...If people preferred the taste of Pepsi, the drink should have dominated the market. It didn't. So in the summer of 2003, Montague gave himself a 'Pepsi Challenge' of a different sort: to figure out why people would buy a product they didn't particularly like...In our world of search marketing, this theory has equal application in the SERPs. As a search engine user scans through the results, they select the link they believe most likely to answer their query. Enquiro's golden triangle research suggests that every user is looking, at the least, through the top 3 search results, and the majority scan no fewer than the first five results. Our job as marketers is to "brand" our website to searchers in such a way that we can be #5 (or #10) and get more clicks than our competitors.
...Montague had his subjects take the Pepsi Challenge while he watched their neural activity with a functional MRI machine, which tracks blood flow to different regions of the brain. Without knowing what they were drinking, about half of them said they preferred Pepsi. But once Montague told them which samples were Coke, three-fourths said that drink tasted better, and their brain activity changed too. Coke "lit up" the medial prefrontal cortex -- a part of the brain that controls higher thinking. Montague's hunch was that the brain was recalling images and ideas from commercials, and the brand was overriding the actual quality of the product. For years, in the face of failed brands and laughably bad ad campaigns, marketers had argued that they could influence consumers' choices. Now, there appeared to be solid neurological proof.
As an example, when I perform searches about search marketing related topics, I will scroll through results until I see a post from Stuntdubl, SEOBook, SearchEngineLand, SERoundtable or the like - the same is true for many folks in other fields; they know the brands they like and they want to find a familiar, reliable, trustworthy source. To help achieve this phenomenon, I've created a short list of steps to take to build this kind of branding into your search audience.
Steps to Successfully Branding Searchers
- Build a Strong Brand Name
I wrote about this last week, so I won't re-hash it. The value in the name is that it can be easily recognized and segmented from other brands. Names like Amazon, Wikipedia, and the BBC all do an excellent job of this.
- Place your Brand Prominently in Title Tags
It doesn't always need to be first in the title tag, but it certainly helps. Wikipedia and the New York Times have their brand after the content, while the BBC and Amazon put their brand name first. IMDB, in my opinion, shoots themselves in the foot by not using this branding system in their title tags. They're already an authority, and I believe they could increase their search traffic 15-30% simply by putting their brand in the title of each page. - Deliver a Consistent Experience
When searchers come to your site for information about a topic, they should receive the same page structure and format each time. This consistency improves user experience and usability and will entice users to return by making them comfortable with the format your site provides. - Create Content that Successfully Answers Queries
None of the tips above or below will help if you can't deliver on this most important part of the equation. The content you offer, whether it be informational, sales-oriented or entertaining has to correspond with the needs of the searcher. Excel in this piece, and your branded search traffic and search loyalty will skyrocket. - Build a Large Repository of Information
A small site can leverage branding, but it's big sites who'll see the most benefit. You need to be visible for thousands of searches related to a particular topic before you can truly feel the value of the branding effect. As searchers see your brand again and again in the SERPs, you also get the benefit of being perceived as an expert in the field - one of the terrific side effects.
Great post - I particularly like the fact that people enjoyed Pepsi more when they thought it was Coke. This is why I'm always calling you by the name "George Clooney". :)
...and why I always call Rand "Mystery Guest" ;)
And why we always refer to SEOMoz as "Google". HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
I think there are good points here, but I think you also have to be careful when discussing branding. It's kind of like SEO... it is very easy to generalize, good, bad, this and that, all rolled into one, but we know that there are many individual pieces that make up SEO... keyword research, link building, content optimization, linkbaiting... and much of this can be further broken into smaller elements.
We have to keep in mind, especially when looking at brands like Pepsi and Coke, that we're also looking at decades of branding impressions, not to mention family and peer impressions.
Although perhaps companies like that have gained a much better understanding of the psychological and neurological power of positive branding, that the mind can't necessarily separate the difference between reality and a memory, and in these cases, they've used their branding over time to create these positive associations. How many of us don't think of Coke and the feeling of peace and goodwill when we think of Christmas? But tht level of brand positioning is well beyond most of us.
Interestingly, the web provided almost the anti-brand experience... somewhere you could go to access things that you couldn't otherwise, where anyone could have their place right next to or even above the big names.
But the reality is that most of us want to find a brand we can trust. After all, the web is primarily about getting information, so being able to associate a brand as a reliable (or what we believe to be reliable) source gives a sense that we don't have to continue looking and digging through websites to find answers.
In the end, we're looking for simplicty.
Search is probably one of the most accessible tools for most to try to build those brand impressions. Most companies can't afford to run TV, radio or print spots just to build awareness. But when people continue to search a subject and your brand continues to pop up in the top results, it may start to build those same types of associations. People believe or want to believe that the top spots provide the most relevant, trusted information.
