Can your prospects and customers sum up your product or service in a single word?
If not, your product or service is not a brand.
For each additional word it takes to describe your company’s products and services double the amount of competitors you will have to defeat in order to earn a share of your target audience’s attention let alone wallet.
Most businesses think their homepage is the single most important page on the web and rightfully so.
However, for any business other than those with a well established offline brand and a corresponding branded domain name, such is not the case.
The Single Most Important Place On The Web
Why?
What happens to those businesses without well established brands who’s prospects or customers don’t know exactly where to find them online?
They first ask for directions from Google, the single most important page on the web.
Last week, I wrote about how Microsoft’s was buying ads on Google to promote its new search engine Bing.
With Bing’s launch, Microsoft said it planned to target four distinct categories: shopping, local, travel and health.
Today while logged into my Gmail account, I noticed the following Google Adwords ad for Bing targeting local search.
Bing Local Search Decisions
The Official Bing site ad reads: Local decisions. Get Pricing, Maps and Reviews For Local Businesses.
Clicking the Bing ad takes visitors to Bing.com/Maps site where the Bing search box is prepopulated with the “Business, category and/or location” prompt.
Bing Business Category or Location
Upon entering a business name, Bing presupposes my search is for a local business and provides a list of results from my city.
Bing Local Business Search
Entering a business category produces search results from the same locale as the business name search.
Bing Local Category Search
A Microsoft brand search produces a list of businesses that apparently carry Microsoft branded products within the same locality.
Bing Local Brand Search Microsoft
Any predictions on how this search / search arbitrage will pan out for Microsoft’s Bing?
While checking my email today in Gmail I was somewhat surprised to see the following ad dsiplayed above my inbox:
Microsoft Bing Google Adwords Ad
Microsoft is also buying Google Adwords to promote their new Bing “decision engine” brand in Google search results.
Google Search Bing Ad
Bing the brand is also being advertised in Google search results under “decision engine” as well as –
Decision Engine Ad
“search engine”.
Search Engine Ad
I know its hard to believe but people still search Google.com for “search engine” and “search engines”.
In fact, according to Google – over 5,000,000 people worldwide search for either the single or plural version of the phrase each month.
Search Engine Demand
However, a considerably smaller number of people search for the single or plural version of decision engine.
Decision Engine Search Demand
Roughly 5,000 times fewer searches in fact.
I don’t know what to think of the following two brand images which appear strikingly similar to each other.
Barack Obama Twitter
Barack Obama
Pepsi
Refresh Everything – Pepsi.
Which brand has borrowed and blended their image from the other?
I just added my Twitter account into my Linkedin account profile after noticing Owen Frager had added it to his “what he is working on” Linkedin updates.
Twitter TimCohn
Pretty cool Owen…
Linkedin TimCohn
I had been meaning for some time to write about the importance of “owning and controlling your brand” whether personal or corporate in the most promising emerging social platforms for both offensive and defensive purposes
Appropriately, I first became acquainted with Owen after having posted on Domain King Rick Schwartz’ blog
Name.com
about how I missed the first offensive opportunity to control “my personal brand” – albeit my not so unique name – on that newfangled social platform called the world wide web way back in 1996.
Tim Cohn
Granted, its hard to gauge in advance which social platforms will have the largest audience and reach after filtering out all their noise.
However, not registering your “brand” in their databases early on can lead to remorse later on.
If you haven’t done so already, register your own brandname.com / companyname.com and create accounts for the same names in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr – if you can…
The same holds true for individuals.
Sign up for a Linkedin account under your personal brand: your name.
Don’t be disappointed though if you can’t. If yours is a common name – it surely has long since been registered.
Registering your brands with these sites may not make you any money in the short term, but if and when social media platforms ever figure out how to make money for themselves let alone for their advertisers and users, wouldn’t it be better for you to control your brand name(s) on the most successful social media sites instead of someone else?
If targeting local and mobile search advertising is the future growth drivers for search advertising providers, then Google and its Adwords geo-targeting features are in the driver’s seat when compared to its three closest search advertising rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com.
Below I outline each providers’ offerings not according to their search advertising market share but instead according to their level of geotargeted advertising product development.
Google’s advertising product and its geo-targeting capabilities have one distinct yet obvious feature the other’s lack:
An actual map for geo-targeting the location of your ads and where they will be shown!
Google Search Advertising Country Geotargeting
With Google Adwords, advertisers can target their ads one country at a time through Google’s Country Geotargeting tab, or choose to bundle their ads for display in multiple countries at once with Adwords Bundle Geotargeting feature.
Google Search Advertising Bundle Geotargeting
Google Search Advertising Bundle Geotargeting
Google Search Advertising Metro Geotargeting
Google Adwords advertisers who advertise in specific markets nationally or regionally can target their ads by metropolitan area or by city.
Although not referenced, Google’s metropolitan area targeting looks slightly similar to the Designated Market Area system developed by Nielsen Media Research which incorporates Nielsen’s broadcast media markets and distribution scheme.
For its City geotargeting option, Google surrounds the target city with a square.
Google Search Advertising Custom Geotargeting
Google custom geotargeting by far provides the highest level of geotargeting available from any search advertising provider.
Custom geotargeting lets advertisers create their own custom advertising distribution area within any market.
Google search advertisers can simply point and click three or more points on their advertising map and Google does the rest for them – creating a custom advertising distribution area through latitude and longitude coordinates.
How do the other search advertising providers’ geo-targeting features stack up compared with Google’s?
Yahoo and Ask both offer advertising geo-targeting options but both to a lesser degree.
Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting
Yahoo offers geotargeting to it advertisers by account market area and specific regions. Account market area is established by the advertising account holder when the open their account. Both account market area and specific region areas are organized by country, state, province or territory.
