When it comes to brand awareness, the most important aspect is getting your brand in the eyes of your customers. This the first step in any branding campaign. From there, your branding campaign should take off.
So there’s obviously a variety of tools in digital marketing to get your brand noticed, whether it’s social media, a blog or whatever tool you choose to use.
But there’s one tool that is often overlooked when it comes to brand awareness, and that is your search ads. Most businesses look at search ads as a way to draw traffic to your site…and that’s it. But what many business owners don’t realize is that your search ads are doing a lot more behind the scenes.
Paid Search Increases Visibility
Take what I said earlier about the most important aspect of your brand awareness campaign. In case you forgot, it’s getting your brand in front of your customers. Obviously some type of imagery or photo is going to be the most appealing means of getting your brand noticed, but that doesn’t mean that search ads can’t do the same thing.
Think about when you type in a search on a search engine for a specific product. How often are you skimming through the ads on the top or to the right? Probably quite often, and that, my friend, is why search ads are important to your brand awareness campaign.
Although the intended purpose for your search ads is to get someone to click on the ad, they serve another purpose. Just because you didn’t click on that ad doesn’t mean you don’t remember it. By having consumers read your ads, you’re putting your brand in their mind, and that’s what we are here to do with brand awareness.
Gobble Up The Keywords
Another great strategy is bidding on popular keywords that pertains to your brand. This will allow you to dominate the search engine results page. By bidding on certain keywords, you’re giving yourself a better chance of appearing in both organic and paid ads columns. When this happens, you’re not only increasing your chance of visibility to consumers, but you are also presenting yourself as a major player in your particular market. Again, this increases your brand awareness.
It’s also important in preventing your competition from invading your space. There’s a good chance that your competitors are already out there bidding on your branded terms. To prevent consumers who were supposed to land on your site from clicking on your competitors ads, you must buy popular brand keywords.
Piggyback Recent Events
It’s ok to try keywords outside the typical realm. Again, you’re not paying for your search ads unless consumers click on them. Try some keywords that focus on recent events and news. By piggybacking these events, you’re giving yourself a better chance of broadening your reach. Think about how many people are doing searches related to the NFL Super Bowl during Super Bowl week. Try to tap into those searches and put your brand out there for searchers to find by trying some of the keywords around that particular event. You never know who will find your ads along side their search and find interest.
Give It A Try
So these are only a few little tricks you can use to raise brand awareness through your paid search ads, but it’s something you might want to try. Obviously search ads are intended for driving traffic, but it can also do much more. If you want to find out whether or not your search ads are improving your brand awareness, be sure to take a look at our recent blog post on 4 Strategies For Measuring Brand Awareness.
