Here’s a question for you:
Do you think a brand can influence your behavior outside of purchase preference? Put another way, will seeing the North Face logo make you want to take up hiking in the snow?
A few years ago, researchers at Duke University conducted an experiment with 341 students. Their goal? Studying what makes a brand powerful and how we’re influenced by brands. As part of this study, the students were asked to complete what they were told was a visual acuity test.
During this test, either an Apple logo or IBM logo flashed on the screen for a second, so quickly that the students were unaware they had been exposed to the logo. The participants then completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing all the uses they could think of for a brick.
Are you surprised that students exposed to the Apple logo came up with not just more uses, but more creative uses? The experiment was also done using the Disney Channel logo and the E! logo – and the students were tested on their degree of honesty and dishonesty. Which logo exposure led to more honesty? If you thought Disney, you’re right.
This is evidence that subliminal brand exposure can cause people to act in specific ways. Branding matters.
For those of us who work in paid search, this whole “branding” thing, with its unintuitive KPIs, can seem nebulous and not something for us to worry about. We PPC-ers have specific goals and KPIs, and it’s easy for us to be seen as only a bottom-funnel channel. But we’re far more powerful than that.
Here’s the truth: Brand advertising via PPC does impact the bottom line.
I’ll share three key ways to build a framework for branding:
- Make choosing you easier.
- Show your customers you care.
- Make it easy to be a loyal customer.
Chances are you’re taking some of these steps already, which is fantastic. This framework can guide you to ensure you’re covering all the steps of the funnel. Let’s break down how PPC can support all three of these key points.
1. Make choosing you easier
Top brands understand their audiences really well. And what’s true of pretty much every audience right now is that we’re all looking for the fast fix. So if a brand can make it easy for us to find what we need, to get something done – that brand is going to win our hearts.
Which is why getting your ad messaging right is critical.
Something I notice repeatedly is that we’re so focused on that next advanced tactic or the newest feature that we neglect the simple basics. And that is how we get cracks in our foundation.
Most accounts I look at perform brilliantly with the complex, but routinely make avoidable errors with the basics.
Ad copy
Ads are one of those places where the cracks aren’t just visible, they’re also costly. Let’s look at a few examples of ads with sitelink extensions.
Example 1: What not to do
What do you think of this ad?
It’s a decent ad. It’s just not great. What’s hurting the ad is that the sitelinks are a broad – even random – mix of different paths and actions a person can take. We have a mix of product, social media, and spokesperson content. This is not likely to make anyone’s life easier.
Even if I had been interested in the makeup, I might be distracted by the opportunity to meet Carrie Underwood, reducing the odds of a conversion. In trying to please too many different audiences, this ad doesn’t do a particularly strong job of pleasing anyone.
Example 2: Sitelinks organized according to stage of interest
Why not organize your sitelinks according to your customer’s stage of interest instead, like Clinique did here? This is brilliant.
Clinique is acknowledging that some shoppers are here just to buy the makeup they always order – so “Shop Makeup” is the first sitelink offered. But other visitors have come to see what’s new, or to do research on the quality of Clinique skincare, and probably everyone is looking for that discount.
Organizing sitelinks by your customer’s stage of interest also boosts brand by showing your customer that you care. We’ll talk more about that piece later.
Example 3: Sitelinks organized according to customer’s need
Here’s something smart: Organizing sitelinks according to what you already know your customers need.
Harley Davidson knows that a potential customer coming to their website wants more than pretty pictures of the bike. They’re ready to schedule a test ride or even estimate payments, so these options are right at the top.
They also understand that Harley Davidson is an aspirational product. I may want to estimate a payment or find information about my local dealer even before I know how to ride a bike. It’s part of the dream of joining the Harley lifestyle. They know this and make their customers’ lives easier by sharing links to learn-to-ride classes.
Example 4: Give them multiple ways to choose you
For brands targeting by geography and who have a local presence, including call extensions and location extensions is a must.
As searches move from desktop to mobile, we know that local searches take the lead – and conversions on a local search happen within five hours of the search (source: Microsoft Internal research). Including call and location extensions helps shorten that conversion cycle.
What I especially love about this ad is that they give you two different buying options. You can visit the store at the physical address, or if that is deemed out-of-the-way by the searcher, the ad entices them to shop Sephora with a discount code for an online purchase. This increases the odds that the shopper will choose Sephora as opposed to visiting a more conveniently located competitor.
Indirect brand terms
When people are looking for your service but not necessarily your brand, you can still make their lives easier by sharing answers to questions they may have.
