Most brands have logos to remember them by but then firms like Amazon are successful without one. I've spent a little while trying to research this but most data comes from 2002-2004 which is a little outdated in the world of the web.
Does anyone have any kind of data or personal experience building a brand image from PPC campaigns and does anyone know of any successes or failures trying?
This has got me thinking because I wonder how successful you can be building brand awareness on a text based ad?
For text ads on the content network, be sure to mention the company name in the title or ad text, not just the display URL. On content ads the display URL won't always show.
Search Campaign
Choose general keywords which are too far up the funnel to bid on an ROI basis (make sure you're not competing with yourself).
Measure page views, newsletter/RSS subscriptions, etc as your goal.
Budget optimizer can be quite useful if you're just trying to maximize visitors/visibility.
Content Campaigns
Always use a rich media ad. It could be image, flash, widget, or video - but use rich media.
I'd recommend starting with enhanced placement campaigns (keyword + placement) first so you can measure the effectiveness of your ads, and choose where on a page they show.
Once you fine tune your message, then you can use keyword content, placement, or enhanced to put your message out there. Continue to refine with placement performance reports.
Don't forget to check out RSS feeds as well in possibly placements for targeting.
On nicely targeted sites where the placements are highly visible, don't be afraid to bid CPM instead of CPC (never bid CPM on text or forum sites).
Past AdWords
If you have a facebook, linkedin, twitter, etc page. Or, you do newspaper, radio, etc ads -- coordinate the messages.
If you always use a logo in a TV ad, put it in your image/video ads. If you've been using the same tagline in newspaper ads for 10 years, again, use that tagline throughout your online marketing. (At least in your search branding ads; you might use a different message for PPC ROI bidding based upon conversion metrics).
While 'branding' can be useful (and measurable); sometimes the first step is making sure you're all of your marketing channels are coordinated. This can make just as big of a difference as an AdWords branding campaign.
I like the idea of graphic driven ads for content campaigns; it wasn't something I had thought of. I've always tended to steer clear of them because of the low conversion rates but for brand awareness I can clearly see where you're coming from.
I spent another few hours last night trying to discover more but there really isn't much decent research on it. Yahoo did extensive research on this subject a while back and came to the conclusion that you can build brand awareness on text driven ads. Problem is I can't help thinking that is exactly what I expect them to say :-)
It would be like trying to sell digital picture frames before anyone knew what that was. Through the content network, you could get the product introduced to people interested in photography, picture albums or picture frames. You could tap into categories for unique gifts or cool new digital gadgets.
The idea was that we could build brand through content targeting first and then build up a traditional paid search campaign after the company and products became more well known over time.
I had to pass off the project to another media manager (I was working for an agency at the time) before I could tackle that strategy but that was the proposal presented and accepted by the company.
