Why Search Marketing & Branding Need Each Other
Without having these, we’re either making up our own, leaning on more shallow features and benefits, or inadvertently making our products and services seem similar to everyone else’s.
I own a digital agency that has existed for 20 years and did branding until just two years ago.
It wasn’t until we stopped doing branding that I came across a number of meaningful connections and “needs” search and branding teams have that enhance the efforts of both.
Search marketers are often at the other end and far away from brand strategy.
When branding is pressed for return on investment (ROI), it often comes downstream through marketing channels, platforms, and the implemented strategy.
Search often struggles without a differentiated brand or strategy to stand out from competitors in search results for ads or content.
I believe there are great benefits to connecting branding and search, partnering together, and working closely within broader business and marketing teams and environments.
Digging into conversations, my experience, and perspectives shared with me, I’m sharing the benefits categorized for search marketers and brand creatives/strategists alike that can create more consistent and impactful opportunities to elevate brands and performance overall.
For Search Marketers
Content & Creative Standards
In the absence of robust brand strategy development and documentation, search marketers (among other channels) are often left in a vacuum when it comes to creating content and assets needed for SEO and paid search success.
In a vacuum, there are best practices and channel strategies that can guide what gets created and what words, messaging, and creative are utilized.
However, it can be fragmented, inconsistent, and unrelated to broader themes and objectives.
When we have standards and strategies to leverage, we can be a further extension of the key unique messages to bring the brand alive.
I can’t count the number of times there have been conversations between search marketers and sales teams about specific ad copy and imagery that have no grounding or truth from brand strategy to fall back on.
I’ll say this as someone who has done SEO for a long time: You don’t want an SEO to write your copy or design your creative. There are exceptions and unicorns, but you want your SEO experts and SEM specialists doing their craft.
Unique Value Propositions
One of the key measures of search campaigns and strategies is how effective they are in driving conversions – and even deeper, what happens with those conversions and whether they become actual sales, revenue, and profit.
When leads are qualifying, too expensive, beat salespeople up over price, or don’t buy from an online store and go back to Google, we haven’t done our job in telling the story and sharing our value proposition.
There will always be someone looking for the cheapest, and unless we’re the low-price leader, we’ll lose those sales.
But, when someone is seeking our unique offering and factors that can include price but much more are in play, we want to do a great job presenting those at every touch point, including those important to SEO and PPC.
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