Of course, you’re already showing up for branded searches or searches directly asking for your product. But what about being helpful to your customers by answering their questions with helpful information? Bidding on these keywords is good for your brand.
For example, Neutrogena is doing a great job at showing up for longer-tail keywords, and they’re also working to build the association between gentle makeup removers for sensitive skin and their brand.
And here, Crest is doing a fantastic job in using their ad copy to make themselves stand out as experts. If anyone has questions about teeth whitening, they’re showing that they’re ready to answer them:
This also helps you show up for long-tail queries, which are another increasingly critical aspect of voice search.
2. Show your customers you care
If you can anticipate issues and show up when your customers are venting, you win.
Professor Andrew Ehrenberg of South Bank Business School says that people trust strong brands more. They forgive your mistakes more easily. They believe you will put things right.
And what better way to show your customers you care than by anticipating their issues?
Be there when they want to complain
Where’s the first place you go when you want to look something up? Most likely a search engine. Showing up well in the SERPs can make a big difference.
Let’s look at an example. I did a search for complaints related to Disney, a brand with a strong positive sentiment.
Surprisingly, the SERPs were filled with complaint sites. What could have helped Disney here would be if they ran ads on these keywords, with the message that they were keen to make things right, and here’s the best number to call and chat.
Wouldn’t that diffuse the situation? Best of all, keywords like this would be very low-cost to bid on.
What about showing up when potential customers are complaining about the competition? You could consider running ads for keywords related to complaints about your competition.
I’d advise you to be careful with this approach since you want to come across as being helpful, not gloating. This strategy also may not lead to very many conversions – since the searcher is looking to complain and not to find alternative businesses – but given the low cost, it may be worth testing.
Cross-channel wins
As PPCs, we’re more powerful than even we give ourselves credit for. Our work can greatly help the PR and SEO teams. Here’s how.
PR:
As noted earlier, the search engine is the first place we go when we want to look up something.
This is so very impactful that, as reported in the New York Times, Microsoft scientists were able to analyze large samples of search engine queries that could in some cases identify Internet users who were suffering from pancreatic cancer, even before they have received a diagnosis of the disease.
This all goes to show the power of search. We can also harness that power for reputation management.
Broad-match bidding can help PR with brand protection. Looking through broad-match search term reports, a.k.a search query reports (SQRs), can help to spot trends like recalls or a rise in negative sentiment.
PPCs can send the PR folks a branded SQR on a regular basis for them to scrub through to spot any concerning trends. This can help PPC stand out as a channel that protects and monitors brand sentiment.
SEO:
Content marketing is a key way for brands to build loyalty, and PPC is an excellent way to get the content to the audience. Serving ads on key terms that support the content you have allows you to give your audience the info they really want.
For example, if your SEO teams built a mortgage calculator as value-add content, then you could serve ads for queries such as “How much house can I afford?”:
Taking this concept a step further, you can use high-value content to show up with ads that match the research stage of the customer’s interest. As PPCs, we’re often keen to simply show an ad that gets people to convert. But what if they’re not ready? Why should we either ignore them or show up with something that doesn’t match their goal?
Take a look at these ads that show up for a research-stage query:
The first ad from Sears – while very compelling – seems mismatched to the search query.
Now look at the third ad in the list, offering 50 kitchen idea photos. This is a much better match to the query. If it were me searching, this is the ad I would have chosen to click on.
What happens to the conversion?
Well, the landing page of the “50 ideas” ad could feature some type of offer, say like what the Sears ad has to offer, and here it would be much more welcome. In this way, we could use higher-funnel ads as lead gen, with KPIs such as content impressions, lead form fills, and micro-conversions.
This is such a win-win-win strategy:
- You’ve shown your customers you care for them and will be there for them
- You’ve helped your colleagues get more exposure for their hard work
- You’ve earned yourself cost-effective new leads and conversions.
Boss move.
Want more ideas? Wil Reynolds has some fantastic tips on how SEOs can use PPC to hit their goals.
3. Make it easy to be a loyal customer
Growing customer lifetime value is one of the most worthwhile things a brand can do. There are two clever ways to do this.
Smarter remarketing
You liked us enough to buy once – how would you like to buy again? Show your customers more of what they like over time and they’ll be more attuned to choosing your brand, provided you’ve served them well.
What about remarketing based on how long it’s been since the purchase of a product?
This tactic can be seen as helpful as opposed to overtly sales-y, building brand loyalty. Think of how Amazon does it with their emails suggesting other products or deals we may be interested in. As a result, we just keep going back to Amazon. Even if they don’t have the lowest price.
