Archive for the 'Branding' Category

I’m psyched I finally got a good favicon. It was two years ago that I tried my hand at creating a favicon. I wasn’t happy with my crude graphics skills. So, I abandoned it for the standard bluehost favicon. That funky blue square.

I know I needed a new one. But it was always on the bottom of the priority list. And when it was in que, it always got bumped for other, more important stuff.

The task bubbled up on my to-do list again, but this time I asked my neighbor who is a graphic artist if she could whip something up for me. Her website Nice Logo, isn’t live yet.

That’s all it took. One quick request. Out of her goodness, within minutes she emailed me back a 3 favicons to choose from.

So now I’m the proud owner of a professionally created favicon.

Note: If you can’t see it, try clearing your cache.

Here is a Bid Management strategy to optimize a Search campaign that has Branding and/or Traffic goals, such as: Click Volume and CPC. These types of success metrics are usually used for large brands that don’t measure website conversions, or just don’t have any way to convert a visitor. Think of consumer product brands like: Revlon, Pampers, Burger King, and many of the Pharma brands. They are more interested in Brand Awareness & Engagement, and measure those overarching business objectives with web analytics, and software like Hitwise.

So, working with this type of client, efficient Campaign Delivery, and the quality of relevant traffic is critical to the campaign’s success.

When should you increase or decrease your CPC’s? If you are consistently hitting your daily budget, but, need more clicks and/or the Avg CPC is too high, then you should just dial down MAX CPCs to get lower avg CPCs and increased volume.

If you still hit your daily budget consistently at the new lower Max CPC, then lower your bids again the following week. If after lowering your bids you are not hitting your daily budget regularly, you might want to consider a Long Tail Keyword Expansion, and/or Ad Optimization.

According to Forrester Research, User-generated content (UGC) is being created by approximately one-quarter of online consumers. In my opinion, UGC can be used as an SEO tactic, and can take the form of product reviews, discussion boards, comments on blogs, etc.

Besides being a way for big brands to engage with their consumers, UGC can also add relevant content to a webpage, thereby optimizing the content for Search. There are several methods that User Generated Content can boost SEO. Did you ever wonder which type of UGC carries the most trust?

The trust factor of UGC can be seen by the chart below. Interestingly, an online review by a blogger has the lowest trust rank.

Methods that User Generated Content can boost SEO:

Onsite optimization:
1. Product reviews will definitely add relevant content to your webpages.
2. However, uploading video (Butterfinger UGC campaign) will not.
3. JetBlue enables travelers to share their story.
4. Ebay has a wiki.
5. Media sites like CNET and NYTimes.com enable comments on articles to solicit feedback from readers.
6. Companies have initiated corporate blogs, like General Motors’ FastLane blog, and Wells Fargo started their own mini blog network.
7. And, let’s not forget blog comments. They are great. I love’m. Whether they disagree, agree, or just have something to add to the conversation ( except of course for spam).

Offsite optimization:
1. Review Sites like ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews, and PayPerPost are useful for generating buzz, and links.
2. Other sites like CurrentTV add branding value, but do nothing for SEO.
3. Just recruit bloggers like Vespa did.
4. Some advertisers are getting their own MySpace profile like Honda.
5. Leverage your own UGC community. Reward participation, even if they say things you don’t like. Respond with appropriate product and service changes — and thank them for the advice.
6. Consider social networking sites like Digg.

For companies concerned about brand or reputation management there are services and/or software that allows for monitoring consumer generated content regarding your brand. Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Cymfony collect and analyze data. Or, Netpinions can be used to monitor over 35,000 discussion boards and forums. Alternately, you can use a simple tactic such as Technorati, or an automated Google Alert.

I just heard about this company last week, and I’ve been meaning to check them out. SpotRunner
is a brand new company that offers an interface to choose and customize an already produced TV ad. Think of it like a Google Adwords for Television Advertising. You can target your ad by geographic location, right down to the zipcode. Choose your ad from an existing library of TV commercials. While browsing their ad library, I saw ads as low as $499.

Here’s an excerpt from their About Us page:

Spot Runner is the world’s first television advertising agency that’s Internet-based and designed to be used by local businesses. Now local businesses can conveniently and cost-effectively harness the power of high-quality, targeted, television advertising to reach their customers and sell their products and services. With Spot Runner’s revolutionary approach to commercial production, media planning and media buying services, local businesses now have access to a powerful marketing tool that was previously out of their reach.

