Increasing brand awareness measures have traditionally been event sponsoring, print advertisement, email marketing, TV/Radio, PR and just about everything apart from search engine marketing which has been seen for a long time as being solely a traffic generator where the goal and purpose is a high ranking for more traffic and click throughs on sponsored listings.

In fact in my professional opinion search engine marketing or search engine marketing (SEM) should be part of any brand building campaign. Whether through search engine optimization (high rankings in organic listings) or a sponsored listing campaign, a company can create strong associations to their products and brands with high visibility in search engines for relevant search phrases. You have an ideal opportunity here to make your unique product names associate with your main theme/branch.

For example, “iPod” is now synonymous with a quality mp3/media player. Although huge amounts have been spent on traditional marketing to create this brand awareness and association, to be on the first page or better ranked top for the term ‘mp3 player’ will greatly reinforce the brand as THE product for commercial mp3/media players. iPod ranks 7th place for “mp3 player” in Google.de at the time of writing this article, so they have done a reasonable job associating their product with ‘MP3 player’.
Many MAJOR corporations out there have not. A quick look at some of the DAX 30 companies shows that not all major brands have realised the potential of re-inforcing brand awareness through the medien of search engine marketing.
To give an example, type into Google “Sportbekleidung” or “Fussballschuhe”. The Adidas website is nowhere to be found. In my opinion they should be if they wish to reinforce their Brand awareness amongst the millions of searchers on the web out there!

For search engine marketing campaigns, if the return on investment doesn’t quite work out, (and everyone should check their ROI on search engine sponsored listings) the campaign should still be carried out for brand awareness reasons, apart from the link click throughs and direct business. Branding awareness is becoming increasingly important as competition from other emerging companies grow and marketing directors should be reinforcing or obtaining branding awareness through all possible mediums and not just the traditional.

What is also alarming is when a company has a unique brand/product name and their own site cant be found in the top 10 of Google under that name. Instead shopping portals, forums, articles by third parties etc. get all the branding association of the product. This can not be good for branding awareness. Even if you do not sell your products online but partners or affiliates do it for you, I believe you should still have your website in the top 10 at least. It is YOUR product/brand.

Some of the arguments against any form of search engine marketing from companies with a well established brand name are…

1. Everyone knows who we are anyway. They just type in our name plus .de and find us.
2. We don’t sell anything online ourselves so rankings and search engine placement isn’t important to us.
3. We don’t have any additional budget for a search engine marketing campaign.
4. We have survived so far without it and have huge brand awareness, we don’t need it.
5. We tested it and the ROI wasn’t there.

My response would normally be as follows.

1. Not necessarily everyone knows who you and why not continue to reinforce the association of popular relevant search terms with your Brand/products?. What about foreign investors or partners? They research on the web, mostly with search engines. You can always improve your brand awareness.
2. You may not sell anything yourself but partners and affiliates will. They will also research on the web and they will commonly short list those companies they find with good rankings in the search engines.
3. SEM/SEO for does not have to be expensive. Often it is considerably less than traditional advertising. I know of a major AG who at the suggestion of just changing their Title tag jumped up 50 places to the top 10 for a highly competitive terms. A small change on many sites can bring huge differences in rankings. These small changes do not cost an arm and a leg.
4. See answer to 1.
5. If the ROI wasn’t there (which in most cases it actually is, especially on search engine optimization), then what value do you place on improving your brand awareness? Does this not compensate your ROI loss?

There are many examples where other major corporations are not maximising their brand awareness capabilities. Take the Auto industry for example. Type in “Autohersteller” into Google. Would you believe not one car manufacturer website can be found?
With “Automobile” on a Google.DE search and not one German manufacturer of cars can be found in the top 10 or on the sponsored listings (Google Adwords). Saab and Mitsubishi can be found however.

It is time marketing directors looked at search engine marketing and search engine marketing as not just a ranking and traffic exercise but also for reinforcing the awareness of or creating a brand name.