Posts on State of Search about ‘Brand’

Case Study: Rebranding from a Search Agency to a Digital Agency

New brand stamp

This is a guestpost by Jodie Harris from MediaVision.

Recently the London agency MediaVision went to a rebranding. This post is a case study on why MediaVision rebranded from a search to a digital marketing agency. The case study includes on why we wanted to re-brand and everything that we needed to consider before making the big decision.

It highlights our biggest tasks such as designing a new website that would communicate to the world who the new brand was as well as the most challenging hurdles we needed to overcome for a successful execution. Now the new MediaVision brand has launched, here is our case study on how we planned and delivered it. (more…)

SEO Brand Marketing – Looking Beyond Keywords

Brand marketing

Over the years, I have worked for start-ups, on my own sites, on huge multi-national brands, across a variety of countries and a variety of digital channels. A

mentality that seems to continuously pop up no matter what country I’m on what type of site I’m working on is that SEO should be used to focus on non-brand generic keywords because a site should ‘be default’ always rank for its own brand. This is especially true when considering large multi-national brands. Or is it? A big mistake I see sites make all the time (and I’ve been guilty of myself) is getting so bogged down in the details and the focus on ranking for those all important non-brand keywords that the quick, obvious wins, and investment in SEO as a branding tool are overlooked. SEO brand marketing is ‘a thing’! Here’s

a few quick win areas that are often being forgotten. In the interest of being local, I’m using all Australian search results for this particular exercise but the quick wins remain true no matter the territory! Brand searches are not a guaranteed conversion, it is too easy to assume so. Don’t give the searcher the opportunity get distracted by what else is on the page, ensure a brand search is always part of a wider branding exercise. Just because they’re already looking for your brand doesn’t mean they are 100% loyal! (more…)

Is PlayStation Dying as a Brand?

playstation-4

Sony recently unveiled plans to release the PlayStation 4, ushering in the eighth generation of video games consoles. Fans went berserk online and during the week of the announcement 1 in every 900 searches online were related to the new Sony console. In amongst the thousands of different ways that people were searching for PlayStation though, one of the most striking things was that relatively few people were actually using the term ‘playstation’ which had me wondering – is the PlayStation brand dying?

Of course the entity that is PlayStation remains incredibly strong, but in terms of taxonomy (how we name stuff) people are much more likely to search for the acronym ‘ps’ rather than ‘playstation’. On the day of the Sony announcement (20 February 2013) ‘ps4’ was the 31st most searched for term in the UK compared to ‘playstation 4’ which ranked in 40th position. When we looked at the total search volume of recurring keywords for PlayStation 4 searches between December 2012 and February 2013 only 33% of searches included the word ‘playstation’ whereas 67% included ‘ps4’. (more…)

Steps for Conducting an Online Brand Audit

Brand

There could be a number of reasons that you need to do an audit of a brand, and it is important that you look at lots of different measurements to ensure you are getting the right answers. There is no point analysing a brand without taking different metrics into consideration.

In this post I am going to run through the metrics that I look at when conducting a brand audit, which should help guide you through this process on a step-by-step basis.

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Does Content Marketing Kick TV Advertising’s Ass?

second-screen

The SEO industry have long bemoaned investment in traditional channels like TV advertising; claiming SEO yields higher ROI. However, if we’re honest I think our arguments have also been about us wanting to get our sticky mitts on a larger share of the marketing budget. (more…)

Are You Managing Your Personal And Brand Online Reputation Accordingly?

WhatDoesTheInternetSayAboutYou

The rapid growth and popularity of the internet and social media has made the world a far smaller place. Gone are the days when organisations were able to hide behind their PR teams – nowadays everything is instant and therefore also international. So what challenges does that imply for us?

Reputation used to be closely linked to word-of-mouth – the most powerful form of marketing even in the digital age. Just think of the last time you wanted to try out a new restaurant – you might have asked friends whether they’ve already had the pleasure to dine there in order to help you with your decision making process. Another very common approach (surprise, surprise) is to simply ‘google’ the product or service of your desire to help you make up your mind. This is exactly where my curiosity comes into the game – do you agree with me if I say reputation is a key factor for consumers looking to make a purchasing decision?

