Branding And The Internet: In The Keyword Buying Craze,
Marketers Often Skip Basic Consumer Research

By Angelique van Engelen

Online marketers, ourselves included, supposedly are hardly doing anything else than capitalising on keywords in their marketing strategies. Those who come out on top have one thing in common: they are experts at mapping precisely that magical, ever evolving space where the overlap between real life and the internet is at its most poignant. They're looking where real people are actually s p e l l i n g out what they are planning to buy in the search engines. Or ARE they?

Transparency is a scarce commodity in the keyword buying business. Unless you start to take part yourself, there is not a lot of detail that emerges to mainstream news, even though keyword auctions are rated among the top competitive areas of business transacted over the web. It is true; keyword buying is very much the wild goose chase it's made out to be this is unlikely that even the largest ad companies have an overall effective and proven method here. Will the dust ever settle? It is unlikely. The global community has signed up for a mixture of guaranteed entertainment and limitless opportunities by (mis)organizing things the way they are!

Aside from the fun that the newconomy markets present us with, it's somewhat ironic that it's live and learn when it comes to keywords because in theory, the marketing community should be in its valhalla with the arrival of the internet. Hasn't it been the marketing dream for centuries to get to the stage where a potential customer takes an action?

At the end of a marketing ploy, in offline terms it's called the hit, the transaction, the sale, closing the deal. This is where marketers have so much wanted to be they would have transformed themselves into flies on walls if they could, years ago.

That is why it is amazing to find out that research into keywords used by customers to find what they are going to buy on the internet is often still very much neglected. There are a few sturdy research documents out there that actually yield specific information on the subject, but the average marketing outfit is not a powerhouse when it comes to knowledge of keywords most widely used for specific products. The specifics of keyword buying may be intransparent, but a wealth of information is automatically stored about the process of online buying. It is striking that this is not a complete reversal from the offline process but that from the beginning onward, the marketer can count on a lot more commitment from his potential customer because the customer has already indicated what he or she specifically is looking for. Targeting is so much more specific if the process kicks off with the customer's action. In other words; keyword marketing is much more powerful compared to the offline

To forego the keyword search as a marketer means you miss out one vital element in the communication cycle your client goes through before purchasing a product. Inefficient marketing was mainly the issue leading to the demise of the dot com sector earlier on and, having learnt their lesson the hard way, marketers are now finding out more about what customers really want before launching campaigns. From the customer's own words. Sounds promising - in theory. In practice, the landscape is bewildering to say the least.

Owning the rights to certain keywords means you are dominating the results that search engines will present to people who type in those words. What is so great about this is that unlike in the real world, online marketers have way more insight into what makes people buy. Because they have access to what actions customers take even before they would be onto them had they been in the offline world.

Mountains of gold on the horizon, potentially. But the sector is still showing a lot of vulnerability and online marketing is in dire need of improvement simply because the phenomenon is so new in academic terms. The big advantage to customers is that people can find what they are looking for faster and more efficiently than on any other medium. But still the gap between what customers are specifically looking on the web for and what they are offered is considerable.

Customers are too often puzzled, searching a product on the web and finding lists of items with brands totally alien to them. If an online campaign is not backed by offline action, its chance of survival will drop dramatically. Many product campaigns are faltering because adverts are simply being thrown in a surfer's face in irrelevant contexts, they are annoying or ill timed.

One big area where online marketers are not taking enough heed of the expertise of their offline peers and where they might lose the battle, is branding. Too much direct mail-type marketing means that credible, trustworthy branding is unlikely to occur. Type in a generic search term for a product and find yourself amazed at the outcome. Reading the results, you'd think you'd landed on mars.

Branding the old fashioned way is a lot more time consuming than any internet marketer will naturally be inclined to think. But its advantage is that it yields sturdy results. Branding is an exercise of timing, planning, researching and optimised launches. It takes time before people are used to new products. Psychological studies confirm time and again that we buy what we think is safe, comfy, familiar, nice, soft, handy, easy, whatever the word to indicate a certain comfort zone that creates an entry for marketers. It's a known fact that you first need to see a product about umpteen times before it has become a part of your reference frame. If you don't believe this, move to a foreign country, visit a supermarket and try not to feel totally lost. It's impossible.

When we are familiar with a product branded the way a marketer intends, we think that purchasing it will better us. If we don't have at least a vague positive idea when we purchase a product, no brand building has been done or not enough or it has not connected with us. Although branding of products offered online is something quite new, it is quite amazing that outright stupid mistakes are made here. Where online marketers are often wrong is where they are measuring search engine advertising the way they would measure direct marketing.

True, much of search engine advertising resembles direct marketing, but realistic measurement of people's attitude towards the products advertised should include more than only whether or not they buy it. This is the point where the transition marketing-brand building is made. Brand measurement takes place when all the responses are analysed, even why a product is not purchased or not immediately or not at a specific platform or not, etc.

In forgetting to measure any customer behavior outside the conversion rate, online marketers completely forego the power of branding. And that is such a waste considering the strong visual context the internet offers. They don't realize how much greater click through and conversion rates would be if their brands were recognized and trusted by the online community.

Here is an example of just how effective a campaign can be when branding's taken seriously. These marketers have got it so right, that their campaigns themselves have become an overnight brand known for controversy. Called gatoring, after the company that made the software linking keywords with pop ups, this advertising has come under scrutiny of the courts. What people are upset with is that popup ads are thrown on competitors' sites.

When looking for a particular brand of car for instance, a popup of a competing brand will pop up in your face. Despite the dubiousness of the practice, gatoring shows the power of the internet in the battle of the brands. Online marketing, in combination with with a sound plan delivers results people only dared dream of ten years ago!

Angelique van Engelen is a freelance copywriter who runs www.contentClix.com from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She specialises in writing sales copy, feature articles and research reports. Feel free to contact her.