For example, what if a sports nutrition company knew that most customers took three months to finish their box of protein shake powder? Then around the middle of month two, the company could run an ad like this to their list of buyers. It features an offer and shows up just at the right time.
The customer will probably think they’ve lucked out to find a special offer just at the right time. We know that it’s not luck, it’s just smarter remarketing.
Want more ideas? Check out Sam Noble’s Whiteboard Friday on how paid media can help drive loyalty and advocacy.
Show up for the competition
Remember when the iPhone 6s launched? Samsung ran very clever PPC ads during the launch of the iPhone 6s, and again when Apple was in the news about the phones bending.
Samsung used humor – which, importantly, wasn’t mean-spirited – and got a lot of attention and goodwill, not to mention a ton of PR and social media attention. Great for their brand at the time!
You can use the same tactic to run ads on competitors’ brand names with ads that showcase your USP. This works especially well for remarketing in paid search (or RLSA) campaigns.
Here, Chevy capitalized on the Tesla Model 3 announcement-related search volume spike. They ran ads that reminded users that their cars were available in late 2016, with the unstated message that it’s much sooner than when the Tesla Model 3 cars are expected to arrive.
Give back
Engaging with the customer is the best way to make it easy for them to be loyal to your brand. Enhance that by showing them you care about what they care about for added impact.
Here’s one way to give back to your customer, and this particular effort is also a huge branding opportunity.
I love how L’Oréal is associating themselves with empowering women – and most of their customers will like this as well. They’re giving back to their customers by honoring the women they care about. To create loyal customers, the best brands give back in meaningful ways.
Wrapping up
One of my favorite Seth Godin quotes is, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories that you tell.”
PPC is a wonderful channel to shape and create stories that will engage and delight your customers.
And now we come full circle, to that place where we started, wondering how in the world PPC can impact brand. Your paid search campaigns are a chapter in your brand’s story, and you have an unlimited number of ways to write that chapter, and to contribute to the brand.
Branding isn’t just for the birds. Have you found a way to use PPC to help grow your brand? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
PPC is very useful in increasing traffic even when you are ranked organically for the same keyword. It has been observed that when a website is ranked on the first page of search and also opts for PPC the traffic obtained is greater than the sum of organic and PPC each on a stand alone basis.
Secondly PPC offers a way for a new website to get traffic fast as SEO takes time.
Hi Joseph,
Absolutely yes! I love that you mentioned that. We've even done studies on how brand term bidding can impact overall clicks to your site and we came to the same conclusion you did. You can review the study here: https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/insi.... Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment.
Curious your thoughts within Indirect Brand Terms. When i'm looking at the performance in bulk, i tend to see terms like "how to" and even "what" having considerably poorer conversion rates. Do you recommend breaking out these keywords into specific ad groups or even a unique campaign to allow for a specific budget and keep performance separated? I know this is product specific, but across the majority I do tend to see the more ask type searches not leading to conversions.
These keywords technically are not brand, so CPCs will likely be higher but curious to see your thoughts as we want to optimize as much as possible. But based on the message of the article, do you think there is a greater advantage to bid on these terms even if potentially seeing a negative ROI (or higher CPA)?
Thanks!
Hi Purna! Thanks for taking the time to put this together. While I don't work on the PPC side of things, it's great to be able to read through these articles and really digest them—helps me to have more well-rounded knowledge! :) So thanks for making these articles so engaging.
Out of all of your suggestions, which options do you think work best for small home service type companies?
Nice info Purna,
Really into using PPC with Content marketing as a way to get the content in front of the right audience.
Targeting search terms to promote your content is a great way to target the audience and reach them with the content. It's a mechanism in linkbuilding too...
Thank for the article :)
Hi Peter, thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment. You're absolutely right-- targeting search terms via PPC to promote content is a fab and oftentimes cost-effective strategy.
Great Information, many ideas to choose and implement in our businesses. But for small or local brands or businesses, what options would be more effective?
Hi Juan Luis, these tips apply to businesses of any and every size. Thanks!
Hi Juan, these tips could definitely apply to small and local businesses. Thanks!
Hello Purna
Thank you for great content!
Do you have a way to block competitors from clicking on our brand ads just as fraud ?
Hi! Thanks so much for reading. In terms of click fraud, the search engines work really hard to identify and combat it. If you are noticing an unusual amount of clicks and are suspecting click fraud you can always reach out to our customer service teams to look into it further: https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/bing... Hope this helps.