The Yahoo specific region feature geotargets its advertising through the Designated Market Areas system licensed from Nielsen Media Research.
Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting Mapview
Where is the Yahoo Search Advertising Geotargeting Map?
Yahoo offers a Map View tab of specific regions geotargeted by its advertisers yet I haven’t ever been able to view an actual Yahoo map showing where my advertising has been geo-targeted and placed.
I can’t imagine why Yahoo search marketing would place a “Map View” tab in their Campaign settings geo-targeting page yet not actually provide a map view.
Ask Search Advertising Geotargeting
Ask provides its advertisers with Location targeting which is also based on Nielsen’s Designated Market Area system.
Ask doesn’t provide a map showing advertisers locations of their geo-targeted advertising.
However, and to its credit – Ask does provide a geotargeting feature direct marketers like myself would like to see from other search advertising providers like Google Adwords – Postal Code targeting.
Postal Code Targeting or Zip Code targeting here in the US would allow direct marketers and brands alike another level of advertising targeting, delivery and thus control.
At this point you may be wondering why I chose to cover Microsoft’s adCenter search advertising geotargeting product last even though it has a larger share of the search market than Ask.
Why have I listed Microsoft’s advertising geotargeting product development last?
Because Microsoft’s search advertising product does not offer its advertisers geotargeting options let alone any other kind of geographic ad targeting.
Microsoft Search Advertising Geotargeting
Will Microsoft ever offer advertising geo-targeting features to its advertisers?
If not, why?
I am giving a presentation on Google Adwords Oct 08-09, 2008 in Logan, Utah at Utah State University’s 18th Annual Customer Service & Marketing Seminar.
Customer Service Marketing Seminar
Utah State University’s Customer Service and Marketing Seminar is organized and produced by the University’s Partners in Business program at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.
I would like to thank Cameron Oliver for extending me an invitation to speak at his group’s event.
Partners In Business
I accepted Cameron’s invitation to speak about Google Adwords in the Utah market for several reasons.
The determining factor which ultimately lead to my decision to agree to speak to a Utah audience about Google Adwords was of course – data from Google itself.
According to Google’s Search Volume Index, information about Google Adwords is sought by more searchers from Utah than from any US state other than Google’s home state of California.
Google Adwords Regional Interest
As you can see, California scores a 100 in Google’s Search Volume Index for Google Adwords followed closely by Utah’s 93.
Google’s Search Volume Index tool also confirms search interest in the Google brand is highest in Mountain View, CA where Google has its headquarters.
Google Adwords California Search
Google’s Search Volume Index is an excellent tool for visualizing whether any market demand exists in any particular region of the world for products and services – or not.
Google data says people in Utah are interested in Google Adwords – so Utah – here I come!
I will be speaking twice at the Customer Service and Marketing Seminar on October 8th first at 9:45 and then again @ 2:30.
Customer Service Marketing Seminar Schedule
The title of my 50 minute presentation is: Google Your Business and Marketing!
Below is an overview of my presentation and the topics I plan to cover.
Overview:
Harness the power of Google to grow your business!
An increasing number of buyers are first turning to Google to research products and services before they purchase.
Make sure your business comes up in Google when searchers are deciding where and who they should buy from.
This presentation will show both small and medium size businesses how they can implement Google-specific search engine marketing and optimization techniques to get more buyers, larger sales more often.
Learn how to:
Target your prospects online instead of off-line for measurable results.
Transform your business into a modern marketing machine.
Speak with your customers in their language, the language they understand and prefer.
Tap Google Adwords to reach your prospects when and where they want to be reached.
Acquire new business more rapidly and efficiently through marketing on Google.
Reduce your customer acquisition and retention cost.
I am looking forward to speaking about Google Adwords and presenting “Google Your Business and Marketing” at Utah State University’s 18th Annual Customer Service & Marketing Seminar.
Gian Fulgoni chairman of comScore, recently wrote about his firm’s research on the impact online display and search advertising have on in-store retail sales.
How does comScore measure the impact online advertising has on retail offline sales? According to Fulgoni, “using the comScore panel, off line sales impact can be measured by linking panelists’ exposure to online ads with their in-store buying (through the use of retailers’ loyalty card data).’
Fulgoni draws two interesting conclusions from comScore’s
research:
1. “Search advertising provides higher sales lift than display advertising, but when combined, the synergy provides the highest lift…”
comScore Shoplocal.com Lift
Search and Display Ads Lift
2. “While search advertising results in a higher sales lift than display advertising among the people exposed to the ads, the number of people reached by display advertising is typically markedly higher than the number of people reached by search advertising …
comscore shoplocal.com reach
Online Advertising Reach
For media buyers planning to increase their brand message reach and lift consider the following;
1. An online display advertising campaign often reaches further than a search advertising campaign but online display ads will have less lift than search ads.
2. Search advertising will have more lift than online display ads but search ads may not reach as far as online display advertising.
Brand managers buying either online display advertising or search advertising but not both online display advertising and search advertising are likely diluting their brand’s message power – and along with it the ability to maximize their return on either form of online advertising they may have invested in.
Google re-introduce an expanded roster of Artist Themes for iGoogle.
What if you could have your brand’s most loyal customers display your brand image alongside Google’s in your customer’s browser’s homepage?
Can you say Brand Lift?
Innovative earlier adopters like Dolce & Gabbana, Philippe Starck, Diane von Furstenberg (I guess Mr. Diller approves) the Beastie Boys and even Lance Armstrong have already taken the leap.
See for yourself in this YouTube video montage showcasing 68 original iGoogle themes by world-class artists:
Find more Google iGoogle Artist themes at Google.com
iGoogle Artist Theme
iGoogle Artists Themes
Search Marketing Communications 
You must be logged in to post a comment.