Seventy-seven percent of advertisers with 500 or more employees said their primary purposed in using pay-per-click ads was to increase or enhance brand awareness.Print's supposed strength over online is branding. Ya know, the high-fidelity of the print experience, the glossy spreads, the ability to make a powerful impression. Online is a low-fidelity medium. Oh, there are those who say banners are good for branding, but there are many more who are skeptical of that claim. I think all would agree most users today don't even see banner ads. Our brains have long since tuned them out. And Google search ads are even lower fidelity. 15 words of copy and a link. That's branding?
I can understand using online for lead generation, which was cited as a secondary objective in the survey above. No one disputes that online is much better than print at that. And I also agree that a thoughtful white paper can position a brand as a leader, which is a crucial form of branding.
But at a time when marketing dollars are leaving print for online (and a huge chunk earmarked for search marketing), you can't tell me those dollars are also doing the heavy lifting of branding. I can't buy that. But apparently advertisers (at least the ones cited in the survey) do.
3 comments:
David,
Incredibly insightful, as usual. To say that search marketing is primarily for branding is like saying that a well-equipped BMW 7 series is primarily for listening to music. Sure, you can do that with it, but you can do a whole lot more a whole lot better with the vehicle in question. And if you only use it for that function. you are missing out on the true power of the medium (and paying more than you need to, to boot).
When it comes to branding, I like to consider the signal-to-noise ratio of the medium. In print, a full page ad has very little competing for a reader's attention (external stimuli notwithstanding), and blurs the distinction between signal and noise. This is the same reason that banner ads are ignored by users. Typically, there is a lot of other content (signal) on the page, and the ads are background noise, often placed on the outskirts of the content, making it even easier to ignore them.
It's even worse in the case of search results. Let's take a real-world search example. I executed a query on Google for the terms "apple ipod replacement battery" (not in quotes for the actual query). With Google set to return only 10 results per page (the default number), there are 415 words returned in the organic search results (the signal). Advertising (the noise) is returned in two locations -- at the top and down the right-hand column. And, we know that the right-hand column is the least looked at area of a webpage, thanks to the Neilson eyetracking study. So, if you discount the right-hand ads, the top ads return only 45 words total. That's a ratio of 9.222:1 in favor of signal.
So, marketers, listen closely -- here's the important part. Your search marketing better be designed to elicit a very specific response from users, and you'd better measure the heck out of its ability to elicit that very same response. If you are looking to brand your company, and are relying on search marketing, I have some accelerant and a large barrel in which you can ignite your money.
How does search marketing = branding?
Simple- where does someone go after they click on the advertiser's link? To their advertisers page, loaded with branding.
Keith, you can call that branding, it's truly a question of reach. Say you're paying $2 a keyword -- relatively cheap, for some words -- and you wanted to reach 40,000 qualified people (which Google doesn't provide ANY audits--witness the clickfraud, of which i've seen estimates hovering around 15%). Say, for the sake of this argument, Google was able to miraculously provide 40,000 people who clicked on your $2 ad (aside from the question they count the clicks, not unique people). You just paid $80,000 to reach 40,000 people, whereas you could advertise a full-page ad in a trade publication for $5,000 and have 3rd party audit. If you call that branding, it's much cheaper (and arguably more effective) to do that in print.
Post a Comment