I imagine this benefit would be multiplied when your brand has been seen somewhere else, especially by a trusted source. "I remember seeing brand-x mentioned in the Wall Street Journal or USA Today" and now seeing brand-x in a search, they will gain some benefit of the authority carried by those sources. Not all that different than the idea on link authority.
But of course, you still have to deliver on the promise. Those positive associations will on carry you so far, and could even lock you into a position... after all, some would say that New Coke actually was better. Perhaps it was too much of a neurological jump to trade in all those old associations on something new.
I know that you've written about URLs recently Rand, but it also can't hurt to have your brand name in the URL (if it is one with offline recognition). A report from Cornell's Human Computer Interaction Group suggested that the URL accounts for 21% of the click decision..
And then you get major companies who decide to create new brands online, generally with ridiculous names like Fred that bear no relation to the well known offline brands (and which were probably thought up by a branding consultant for a ridiculous fee...
Do you have a link?
2.9MB Powerpoint or: Google's cache (in html)
The powerpoint version has graphs and pictures so unless you have dialup I'd suggest that version.
Thanks!
I'm looking for info like this separated by age and sex - and potentially native language, too. Obviously, we will expect differences in languages that read right to left or top to bottom, etc., but I menat other left-to-right languages.
I really appreciate posts like this because they go more into the details of user behaviour and marketing analysis. It gives more credibility to the type of work the search engine optimizers / marketers do, because it makes others notice the various dynamics that go into the various decisions of website visitors online.
Information like this is powerful for content driven and e-commerce websites alike because empowers them to identify the motivations of their target markets. Sometimes people simplify SEO / SEM to the extent that it is represented on one end of the spectrum more often as child's play, and on the other end as some type of witch-craft or wizardry. It is neither of these, but instead it is a combination of market research, search engine technology, copywriting, advertising strategies, and many other elements.
The one thing about Web 2.0 type of websites that makes them powerful in this regard is that they have (or should have) a helpful, intuitive, engaging, and interactive user experience that leaves the consumer with ideal results (finding what they are looking for) while helping the website operator to accomplish their goals (making a conversion). It takes these type of neurological / psychological reactions into consideration as the motivation for the choice of GUI and choice of copy.
I think the Pepsi story is exactly what Seth Godin is talking about in "All Marketers are Liars." We all have this ability to convince ourselves that things that aren't necessarily true are actually true. And they do become true for each of us if we believe the story we tell ourselves.
I agree that larger sites will be the biggest benefactor of more branding, but I've always thought smaller sites can still brand themselves at least within their niche.
It's the repetition and visibility of the name that leads to people recognizing your brand and even of your site isn't getting that visibility in the SERPs you can still create it by participating on other community sites.
A simple example might be a forum where your username is your comapny name. Your site might not show up a lot in the SERPs, but choose the right forum or other community and those pages may be very well represented and help to reinforce your brand.
Same reason you would write articles and post them on more popular sites than your own. In a way you piggyback on someone else's brand to help reinforce your own.
<--- Shameless example :)
If your brand is relatively unknown, how much do you gain by placing it first in the title tag? My guess that it is negative benefit because that pushes your real message out of the golden triangle. For these business a strong KW rich title tag will get bolding in the SERPs on the left side of the read.
The real winner will be content (as in the case of Coke) combined with obvious onsite branding that strongly lets the customer know where the good content was found.
If you already have a strong brand then leading with that strength might pay.
I'm not sure that Rand is suggesting that you always put brand first in the title:
Keywords are obviously very important, but brand can be as well. As a rule of thumb our title tags tend to run along the line:Find [keyword] news/jobs/etc on [brand]
I think an important real life example when it comes to branding on-line is Google. How often do we "google" instead of "search"? I think the search engine only is shooting itself in the foot when it tries to punish those who use it name as a verb.
Perhaps companies and organizations should find out what words people use in reference to them, and then place those words in their title tags and on-line promotional material. In some cases, that is the brand name -- like Coke.
I noticed this when i was bit younger, before i moved up north, there was this brand of chewing gum that everyone enjoyed, whenever they we wanted gum it would be Chico, so much so that when asked what we we were chewing we would answer Chico ( even though it was a winterfresh). In essense chico became gum. When referring to chewing gum either name is interchangeable. The brand made such an impression it was it's industry.
This is what google has done to their brand as stevenp has noted, to me yahoo was establised more of a marketing entity than just search. Google on the other hand established their brand as a search engine ( you can tell from the lack of distractions at their home page). So they in event defined search, thus search is google, google is search.
Eventually it boils down to this, know your niche, market to your niche, pop up whenever there is something to be told about your niche, target your niche with specification, deliver and then you ( hopefully) become your niche.