Google is pretty good at telling if a comeptitor keeps clicking on your ad VS just a consumer doing research.
Why we are using still ppc ..Many told me ppc causes increasing bounce rate..Is it still effective ?? and Can anyone please explain me Use of ppc now a days?? regards
Very good advice !! Thank you very much for sharing them Purna !! Although for a small project like mine it is difficult to do branding due to the budget. You have to be very clear how and where we put our ads and above all segment, segment and segment looking for our potential customers. We will be opening the market little by little.
Thanks for the PPC advice for brands. Looking to expand into this soon.
If you want to get a better and quick results whether its may sales and popularity of your business, PPC is must. Due to Pay per click method effective keywords mostly targeted, by which they grow up in SERP's. Another thing is SEO by which you can optimize your website or business free of cost with help of directory submissions and business listings.
Very accurate information given for PPC.
I am doing PPC from last 2 years, Brand name and logo impact more in users.
I got some new ideas from reading this Post.
Thanks, Purna Virji.
Great article! We have some of these implemented, but quite a few aren't. LOVE the note about sitelinks according to interest or level in the buying journey. Really never thought about it that way from the customer's perspective. Brilliant!
Hi Purna, loved your very interesting examples thank you! All very much thought provoking.
The competition suggestion is one that I feel is a little taboo, even with 'fair' intentions google adwords seems to be smart enough to know what you are doing, and they don't serve your ads well, you also get a very bad quality score.
I'd not worry about the low quality score. You're getting that because you don't have a keyword, ad and landing page that are in sync. If you can setup a campaign and it's converting. Why would you not to do? If a searcher doesn't know you're an option, they can't pick you as a solution.
It's not taboo to bid on your competitors terms. I do it all the time and this is business at the end of the day.
Hi Brendan, it's not taboo. As Duane said above it can be very effective in terms of ROAS. As long as the ROAS is there, then I wouldn't worry about quality score as much. Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment.
Looks like all the Ad Extension Analysis Here. As per my experience - Call Out & Rich Snippet Features are more valuable.
You talk about ordering sitelinks in PPC. I don't think it is possible with Google AdWords, unless that is a new feature.
I was thinking the same thing Marc. I don't think they have changed how they work. We could just show 4 sitelinks and hope they all get shown but that's risky.
Hi Marc and Duane!
While we can't select the order, we can choose which sitelinks we want to associate with which campaign. Thus, I would choose a more tightly-focused grouping of sitelinks and see which combinations show up. Ultimately the search engine will show the sitelink combo that is likely to get the highest CTR. Hope this helps
Great article with some actionable tips. I have to add though that some if these actions only make sense when you already have some brand recognition and therefore search volume. If no one is searching for your brand it doesn't make sense for example to bid on brand keywords or related terms.
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much! You're right, some tips here are more valuable for brands with more brand-term search volume. I wouldn't discount them completely for smaller brands though-- if people have been to your site before and are considering purchasing from you then it's likely they may do another search with your brand name in it. In that case, why not put your best foot forward, right? Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
I always say it's good to setup a brand campaign even in the early days. We did that for new startup last year and they are still seeing people search for their brand. Sure most of the business comes through competitor and generic traffic but brand is always worth setting up from day one.
Great article with great examples Purna!
I have a question regarding competitor targeting,though...I know that google lifted the ban on bidding on competitor brand terms back in 2008 and it's now allowed to bid on competitors names as long as you don't mention them on the content of the ad.
My only concern is that by bidding on competitors names, if your landing page doesn't have any mention whatsoever of the competitor(as you probably don't want to either) you might be losing impression chances as your landing page is somewhat "not relevant" and therefore the quality score of your ad decreases, am I right? How do you solve that? I'd really appreciate your help in this
We do a lot of competitor bidding for clients. Your QS won't be high but by having a landing page that speaks to your product and benefits. You'll have people convert. The traffic is usually more qualified then a generic search. Plus there is a halo effect of people knowing who you're as an option.... if they weren't aware of your brand before.
You have to accept you'll have a low QS and focus on what information do these people need to convert. Plus you can remarket to all these people RLSA and get them convert with a new search ad + landing page. Doing this for a client right now and the CPA is bloody cheap.
Hi Meritxell,
Good question and it's one I get asked quite often. Duane hit the nail on the head in his answer above- that's the approach I would recommend.
I always tell clients that if it is converting and working for you, and you are seeing ROAS, then what does a lower QS matter? Our ultimate goal is ROAS and conversions. Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment!
Great piece Purna.
