The Free Branding Benefits Via Complementary Search

A recent study commissioned by Google and undertaken by Enquiro Research and Ipsos Mori in the UK has indicated that advertisers can expect a boost in brand recall over their competitors by as much as 76% when they appear prominently in both paid and organic search results. Brand awareness can be as much as 30% higher and relative brand affinity up to 17% greater.

Obviously Google have a vested interest given that they are seeking to promote search as a viable brand channel in order to attract more of the lucrative brand budgets from FMCG and luxury goods advertisers but even sceptics must agree that the evidence is pretty compelling. Similar Google commissioned studies in France and Germany have also mirrored these results giving weight to the argument that saturation of the SERPS brings quantifiable branding benefits.

As specialists in performance based search marketing we are often asked by our network partners to provide proposals to their advertisers as to how we can demonstrate additional value above and beyond the incremental sales delivered through our complementary SEM.  Obviously each advertiser is different and there are many factors which will influence our suggested strategy but one benefit which we always try to highlight is the additional branding that complementary ads give.

These studies raise the important question as to how much greater the brand awareness, recall and affinity for advertisers who not only have representation through organic and / or paid listings but also work with affiliates such as ourselves to co-ordinate and saturate the search space.  Equally, many advertisers will often not have a dual presence in both organic and paid results and sometimes neither on key generic search terms. This means that affiliates who provide them with complementary branded ads with dedicated exposure in ad copy make the branding benefits to the advertiser especially relevant and important.
Complementary search activity from affiliates who are presently rewarded only on direct response actions is currently a free means for advertisers to increase their overall exposure in the SERP’s and reinforce their brand and product proposition. Additionally, organic listings are less easy to manipulate to ensure the desired brand message or product is being advertised effectively with relevant copy and a strong call to action making complementary paid ads an even more powerful tool for communication and branding due to the greater degree of control over accuracy and prominence.

It would be really interesting to see the results of a similar study which looks as the effect of multiple paid search listings for a single brand both in conjunction with organic listings or without. If Google would like to fund the study we’d be happy to oblige!

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