The internet displays a vast amounts of information on brands and individuals that reputation simply doesn’t stem from word-of-mouth solely anymore. Further  factors to take into account are: the ease of the online purchase journey, online communication provided and its speed as well as online advertising taking online reputation to a new level. (more…)

Creative and Cost Effective Piggyback Marketing

Pig on white

Piggyback marketing is a technique that has been used by companies for years and if it is done correctly you can end up with fantastic results off the back of it. It is important to get it right though. I have seen companies attempt piggyback marketing and it come back to bite them.

In this post, I am going to share some examples of piggyback marketing campaigns that have gone well and would not have cost the business a huge amount of money. Hopefully these ideas will give you some inspiration to try this marketing technique out for yourself. You simply need to think outside the box and find events that your potential customers would be interested in. (more…)

Pre-Launch and the Marketing of Suspense: The Hobbit History Case

The Hobbit

The day has come.

I waited almost 35 years to see it made into a movie, but – finally – between today and tomorrow The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey will be released all over the world.

Expectations, suspense.

These two words are typically cinematographic; so much that almost all the entire movie marketing is based over them.

Only the movie marketing?

Not really, if you think about it. Our own Search Marketing industry relies a lot on expectations and suspense in its efforts, and the startup world is almost as good as the movie industry in titillating the expectations of its end users in order to gain brand recognition.

But, before, let’s return to the movie industry.

Almost inevitably in the case of cinema – and of any other product previously announced – rumors precede the fruition of a movie: the public does not enter in a movie theater completely unaware of what he is going to watch, and the vision of the first images comes always in a dialectical relationship, in terms of the creation of expectations, with the information that the viewer has before the start of the film. (more…)

The importance of SEO in online rebranding

New brand stamp

This month I’ve chosen to delve into the world of online rebranding, specifically in the charity sector. SEO now plays a critical role for any company wishing to rebrand as the new identity of a company will need to be reflected in the keywords it wants to rank for online. Even small changes in a rebranding exercise can have big a big effect on website traffic.

Let’s take Prostate Cancer UK as an example. In June 2012 The Prostate Cancer Charity became Prostate Cancer UK. According to the company website this change in identity was done to get away from the association of a fundraising charity and rebrand as a leading research authority:

“Our research has shown that only three of the top hundred UK charities use the word ‘Charity’ in the name and that the word is associated with fundraising, children, and dependency – not with authority, research, or expertise. Prostate Cancer UK is clear, simple, has authority, and importantly still communicates who we are.” (more…)

Google Analytics Dashboard to Monitor Brand Engagement

Brand Keyword Pie

I don’t know about you, but I just can’t get enough of the Custom Google Analytics Dashboard. Whilst the standard sets of reports in Google Analytics are great, if you aren’t using the Dashboards yet, you’re certainly missing a trick. There is so much more that you can do to understand the traffic that is hitting your site; this will help you get the most out of your marketing campaigns.

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Predicting Trends in Search Cycles

tree-cycles

This month I wanted to share some insight into search cycles and the way you can apply lessons learnt from historical search trends to forecast future demand. In particular I wanted to focus on the changes in search behaviours around product life cycles. In this case I have chosen the phenomenally popular Apple iPad as an example.

You can see from the graph below the defined search peaks for the iPad across time. There are big spikes in search activity in the run up to the launch of each iteration of the iPad and also around Christmas time when people want to buy the product as a gift. (more…)

Online Brand Management using Google Analytics

Social Network Interaction

Over the past two months I have been doing a lot of research into tools that can be used to monitor mentions of a brand name and assist with managing a brand’s reputation. During this research I uncovered some great functionalities right under my nose in a tool that most people in digital marketing are immersed in everyday, Google Analytics.

There are some basic features that everyone should be using for online brand management in Google Analytics, which I am going to go through in this post. I am also going to cover elements of the new social reports in Google Analytics, which can show you some really interesting data about your brand.

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