Just my perception
In the Houston area all types of soda were referred to as "coke" even if it was Pepsi.
Concerning your point about how Yahoo! has marketed itself as much more than just a search engine, I think that it has hurt its stock performance some. It does many things, and the more you do, the harder it is to do each thing well. Google has successfully presented itself as a company that focuses on one thing -- search. However, if Google's search prowess wanes, it does not have as much to fall back on as Yahoo! does.
That's a great comment. There's not much point building a brand with nothing to back it up. Sell the service or product first. Only once you have raving fans and sneezers about your product should you even consider building a brand. Working that way will just give you a lot of grief, if a nice logo and site.
Concentrate on customer experience first and last. The customer experience will then become the brand.
Michie,
I think that you can develop a product or service and build a brand contemporaneously. In fact, I think a company focusing on what it does -- instead of what it is -- will result in a great brand.
Nice comment, all the marketing and branding in the world probably won't help you if you don't have a good product or service first. Although there are some interesting examples of companies making lots of money with marketing / branding and an inferior product, but discussing those usually digresses into a discussion on ethics. I can assume most of the people reading this want to do the best job possible for their customers and not grow from "tricky" marketing.
There is often a difference between growing a business and building a brand marketing inferior products or services.....
and
an established brand being able to leverage that (at least short term) to market inferior products or services.
People may either convince themselves that the products or services are good through blind-allegiance, or they may give the brand "extra-slack" for the time being due to past performance. The question then comes down to how long you can coast on your brand?
The expectations are much higher today, as is the availability of information, that I think many companies are finding that they can't coast along like they could once before. The web offers a reinforcing view when you suddenly find that you aren't the only one that feels they were let down or is being taken for a ride.
Yes there are a lot of companies which have great branding and bad service and products. They can get away with it for a while, not eventually unless the two are tied together they fail.
The opposite of this is that you can have terrible branding and the great product or service will save you. Fixing brand is easier when you are a great company.
For me, the reasoning behind this is obvious. It's the same as training a dog to do tricks, or a child to develop good character traits - you give them a stimulus, and when they respond in the way you want, you reward them.
In this case, you give them your product, and when they buy it, you give them a good experience. The key with it though is that the "good experience" IS NOT enjoying the product. It's in buying it. You feel good because you bought that can of pepsi, or that new ebook, or the new car. It makes you feel good, not because it's necessarily a good product, but because you think you should. You reward yourself.
The best brands (in my opinion) are the ones that have this down to an art. Brands with a lousy product, but a killer marketing message. So the product stops mattering; all people care about is buying it.
I would be slightly wary of that analysis. Pepsi has spent so much money infiltrating such a large portion of our lives (tv commercials, billboards, movie ads, product placement) that it makes sense that humans associate those memories with the brand and thus make a decision about the quality based on brand awareness. The mind falsely influences the "body" all the time, just look at the placebo effect. How stupid is that? (depending on your perspective) This pill takes away your pain, oh wow my pain is gone.
Branding can be very important, but in order for the brand to do anything, people have to have a sense of familiarity with it and have to have either used it many times before so they associate good feelings with it or it has to meet all their trust signs. For example if I opened up a new site and put n the corner that the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, HP were all clients of mine (This is an example, not true BTW) if I did that in a way that people believed the client reference I would have instant credibility by building off what those brands mean. It wouldn't matter if my brand was Newbie215.
I think the greatest thing you can learn here to how to leverage against the preconditioned brand name. Like if I was going to launch a new Cola, instead of attempting to compete directly with all the branding and visual images that Pepsi and Coke have saturated our minds with I would use their brand in my advertising and leverage off that. I would say something like (Of course you'd have to be REAL careful not to get sued)
Pepsi's got great ads, we like them too, but our cola tastes better* (give reference to taste test). See this taste test videos on this site. Enjoy their commercials, but don't buy the hype, get simple better cola – it actually does taste better*.
seoMOZ may feel good about their brand, but I think most of your visitors (like the 10,000-30,000 uniques this site recieves each day) probably don't have a lot of experience with it and it means no more to them then seobook, or seonews, or seotoday, or seoXYZ. One thing that is true though, better domain names inherently help build trust. seoXYZ.org looks better then search-engine-marketing-positioning.com, but that has to do with trust signals more then branding. Ofcourse SEOmoz has done a great job of branding itself to other seo consultants and companies and I think you've done a great job with building a brand in the SEO industry, which itself is still very seperated from maninstream consciousness.
I don’t' believe most websites will benefit from pushing their brand name first or last in the title tag. Like EGOL said
I whole heartedly agree!
