By Kevin Lee, Did-it

As any good offline retailers will tell you, your in-store branding is critical. That means everything from branded store displays, to uniforms, to napkins that feature the company logo. Branding hardly ends after customers walk through your door.

The same holds true online. From the second your visitor arrives to your site, you need to immerse that visitor in your brand. And that’s especially so when it comes to search.

After all, it’s hard to fit a full branding message in a little text ad. Plus, searchers who are in a rush to find the right listing won’t have the “mental space” to absorb a branding message. If you want to deliver branding engagement to searchers, your best bet is to look beyond the search results page—concentrating your branding efforts on the landing page, and beyond. (That’s the search equivalant of in-store branding.)

What kind of branded experiences should you offer search visitors? And what kinds of brand engagement should you be tracking? The list is endless, but what follows are a few branding points to consider.

Time on site. The longer a visitor stays on the site, the better you’ve done as a marketer.

Page views. The greater number of pages with which the visitor interacts, the more likely it is that she’s absorbed your marketing message—indicating greater brand awareness and purchase intent.

Registrations. Registration means the visitor gives your brand permission to engage in a dialogue. The ongoing conversation provides the opportunity to further build your brand and move the customer closer to purchase.

Downloads and views. It’s especially important to offer downloads and views if you’re known for highly informative or highly entertaining advertising (like GEICO or Apple). Visitors may arrive wanting to see or hear your ads—and you can monitor downloads as a pulse-test of both your landing page impact, and of the impact of your branding overall.

Configuration or comparison. If your brand stacks up favorably against the competition, a comparison page may provide significant value. Product configurators—that let you compare cars, washing machines, computers, appliances, furniture or a host of other items—are also brand-immersive.

Targeted link to retailers. Many marketers don’t directly sell products, but their sites do support retailers, by linking to them. If searchers jump to retailers off of your website, that shows an enhanced purchase intent. And no branding metric is better than purchase intent.

Finally, you’ll want to close the loop. Find out which types of brand efforts work best off of which keywords, and which parts of your site have the highest brand impact. Closing the loop will let you get smart about allocating your budget—while giving the best brand experience to every searcher who comes through your virtual door.

Did-it Co-Founder & Executive Chairman Kevin Lee is an acknowledged Search Engine Marketing expert, a founding board member of SEMPO, serves on the Search Engine Marketing Council for the DMA, and the IAB Search Committee.

Tags: contextweb, brainexchange, adsdaq

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