Branding Online – Why Marketers Need SEO
In an interview entitled Common Mistakes of Marketing Creatives and CEOs, Keith Reinhard (Chairman Emeritus of DDB) explains…
“When I was growing up in the industry, let me entertain you, let me make you smile, I’m very versatile, it was one way.”
Advertising was this way for decades, and what may have worked for the last 40 years clearly isn’t as effective these days. A shift like this comes as no surprise. Whether its advertising or just about anything, things change.
Reinhard goes on to describe the way things work now by suggesting…
“Now it’s we’re better together”.
This is a great point as the emergence of social media has had such an impact on brands, possibly one of the largest in recent times. Consumers are tired of being told and now look within their networks or trusted resources or contacts for more impartial views and recommendations.
An interesting point also brought up in the video mentions how when a CEO is really involved with the brand, the brand endures, has integrity, and can sustain the revolving doors of marketing directors. A great point as with each change in marketing leadership comes someone that scraps direction and previously built equity.
One of the best definitions of a brand I’ve heard was provided during this interview…
A brand is who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.
One person that has maintained these types of values is Steve jobs of Apple. Over the course of the last 20 years Apple as a brand has probably never strayed far. But one example of branding confusion that comes to mind is McDonald’s. It seems with each new agency they hire (every 2-3 years) there is a different direction in the messaging. For example, they make burgers, they make them fast, and their affordable. But over the years they’ve introduced pizza, ribs, and even salads.
Online branding will take marketing to new heights with the speed at which you can connect with consumers. With social media, search marketing, and Internet advertising a brand can literally grow at sonic speeds compared with the past.
Marketers still seem to overlook the potential of SEO and how it can drive measureable revenue to their online business, yet have adopted to the virtues of social media rather quickly.
Perhaps it’s the inability of the average marketer to truly understand the benefits of how SEO and online branding belong together and how it can help their bottom line.
With paid search marketing results (PPC) accounting for roughly 20% of the clicks in typical search results, that leaves a lot of cash on the table in terms of customer acquisition.
For SEO’s, the following isn’t new information, but it might be of interest to marketers which are less familiar with the practice.
If you try the Google Keyword Tool you can get some insight to the potential of SEO and appearing in natural search results. Depending on the phrase, you can increase your visibility by thousands and more with a properly executed SEO strategy that pushes your site into the top 10 results.
It’s important to note that SEO is similar to branding in one sense. It’s a process and requires a fair amount of time to achieve those top ranking results. Realistic expectations depending on your industry to rise to the top can range from 6 months to several years. One of the keys to increased success in this venture is the quality of your content or offering. By focusing on this aspect, marketers stand to gain advocates, which will assist in the link building process by blogging, tweeting, or linking to your site for you.
You might be thinking tweeting falls under social media, but it’s the content they tweet that should be part of your SEO strategy. Sometimes referred to as link bait, it’s about the creation of quality content that will help to get those links.
Content creation and planning sometimes falls on the shoulders of an SEO, as does PR and many other tasks. It’s always wise to have an SEO involved in the process but not necessarily depend solely on them to create this sort of material.
The role of SEO is about optimizing a site (for starters), but more important, is to improve the online visibility of said website so that it will rank for phrases that you’re targeting for your business.
When you think about it, there isn’t anything much better than your site showing up in the top listings when a potential customer is in the buying mode and looking for a product or service like one you might offer.
There is more likelihood of them inquiring or purchasing versus presenting banner ads all over. Most web users have banner blindness. Can you recall 3 banners you’ve seen in the last week? Most are lucky to be able to name one they had seen.
There probably isn’t a better way to position your brand online than showing up in the top search results. In the long run, your brand will become synonymous with the phrases you’ve targeted and displaying in those results also provides credibility to your brand’s product or service.
You should note that when you appear in those results, the url in first position will get about 42% of the clicks, while second gets 12%, third gets 9%, and it starts to drop sharply with each position after. And being on page two is like not being found at all.
You can see the entire interview mentioned above here.
Tags: internet branding, Internet Marketing, online branding, SEO