I don’t' think most visitors even remember most of the websites they visit, I mean think about how many brands you look at each day. Without some major traffic or a major push to hit them in the face with your brand I believe the majority of people will still forget you shortly after there visit. That's why converting browsers to subscribers is so valuable, except much more difficult then people portray. I mean seriously how many people even read 10 blogs a day? Plus if you position yourself as a market leader or education source most of your subscribers won't be customers, they'll be like minded individuals. It's interesting and definitely not cut and dry. What would be better. A blog with 100 potential customer subscribers or 1,000 competitors / like minded individuals? I think I would choose the 100 potential customers, but that's just me. Of course you could always leverage the power of having 1,000s of link minded individuals and competitors as your subscribes to build your brand.
It's difficult to talk about this stuff without specific examples, because it's all so relative to the individual company and the size / scope of their INTERNET MARKETING campaign.
PS. Love the book "All Marketers are Liars" by Seth Godin. If you're into SEO and come from a technical as opposed to a marketing background it's a must read, actually I'd recommend it for everybody. When I first say that book, I had absolutely no idea who he was, it was actually the title / cover picture that caught my eye, I read two paragraphs and then proceeded to sit down and read it cover to cover.
This is a great article, Rand. It makes me want a Coke right now. :)
Great thread, Rand and commenters.This is the kind of discussion that trips my trigger. Maybe I should have focused my career on branding :) Because this stuff is what excites me. Understanding WHY it works or fails.Several years back I was able to have a dialog with Martin Lindstrom. If you dont know him, check him out. One of my favorite quotes: "Your brand represents the sum of all the minds and souls of every single person that comes into contact with your company over time."Yes, we can build and manipulate brand, in just the way 'neuromarketing' contents. But remember, it manipulates us right back.-Jeff
At what point does marketing become unethical? If the product does not live up to the marketing, is that lying?
How about marketing via senses other than sight and hearing? A company named ScentAir uses your nose to convince you to buy stuff. How do y'all feel about that?
The sense of smell is the longest lasting memory-trigger in humans, possibly in all mammals. We associate scents with good, bad, comforting, fearful, or painful memories, to name a few, long after associations with visual or audio triggers are no longer effective.
The scent of perfume that your mother wore regularly may stay with you your whole lifetime, even if that scent is no longer manufactured or available. You can sense the scent of it, even when you can no longer smell it anywhere. Same goes for the scent of being in hospital as a little child, the scent of Coke as it fizzes out of a bottle on hot summer days after school let out, etc., etc. etc.
So the use of scents to draw people into buying products or return to specific shops is very powerful stuff. Ethical? That's a hard one.
How much disclosure and explanation are maketers obligated to provide to the recipient/buyers before one can truly say that the buyer has not been duped? How about full disclosure were provided - a loudspeaker, for example saying quietly in a showroom, "We are piping in scents which we hope will bring back fond memories of car rides long ago and encourage you to buy our wonderful cars today."?
As rediculous as that sounds, people probably wouldn't mind at all (unless they are alergic to scents, of course) and more importantly, most folks wouldn't even listen to those announcements. They'd just buy a car and be happy.
I'm not for the enforcement of full disclosure in such arenas. I am for educating our children to be intelligent buyers and consumers... and acknowledging that a pleasant 'memory-scent' is a nice experience, one which we should take advantage of without spending more cash than we planned to spend. "Buyer beware" has its place in society (spoken with a nod to Ayn Rand).
How many of you have opened a can of either coke or pepsi by the time you reached this post?
How may of the rest of you were thinking about it?
That is the power of Branding.
And I just ran into the power of the SEOmoz comment timeout and am way too frustrated to try and rewrite the whole lost comment again, so here is a quick synopsis:
Your Name is not a brand (unless of course you are as big as Coke or Pepsi), it's a brand extension. Your website is not a brand, it's a brand extension.
So while I agree with Rand and some of the other commenters that taking advantage of Branding opportunities is definitely a good plan, it is significantly more important to do everything in your power to create a consistent image in the minds of your visitors whenever they happen to encounter any of your brand extensions.
And make it something they'll recognize in a dark alley!
Not me definitely, both of those drinks are so unhealthy, but there are still some people who drink them and kill themselves slowly.
I disagree with your "kill themselves slowly" comment. Long life is heavily influenced by genetics which is why you see people like George Burns who drank and smoked cigars (among other things) living a long time, while people that live "healthier" die much sooner. Genes ofcourse arn't everything, but they do play a MAJOR factor. I don't think Pepsi will significantly shorten my life.
you know it's weird. i think i hate pepsi, and took the pepsi challenge once and actually picked pepsi. i don't get it. because if i order coke at a restaurant and they give me pepsi, i can tell right away that it's not MY coke. i still think the challenge was rigged.
you're too funny!
Interesting comments everyone :)
Excellent post, Rand!