I really like the Crest example. People are always asking tons of questions. One reason video is taking off the last two years has been around a lot of how-to videos. The Sears example thought I'm not sure is off... I think they are just going after a price conscious consumer who would buys from them normally. The link wouldn't work for me but I could see it working for certain friends.
I'm glad you brought up how PPC can work with other channels.That's one thing I strive to do with clients is always ask is how the rest of the business is doing and making sure we are all aligned.
Hi Duane! How lovely that you took the time to post all these comments- so appreciated! You know I'm a fan of your awesome work so it means a lot coming from you. Hope to see you on the circuit soon.
Purna! I'm a fan of your work. Always mentioning you to people when we talk voice search and what's going on in the space.
P.S. I left Unbounce and stared my own little agency here in Vancouver. If you come to town, let me know and drinks are on me. I sadly won't be at HeroConf LA as I've a Oz trip a few weeks later and can't swing both right now.
Hi Purna,
Interesting post, but i have (a novice?) question: what KPIs you track to know if you branding ppc campaign are doing well? For example in the case of Listerine ads of how to brush your teeth.
Thanks!
Carlos
If you sell the product on your site through an ecommerces store. Then you'd still look at sales and conversions.
If you don't sell online. You can look at collecting emails as a KPI or give away some sort of discount code that they can use in store. The discount code would be something you only give our to AdWords traffic to help you understand if the traffic is converting. If you've a video on the page, you would have a pixel fire when someone clicks the play button on your page. So video views might be your KPI if you're Crest.
Hi Carlos! Not a novice question :) I would do a couple of different KPIs...the first set being engagement-related. How many people ended up downloading the PDF or watching the full video? What do they do after that? Are there micro-conversions we can identify, e.g. people who watch the full video are X many times more likely to visit the product page and convert? So measure interactions. Then the next step is you can measure how they impact or assist with actual conversions for you. Thanks!
Its just amaze me , some point which you highlight for Reputation management , and PPC related description with very dept study of different Companies really Impressive.
I have one Question about PPC and Reputation Management , Is AdWords Campaign rally helps for negative Review about Brand?
if Yes, then please elaborate.
Great article Purna! And Congrats on being the #1 most influential PPC Expert!
Two quick questions!
Question 1:
For the ‘Show your customers you care’ section – if you were to make the Disney message to show they were keen to make things right for those that were researching complaints, would that involve creating a whole landing page with the sole purpose of highlighting faults Disney has made and corrected? I thought that was interesting and was wondering if anyone had an example of a company actually doing that on their site. I have gotten many requests for brand reputation management and it is always a challenge.
Question 2:
When you said: “In trying to please too many different audiences, this ad doesn’t do a particularly strong job of pleasing anyone”, that resonated with me a bit. I do not work with paid ads, but even in SEO I have seen campaigns start to stray towards the mentality that ‘more is better’. For certain pages and site structures that may work, but as you clearly state and I totally agree with, branded traffic needs to be treated different. In SEO we cannot choose where these searchers go, but generally I would argue that most of your traffic to your homepage is branded search. With that being said, whenever we get a new client or a client is doing a website redesign, I find it crucial to make sure that yes there are ways to get to all/most of the content from the homepage, but the important purchasing aspects are the most prominent. I think it is important to really drive that good experience so these branded searchers who have some familiarity with the business can easily find what they are looking for and convert.
Not to hijack away from the PPC world, but what would your opinion be on “informational” searches? So for example on an eCommerce website, enabling the search bar to not just crawl through products (important, purchase driving pages) but also additional “information” content like blog articles. It may provide a good user experience, and allow more attention to your other content (like your Carrie Underwood example), but the product pages are what have the higher conversion rates and a branded search visitor may be looking for.
In the past I've done is reply to people's comments online if they left something on TrustPilot, G2Crowds or one of those other review sites. I don't think I'd make a page that shows all the things you've done wrong.
Hi John-Paul! For Q1: No, not at all. Think instead of a customer contact page with dedicated phone numbers/chatbots for issue resolution. The goal is to get them to talk to someone asap and not have to scroll through multiple potential issues that may or may not apply.
For Q2: Best to think of it in terms of what's the searcher's intent and what's the best result I could show. Thanks!
For better & quick results PPC should be your bet. Your ad will be displayed as long as you are bidding for it. Promoting your brand through PPC is one of the best & cost-effective method nowadays, as you can reach your target audience in short time.
I use PPC for my own business. People often get confused between the perks of PPC vs SEO, but in combination, they are extremely effective.
Very true!