Branding can dramatically affect you sales success online.
Using eye tracking technology, the agency analysed 400 Google search journeys and found that 82% of consumers will click on a brand that they’re already familiar with in the SERP, regardless of that brand’s ranking position. In fact, users were willing to scroll down to position 8 or 9 in the SERP to find a result from a brand they recognised.
SEO & the importance of brand awareness (browsermedia.agency)
So lets unpack this a bit. First let look at some definitions:
- SERP is “Search Engine Results Page.” This result is the page or pages that Google or Bing or another search engine provides a user after they type in their search and hit enter. One’s ranking on a search is the position on the SERP.
- SEO is “Search Engine Optimization,” or the tasks and activities used to get yourself ranked higher in search engine results.
- CTR is “Click Through Rate” is the percentage of people that see your search engine results or your ad that will click on the listing or ad to go where you want them. A higher CTR also improves your SEO ranking. CTR’s are one important measure of how well a marketing program is working.
The implication is that if people haven’t heard of you and trust you, their chances of clicking on your search result drops dramatically even if you rank #1. We can probably extend the result to digital ads as well. Positive awareness of your brand is important.
A person clicking on a search engine result or an ad is definitely looking for information or even to buy. In this case, missing the click probably means missing business, especially on a search result.
What Can You Do to Improve Branding
Many of the tasks that improve SEO will improve your Branding. Write an informative articles. Then do a process called link building to those articles. Link Building is an SEO step of asking people to link to your article from their website, blogpost, social media account, etc. A good SEO strategist can cover the nitty gritty details. (Hopefully this article is a good example.) Digital Ocean eventually convinced me they were a good supplier for cloud servers by having tons great articles I could find on the internet about setting up and running a server.
Run a strong digital ad or social media campaign that features your brand name prominently. Part of having a recognizable brand is people simply seeing the name everywhere. Unless you have really bad customer service the more people see your name, the more likely they are have a friendly association. (I’m thinking of a couple of telecom companies that have been featured as having the worst customer service, one of which I avoid using.)
Run TV and radio ads. What diamond jeweler are you most aware of in your community because they have spent tons to become well known?
Run an outdoor advertising campaign. No other advertisements build brand recognition faster than billboards, busses, shelters, and well placed benches.
Some Other Fascinating Facts
Your rank on a SERP page is still important. Overall, people at the top of the page get more clicks, but branding can make a difference. Also, Google rewards search engine results that get more clicks by moving them up in the rankings. Google assumes that if people click on it is is important.
The article quoted above has some other interesting facts as well
“The research also revealed that first clicks on familiar brands were being made in just 10.5 seconds on average on desktop, and slightly faster at 9.3 seconds on mobile. The report notes,‘In these searches the searcher already has a brand in mind and it’s important that they find your brand quickly.’ ”
“Conversely, when respondents were searching for something they were unfamiliar with such as river cruises or holiday cottages, where they didn’t already have a brand in mind, they would study the results for longer, with decisions taking around twice as long on average. These searchers were much more open to persuasion in their choices.”
“For the small minority of search tasks that resulted in searchers clicking on a brand they had no previous knowledge of, 42% of respondents said they did so because of the content in the Organic result. 33% said it was down to the content in a PPC or Google Shopping ad.”