And, we already learned how offline media affects Search. So, this is a great way for the little guy to compete with the big players. Really, leveling the playing field.

Finally, it seems like an affordable solution for even the small local business owner, to advertise on television with a high quality professional TV ad.

Determining the best allocation of your search marketing budget is an important part of how successful your search campaign will be. The options within Search vary depending whether your campaign goals are for Branding or Direct Response.

A Branding campaign is more about “findability“, and measuring things like Brand Awareness, Reach, Share of Category, Share of Voice, and Brand engagement. If you are using Google, a reasonable mix between Content and Search could initially be: 33% Search, 33% Content Network, and 33% Site Targeting. This is a way to quickly build buzz. Of course you’ll want to optimize these channels and shift budgets if necessary according to your performance metrics.

If your Search campaign is mostly Branding, then the mix could be: 20% Search, 30% Content, and 50% Site Targeting.

If your Search campaign is more focused on conversions (direct response), then the mix could start out as: 60% Search, 30% Content, and 10% Site Targeting. This mix is particularly useful if you’re interested in driving online and offline conversions.

You might want to take Site Targeting out of the mix for Search, if you are running a separate banner campaign.

What’s the value of impressions in Search? I was unable to find any industry research. I checked all the usual sources ( Jupiter, eMarketer, comScore, SEMPO, Forrester, and the IAB). I even asked my Google rep for any case studies. Everyone came up with a goose egg.

So, if you say, Branding. I could make an arguement against that. Because, if advertisers are spending millions on direct mail with glossy brochures and other gimmicks, and that doesn’t work, what makes you think 95 characters in Search will work? Search is meant to be a direct response medium.

The counter-argument is: Because the impression is only “activated” when a consumer is actively seeking information on the product or serviced being marketed, whereas direct mail it is not requested. The impression is valuable because it is being served to the right consumer at the right moment in time. And with PPC , if the impression doesn’t turn into a click, the cost is very minimal. Thats a big component, less waste.

For a brand awareness campaign, low impressions are definitely a concern because a large part of branding is the message association. On the other hand, for a direct response campaign, low impressions are not that important because the key performance metrics are usually CPA or ROAS. Brand engagement is different. That’s about the clicks, not the impressions. Low impressions can also indicate that the total amount of people searching on your terms, is minimal. That means, time for a keyword expansion.

Additionally, most people just look at the 1st page results. So, if the ad is on the 2nd page of the SERP’s, it could reflect in low impressions, and be a reason to increase the CPC’s to gain a higher position. Thereby, increasing the impressions.

On the other hand, let’s assume there is a large amount of impressions and low CTR. If nobody clicks thru, then there probably is no value in an impression. A click indicates interest. No clicks = No interest. Time to optimize. Revise the creative to be more targeted, and/or revise & expand the keyword list. Targeting & relevance should lead to clicks, and brand engagement.

In my opinion, Impressions have some value & are best used as an analytic metric when the objective of the search campaign is brand awareness. Impressions seem to have very little value for a direct response campaign.

A branding strategy for Search needs to include which Search Engines to use. Is Branding the primary objective of your search engine marketing campaign? Do you have enough budget to cover your chosen keyword inventory for all searches conducted during the flight dates of your campaign? Will your budget span across all search engines?

If there is not enough budget to cover your entire keyword universe, then you’ll only serve impressions for a percent share of searches. So does it make sense to expand your Search Engine choices, or just spend more on Google, Yahoo, and MSN (the 3 make up approximately 98% of the search engine market share). Where will you get the most market reach? Do you want to cover all the search engines, and show fewer impressions per engine? Or, put your budget into 1 or 2 engines and show more impressions per engine?

Something to consider is that the 2nd tier search engines are usually more prone to click fraud than the big three (G, Y!, MSN). Also, the keyword inventory will be much less than the big three. And, all the 2nd and 3rd tier engines combined only comprise 1.5% market share of all search traffic. So, the 2nd tier search engines might not be the best choice for a small search engine marketing budget.

Depending on the size of your budget, it might make sense to just use Google & MSN. Google for the shear volume of searches, and geo-targeting capability. And, MSN for the demographic targeting.