Recession impacts all businesses and brings us new challenges. When the economy slows down due to the threat of a recession, many businesses panic. In a state of uncertainty, most business owners will cut their marketing budget when the smart businesses will adjust their strategy and continue marketing. Companies that execute a smart marketing plan come out of a recession with the same if not better earnings than before the recession began.
A key strategy that will benefit your business during this challenging time is to increase brand equity with branded search. Shift some of your customer acquisition marketing budget towards campaigns and strategies that build more awareness for your company and its products or services to increase your brand equity. The best way to increase brand equity online is by using branded search.
What is Brand Equity?
Brand equity is the value of a brand, measured by customer loyalty and perceived value. It’s created through customer perceptions and consists of both intangible (non-physical) and tangible (physical) assets. Brand equity is an important factor influencing customer choice, as it gives consumers assurance that their purchase decision is backed by a reputable company and reassures them that their investment will be met with quality products or services over the long run. High brand equity can lead to positive impacts on sales performance, loyalty, awareness, competitive advantage, and more.
How Brand Equity Is Measured?
Brand equity is typically measured in a variety of ways, including surveys, brand audits, and customer data. Surveys are useful for gaining insight into how customers perceive a brand, allowing companies to track their progress over time and identify areas of improvement. Brand audits involve qualitative assessment of how customers perceive the brand across all touchpoints and can provide important information on how a brand is positioned in the marketplace. Customer data (purchases, clicks, impressions, etc.) can be used to measure the impact of marketing campaigns on customer behavior and loyalty. Ultimately, all of these measurement techniques can help inform decisions about strategy development and tactics deployment in order to maintain and grow a company’s brand equity over time.
Brand Awareness
A brand represents the company’s image, values, and personality. Brands are built on trust and loyalty, they are not just products or services; they represent an entire lifestyle. Your brand identity should be consistent across all media platforms, including print, radio, television, and the Internet. Branded search should be a significant part of your brand awareness campaign and to increase conversions on your website.
Brand awareness is an important part of any marketing strategy since it can help with getting more customers through many marketing and advertising channels that lead back to your online presence.
When a visitor arrives at your website through a brand awareness campaign, the visitor’s intentions to engage with your brand are 3.5x higher than non-branded search terms. Over time, customer acquisition will increase, and it will be more organic, which will eventually lower your cost per acquisition.
What is branded search?
Branded searches happen when someone types your brand name or product name in Google. These searches tend to come from people who know about your company – either because they’ve heard about you through word of mouth, or because they’ve searched for your company name before. People who type your brand name directly are usually more interested in buying than those who randomly find you. As such, branded searches are an important part of any sales funnel.
Organic search traffic is a great source of targeted traffic. Visitors from branded organic search are more likely to take action because of search intent. These visitors tend to have a longer duration on your site, meaning they’re more likely to engage with your offerings, unlike visitors that visit your site through non-branded search.
Branded Search Gets Higher Conversions
Branding is about building a strong connection between your business and its target audience. Branded keyword searches indicate that someone has heard of your company or brand, and is looking specifically for you. Search queries containing your brand convert higher than topic or service based keywords.
Some examples of branded search terms are :
- Your company’s name (e.g., “Google”)
- Your company’s full address (“Google, Mountain View, CA 94043”)
- The name of one of your products (“Google Chrome”)
- A specific feature of your product (“Google Desktop”)
- A specific location where your company operates (“Google Maps” or “Google Earth”)
- A specific time period (“Google Calendar” or “Google Summer Camp”)
- An industry term related to your company (“Google Finance” or “Google Analytics”)
Increasing Brand Lift with Online and Offline Media
Press news about your company or brand both online and offline, over time, can increase the awareness of your brand. Offline media placements in newspaper, magazine, radio, billboard, and TV advertising are also effective ways to create brand awareness. They work by reminding people of your brand every day. This can help build up brand recognition. According to Tailor Brands, it takes between 5-7 impressions to even start creating brand awareness. However, once brand awareness starts increasing, it increases exponentially.
Press Releases
Publishing regular news about your business as a press release on quality news sites can increase the amount of traffic to your website. Branded search will increase when readers want to learn more about your business or product from past customers by using your name plus reviews to research your reputation.
“On average, expert content lifted familiarity 88 percent more than branded content.”
During the readers’ research into a brand or product, performing an organic search query for reviews, articles and press stories from earned media sources is common. Managing the results in the search engine will guarantee that readers are directed to content served by you to also direct them to a call to action and higher conversions.
Mentioning your business name and linking directly to your site in your press release creates signals that increase authority in the eyes of Google, causing a lift to related branded keywords rankings overall.
