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Branding through search marketing

It’s not just about clicks and easily measured click-through-rates. Search marketers shouldn’t forget about the power of branding, or presence as I’ve called it previously, in the search results. Just because a consumer sees the brand but doesn’t click right away, it doesn’t mean that appearance was without worth.

The impact of brand awareness is typically hard to measure, though there have been numerous studies on the topic. One of the more famous ones involves blind taste tests of Pepsi and Coke—more subjects preferred Coke only when they knew it was Coke.

The Google Retail team posted a brief summary of a recent study showing the lift branding—or presence in the search results—gives to an online campaign. The most significant boost came with “unaided brand awareness,” where a searcher types in a general product word, digital camera for example, and a search ad for a specific brand appeared next to the search results.

Unaided brand awareness was boosted an average 24 percentage points in these situations, purchase intent and consideration increased an average six and seven points respectively.

The Google Retail Team writes,

“Let's look at an example. Say you have a campaign set at $1 per click with a two percent CTR. So for $2 you would get two clicks…but you would also get 100 impressions. Those impressions are a key factor in driving top-of-mind awareness and are another crucial element in customer engagement with your brand. In fact, in the study, researchers found that a lack of search presence negatively impacts awareness. In other words, not showing up in paid search can result in customers forgetting about your brand!”