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There are a number of key issues that must be taken into consideration when building a campaign around branding and awareness.

These items relate to different aspects of building a campaign and should be associated with a campaign if deemed necessary.

Affiliates
Understanding affiliate marketing for the purpose of building a strategy around branding and awareness is important to highlight here.

Affiliate marketing is an online medium that has been used for many years. Defined as a network of reciprocal links, an affiliate network traditionally placed links on similar-subject websites to increase relevant exposure of products and services in return for a percentage of any generated sale.

With the advent of paid for placement search engines the affiliate networks started to utilize this medium as a platform for increasing the relevant links for the company they were placing links for, and so dawned the age of affiliate marketing via the search engines.

In early 2005, Google AdWordsTM, the major affiliate search mechanism, announced that only one listing could be presented for a single domain (i.e. company address); for this reason companies now have to face the realization that affiliates may take the only spot available.

With this being said the following issues exist with affiliate marketing and should be controlled at all costs.

• Unnecessary bidding against affiliates – work with the affiliate and create a bidding precedent for the bid prices paid by all parties.

 This problem persists mainly on branded terms but if controlled carefully each party can successfully maintain a presence for the advertising website.

 With Google only listing the company with the highest CTR and best bid price, it is important to ensure that a fraught bidding war hasn’t been created between the advertising company and affiliate to gain that one escalate the cost of a keyword or series of keywords, which should be at the lowest rate.

• Keywords disabled due to affiliate bidding – additional to the points raised above, creatives (Titles and Descriptions) must be designed so that the searcher can identify the advertising company and the affiliates.

• Affiliate creative is poor – talk with the affiliate network advertising and ensure that a branding standard is maintained. If it is not, prevent the affiliate from advertising until the standard is met.

Above all, be conscious of engaging with an affiliate network. In a branding and awareness strategy the affiliate network may not be interested in engaging on a traffic basis, as the traditional model is to take a percentage of sales or CPL.

Contextual advertising
Content match has been a much maligned mechanism for driving traffic to a website from some of the major (and minor) PFP engines.

As a vehicle for driving traffic it is exceptionally good; however, as soon as ROI metrics are placed against it many suffer poor returns.

In a branding and awareness strategy, content match or content targeting is a very strong vehicle and should be used if financially viable. The following should be observed.

• Research when researching the keywords on some the engines, content matching can be added to the analysis parameters to determine what additional success will be gained from using this measurement.

Some engines are more capable of providing these data so use judgment when selecting keywords.

• Measurement – for this measurement use traffic and CPC. A content program will give exceptional coverage on relevant topics, articles and sites; however, as there is a distinct cost associated, which can increase dramatically, measure traffic against costs and budget.

Buying brand name keywords
This is defined as buying keywords that are, or variations of, company names or brand names.

If the website has any form of organic optimization, the chances are the number 1 to number 3 spot will most likely be filled with a listing for said company.

The debate then rages as to whether a further PFP listing should also be bought, with the question raised `Why Should I if my website is already number 1?’

The answer to this question isn’t clearly defined and must be tested using controlled scenarios.

A clear-cut way to determine this is to utilize a log file based tracking tool and record the total traffic from search engines with a paid listing and without (provided a prominent organic listing exists) but to aid in the decision to warrant this activity the following table lists the pros and cons of buying brand terms:

Table 1.
Pros and cons of buying brand terms

Pros of Buying Brand Terms Cons of Buying Brand Terms
Guaranteed number 1 (budget pending) on terms related to a  brand or company name The costs of buying brand terms all can be considerable.

For popular brands these terms could account for more than 50 per cent of a monthly search budget

100 per cent control of the creative, allowing for more dynamic messages to be broadcast as well as testing to be conducted to improve CTR Ability to ‘double up’ on the number of search listings (without affiliates) legitimately thus capturing those who click on organic listings AND those who click on paid listings

Ability to ensure competitor(s) do not buy the brand terms related to the company advertising and steal screen real estate and SOV

With most brands and company names the purchased brand terms should always have the highest CTR and Conversion Rate (see Chapter 7) and lowest CPC The superior performance of brand terms can mask an otherwise poorly performing search campaign.

It is for this reason that the suggested process of keyword categorization is performed

The question as to whether buying branded terms or not makes sense for any particular brand or company can only be answered by testing.

Branding and awareness is becoming a strong metric for judging the performance of a campaign and a viable objective to achieve via SEM.

Branding within the search engine requires serious budgetary investment as well as strict measurement techniques to ensure that the invested budget is being well spent.

Unlike eCommerce strategies where a distinct clear metric is calculated from each click, a branding and awareness strategy looks to increase the awareness of corporate website within the engines.

This being said the measurements taken must ensure that a return on investment is being seen, be it from placement within the engines, share of voice (SOV) or traffic to the site.

• Paid for Placement (PFP) engines and organic search are the two most likely types of search engine mechanism to use for a branding and awareness campaign.

• The major PFP engines and a selection of tier 2 are recommended, as these will give the maximum coverage within the search engine network. These will be complemented, especially on brand terms, by the organic listings.

• It is recommended that generic and branded keywords are used for a branding and awareness campaign; specific terms will not drive enough volume or be searched upon enough times to warrant usage.

• Similarly generic and branded creatives are also recommended to ensure the maximum exposure for corporate messaging is obtained.

• Control should be obtained by measuring success against the following (but not specific to any one): traffic, share of voice, impressions or rankings.

• Management is deemed necessary in maintaining position of these phrases at the maximum amount possible within budget.

• Affiliate marketing must be controlled to ensure that any activity performed on branded terms (as well as generic terms) is done so at the lowest possible CPC.

• Contextual advertising is an option, but must be done with strict control measures on traffic and cost to ensure fiscal responsibility.

• Buying brand names is recommended for this strategy; however, it is understandable that should an organic listing be present this might not be as necessary. It is, however, worth noting that branded terms must be used in one form or another.

Keywords: branding, awareness, branding campaign, awareness campaign, affiliate marketing, branded terms, keywords, brand name, brand terms,

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