic in whatever emperors clothes you like, it's still traffic that sucks.

Your comment is sound but possibly short sighted. It's rare that a company will sign up for nothing but this type of search offering. The trick is obvioulsy to balance this out. Words are designed to fulifill strategies and often a company will use multiple strategies within their search campaign.

If your pitch is totally traffic then the aforementioned "only receiving the min clicks" is not a credible pitch, but if you report on, for example, no. impressions or searches and % of times an ad appeared then you form the basis of a share of voice assessment this is a different story. Adding this to 'other' strategies, such as click, conversions etc, and you can start to map out the different uses of search to achieve a strategy. If this were pitched to a prospect I'd wager this sounds credible?

[NFFC]

>Your comment is sound but possibly short sighted

You are almost right, it's completely short sighted. You will always get the contract, not me.

That doesn't mean your are "right" though, just better at the process. The client would be better served by someone more comitted to the www than they are to corp culture.

Once again, you can dress up non-converting traffic in whatever emperors clothes you like, it's still traffic that sucks.

[Receptional]

Detlev said:
"there may be a whole lot of brand equity to be won for clients that are educated and willing."

This was echoed in New Media Age this week in a report commissioned by the IPA. "The really encouraging signal is the switch to brand building through media, direct and Internet related marketing."

Dixon.

[andrewgoodman]

This is a very interesting issue, Detlev.

I believe we have yet to see the real influx of Fortune 500 advertisers coming into the keyword space just to take advantage of its relative cheapness. Even with limited direct response, PPC-based ads cost *way* less than even a one-off national TV campaign. Tim Horton's, a Canadian donut chain (now owned by Wendy's), comes on TV every few minutes to remind viewers that they now have a flavor of donut that contains toffee. Dairy Queen pops up on TV and in the newspaper to tell people it now has banana split decaf cappucino (or whatever). And what about a company like MickyDee's (to continue on the fast food theme) that has a great turnaround story to tell -- about the salads it now offers that are driving its new-found profitability. Why not help things along with a little keyword-advertising-cum-PR? Why not find particularly good customers for the salads by offering a coupon or info that might attract them? Female health-conscious-professional with a vehicle and $6, come on down (to the drivethru)! These types of ads certainly appear in banner form in periodicals and online publications with the "right" demographics, but there are far too few of them in the text-based keywords spaces and text-based contextual ad spaces.

(The main reason, of course, is because search still doesn't seem "big" enough, and is untried. It doesn't give traditional ad agencies much to cheer about, so they don't sell it to their clients (yet). And because many advocates of that space, even, are still looking at things through a narrow lens, eg. retail or whatever it is they focus on. We know that very large companies in the pharma or oil exploration industries -- to use a couple of examples -- often take out big ad campaigns to change minds about their role in society. But we don't see as much spending on this kind of persuasion online. From conversations with these types of companies, I gather that many feel entitled to appear in the granular results, so they hold off on spending on paid search... what irony, they overspend like crazy offline, and underspend online. So instead of hearing from Giga Petroleum when we're typing in relevant keywords, we get to hear about their wondrous contribution to solar research or whatever by seeing their expensive TV ads... even if we're not the SLIGHTEST bit interested at the time. Oh, the joys of deep pockets!!)

The outlay on the TV ads by the fast food giants is obviously worth it, but the impact is not measured carefully. The idea is not to underspend. To carefully guard the mindshare that has already been won. That all makes perfect sense to me.

There is no reason why companies wouldn't extend these kinds of campaigns out into the keyword space, even if direct response isn't measurable. The impact would be significant and the cost would be a drop in the bucket. As a result of these big brands' reluctance to enter the fray so far, there is still tons of cheap keyword inventory available. Because who can "convert" a "good ROI" on the term "banana split"? IMHO that term is underpriced at the 20 cents or so you'll pay to put your ad up for it (in many countries, five cents). (Unfortunately in the US you'll compete with a book for preschoolers and a recording artist named "Banana Split.")

So probably the pendulum has swung too far to the side of direct response. Admonishing big advertisers to use keyword replace on everything is one example of the focus on "results and relevancy" right now... but I think that longer term this only gives users that feeling of "unnatural personalization." Personally, if I type "ice cream dessert recipes" into a search engine, I'd respond just as well to a standard DQ ad (reminding me that DQ exists, even if I don't click) as I would to some computerized attempt to "personalize" the result.

That being said, I'm looking forward to some kind of convergence whereby the brand guys get more excited about the branding possibilities of keyword advertising, and those familiar with its direct response aspects help them design campaigns that are 100% tailored to measuring the economic impact of a campaign.

Until more large companies actually have comparative data on hand, they won't have the time of day for keyword advertising. But this thing should tip pretty soon, IMHO. One thing that might hold it back is the fixation with 0.5% CTR cutoffs, etc. Where there are no advertisers around who are showing up in a given space, why not allow more ROS-style advertising as long as it is *reasonably* relevant. So maybe relax it to 0.2%, for example, in cases where there are fewer than five advertisers on the page. I know you're listening, Google! I know, I know, the user experience, etc. I guess those free-riding users who never click on an ad don't bother you one bit? :D