Offline Print Media
Newspapers
Newspapers are a powerful medium to reach more customers locally. Studies indicate that 82% trust ads in printed media and over 90% of news media consumers take action after reading an advertisement.
In support of an SEO strategy, a printed ad or write up can be creatively written to inspire readers to perform a brand + modifier (industry, product, or other related search term) search on Google. This happens naturally, however, it can be greatly increased by instructing readers in your copy.
Advertising in Magazines
Magazine advertising costs vary depending on where you advertise, how many pages you want, and what type of publication you’re using. Prices for a full page advertisement in a popular national magazine can be as high as $500,000 and a local magazine may only charge a few hundred dollars.
Magazines have been around for centuries, and continue to be one of the best ways to build brand equity and drive traffic to your website. Magazines are still very relevant today because they provide useful tips and advice to their readers. Specialized trade magazines offer great opportunities to get your company name out there and connect with potential clients.
Digital Media
Radio Marketing
Audio advertising in the form of linear radio, online radio, and podcasts is a powerful way to increase brand lift. In fact, according to a study conducted by iHeartMedia, radio was found to be the most trusted medium compared to cable or network TV and social media.
Programmatic audio advertising is another method to increase brand lift through programmatic buying. It works by allowing advertisers to buy targeted inventory based on audience demographics, interests, and behaviors. Programmatic buys allow marketers to target their audiences better while saving money. By advertising on platforms like iHeartRadio or Spotify, brands can reach specific audiences with relevant messages.
It is estimated that programmatic audio advertising reaches 70 million listeners per month. The key to successful audio advertising is to use the right words to attract listeners to use search keywords online to visit your website. When done correctly and consistently, audio advertising can increase brand equity by up to 20%.
Connected TV
Using TV advertising drives search behavior and many viewers are likely to respond to ads using the search engines or visiting the website directly.
TV advertising has become increasingly expensive due to rising production costs, but there are ways to save money. For example, if you are running a campaign for a single day or weekend, consider buying a 30-second spot instead of a 60-second spot. You could also buy multiple spots at once, rather than doing them all individually.
Using these cost-cutting tips may save you money, but does not guarantee you will reach your desired audience. Linear TV advertising may still be out of reach for many businesses when measuring the return of investment. Also, the requirement to extend the duration of the ad campaign for months can still put this form of TV marketing out of reach for many businesses.
TV advertising is a powerful advertising medium. Connected TV allows advertisers to not only leverage the power of TV advertising, but often experience better conversions than linear TV.
Connected TV is a way to deliver television content through connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, computers, smart TVs, smartwatches and other Internet-enabled devices. Advertisers can create custom campaigns that target audiences across different platforms, use behavioral and demographic data to reach ideal customers. Some platforms allow you to use links or buttons to increase the ability of the audience to take action by visiting your site or offer.
Some networks and platforms that are available to advertise through Connected TV are Hulu, Pluto TV, YouTube, Amazon Video, Roku, Apple TV, Google Play, PlayStation Vue, Xfinity On Demand, Sling TV, Sony PlayStation, Tubi TV, Crunchyroll, Redbox Instant, MLB and more!
DOOH Digital Advertising
DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) advertising is the messaging to consumers in public places, commuting to work, waiting (e.g. in elevators), and in specific commercial locations that is powered by ad technology (geofencing, retargeting, reporting, tracking, and personalization). It’s no surprise how outdoor digital billboard advertising is driving brand awareness and improving the search volume of branded terms over time.
DOOH is a premium physical media that is limited since it is location based and relies on mobile data for measuring its effectiveness. The message is delivered via a screen, which can be seen by passersby. The screen can either display static images or video.
Brand Equity with Branded Search Strategy
In conclusion, we live in uncertain times. We know that the economy is going through a rough patch, and that means that companies are having to cut costs wherever possible. One of the places they’re cutting back is their marketing budget overall. This can mean lower search engine rankings, fewer clicks, and less brand equity.
The best option for businesses that need to increase visibility and sales during these tough economic times is to invest in improving their branded search.
The previous discussed strategies have proven to be very successful for several major brands over the years. For example, when Apple launched its iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, the two models were advertised heavily both online and offline, triggering branded searches for these product names. Both phones received high ratings from reviewers, which led to increased sales.
Branded search advertising is a great way to reach potential customers who may not normally visit your website. But it’s also a smart investment because it helps build brand awareness and increases customer loyalty. Whether you’re trying to promote a new line of shoes or a new version of your software, branded search advertising can help you achieve your goals.
We would love to discuss a strategy that will allow you to increase the brand equity of your business or products. Contact us today for more details.
