Search Marketing, Online Marketing and Branding

Well, it looks as if branding has made it's way into the supposedly dispassionate world of search marketing. Check out this article in the New York Times on a very interesting campaign by Google.

Of course, branding in the online world isn't exactly news -- elements of branding have been used particularly in online display advertising and often in conjunction with offline campaigns. Still, search is supposed to be driven predominately by relevancy to the search and position, but this isn't always the whole story.

I manage search marketing (Adwords) programs for several clients and I've seen a significant difference in campaigns where there is a concurrent brand effort going on versus when there is not -- a click-thru and conversion improvement of 20% or more. So although relevancy may still be the most important thing, don't forget to build trust, awareness and credibility through your brand.

Check back for a future post on the four most important questions to ask when building your brand.