Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
BRAND BUILDING THROUGH SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION: AN IMC TOOL
Author’s Name: Swati Gupta Author’s Name: Geetanjali Gulati Department: Amity School of Business
Name of Organization: Amity University, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract: Building Brands, establishing them in market and
creating an unaided recall value for them is a job easy said than done? Marketers undertake humungous efforts and invest large amount of resources to create a standing for a brand. Apart from giving a brand performance related attributes, brand managers also need to confer upon the brand the imagery related attributes. In order to communicate both performance and imagery attributes various IMC tools are used. There is a lot of innovation that has happened in the Marketing Communication Mix, one of them being SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION.
This term paper investigates the impact of Search Engine Optimization on Brand Building. Search Engine
Optimization is optimizing your site and the content of your site to get high rankings in the search engines when a search term or a keyword is entered for finding about a product or a service. Since the number of internet users has increased drastically over a period of time, the relevance of search engine optimizers has become all the more useful for marketers and brand managers. In this paper, we attempt to answer questions like the importance of Brand Building for the organizations, the importance of SEOs as an IMC tool, how SEOs can help in Positioning a Brand etc.
Key words: Brand Building, Search Engine Optimization, Integrative Marketing Communication, Brand Management
I. INTRODUCTION A. BRAND BUILDING:
Building a brand ensures identification of brands with customers and creating an image of brands in customers’ minds with a specific product class or customer need. The concept of brand building converts the brand response to create an intense, active loyalty relationship between customers and the brand.
There are several factors that are crucial for building successful brands. They are:
REPOSITIONING: Repositioning occurs when a brand tries to change its market position to reflect a change in consumer’s tastes.
INTERNAL MARKETING: management should make sure that the employees of the organization are well aware of the brand and understand its brand value and position.
LONG TERM PERSPECTIVE: This leads onto another important factor in brand-building: the need to invest in the brand over the long-term. Building customer awareness, communicating the brand’s
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
message and thus building customer loyalty takes a long time period for the organization.
COMMUNICATION: To create a clearly defined image and correctly positioning the brand in the minds of the target customers, the organizations need to communicate the awareness to the audience. Therefore, communication plays a vital role in the brand.
FIGURE1 - Factors of brand building
QUALITY: Quality is a vital ingredient of a good brand. Remember the “core benefits” – the things consumers expect
POSITIONING: it is about the position that a brand occupies in the minds of the customers. It also takes into consideration:
a. Competitive Frame of Reference b. Points of Parity & Points of Differences
c. Brand Values – attributes & benefits that characterize a brand
d. Brand Mantras – the brand DNA
B. INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION:
A concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines - for example, general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations- and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communications impact.
FIGURE 2: Integrated Marketing Tools.
Apart from the above mentioned tools there are 2 more communication that can be used for successfully promoting and creating brand. They are:
Social networking sites-
Through social networking slowly and steadily not a business can create a brand of its own but also can derive a lot of additional traffic, which otherwise would have been difficult or nearly impossible to attain. Return may be slow at the first stage, but social online marketing is considered as great free advertising tool that can build a solidVol. 2, No. 1, 2012
foundation for the brand if implanted properly. Numerous marketers successfully are strategically using social marketing to increase the appeal of their business. There are also examples of successfully getting into a Joint Venture Partnerships. What it means, it is easier to find out business minded people interested in similar niche in the online world. Successful entrepreneurs use social networking sites to spruce up their network of friends with common interests. They share ideas, exchange information and in the long run establish relationships and take it to the next level then promote by becoming partners or referring someone interested in the venture.
Search Engine Optimization
- Search engineoptimization is optimizing your site and you’re content to get high rankings in the search engines. When people go to a search engine, they enter their search terms or keywords for a product or service. Sites that appear in the top results get the majority of the visitors. So websites
optimize their content to outrank their competitors and get more customers.
C. IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Integrated marketing communications approach seeks to have a company’s entire marketing and promotional activities project a consistent, unified image to the marketplace. The IMC approach helps the companies to identify the most appropriate and effective methods for communicating and building relationships with their customers as well as other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, investors,
interest groups, and the general public. The brand managers and the marketers now understand the value of strategically integrating the various communications functions for promoting their product or their brand rather than having them operate autonomously.
IMC tools make it very easy and convenient for a company to maximize the return on its investment in marketing and promotion. The changing environment, the up gradation in the technologies and the power of the consumers has made it necessary for the marketers to make effective use of various alternatives present with them for promoting their brand and communicating the clear message about itself to the target market.
Therefore, making the use of IMC is all the more important from company’s point of view.
D. ROLE OF IMC TOOLS IN BRAND BUILDING
Integrated marketing communication tools are used by the organizations to create a brand identity of a product or a service in the minds of the target audience. This identity is created by constantly making the customers aware of the product or the service through marketing activities like advertisements, sales promotion, personal selling, internet selling, social networking sites, search engine optimization etc. IMC tools are effectively used by the brand managers for making a brand successful and therefore acquiring more market share. Through the consistent promotions done by the organizations, the brand recall and recognition value increases and customers remember
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
the brand or a particular feature of the product/ brand during their purchase.
Therefore, helps in gaining brand equity.
E. ROLE OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IN BRAND BUILDING
Search Engine Optimization helps in optimizing your site and the content of your site to get high rankings in the search engines when a search term or a keyword is entered for finding about a product or a service. Sites that appear in the top results or the first page get the majority of the visitors. So, optimizers are hired by the organizations to make changes in the con tent or the webpage so that it appears before the link of their competitors or right next to it. This helps in creating greater brand exposure to a large number of internet users about the company and thus creating a brand identity for them. A successful SEO campaign will not only improve your search engine ranking but also put you in the same bracket with the best and largest players in your industry. Being at the same platform with biggest names in your industry will surely increase your brand value.
II. OBJECTIVES
• To analyze the importance of brand building for an organization.
• To know how Search Engine Optimization helps in
building a brand
• To study how Search Engine Optimization is used
as an IMC communication Tool.
• To analyze the different benefits that organization draw from Search Engine Optimization.
III. LITERATURE REVIEW
Vertexera (2003) has studied the benefits of search engine optimization as a tool for building a brand is discussed. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a plan implemented to increase a site's visibility. It involves selecting keywords that will generate targeted traffic, researching search engine policies and guidelines, and understanding customers. In addition, SEO involves dealing with design and content problems that might hinder a site's results ranking. Search engine optimization is an integral part of web site promotion and no company can afford to ignore it. Search engine optimization is a tool that markets the brand in a cost effective manner. This term paper has also discussed the various benefits that companies can draw from the use of SEOs as their marketing tool. With the drastic change and up gradation of the technologies, the companies have got various alternatives for the successful promotion of their products and services and one of them is Search Engine optimization.
Wenyu Dou (2006) has talked if the companies would be benefitted of using search engine optimization for positioning their brand or not. Integrating theories from various research domains, it was found that search engine results can serve as a meaningful vehicle for creating brand positioning in the e-commerce world. This mechanism appears especially significant when Internet users ‘search engine ranking schema gets activated (e.g., through a brand feature priming mechanism), and it is particularly salient for less-sophisticated Internet searchers. Also it was highlighted that although a brand positioning strategy
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
is the most sensible one for SMEs, large firms may be interested in the impact of search engine rankings on their overall brand evaluations.
Seoguru technologies team (1998) talks the various benefits that a company can get by the use of search engine optimization technique for the promotion of the brand. Search Engine Optimization is an efficient and a cost effective way for the communication and creation of brand identity. It also helps the organization in increasing their sales and ranks their webpage at the top and with the main players or the competitors. Through the use of SEOs, a company can leverage upon their rank on the search engine.
Edward Charles (2010) talks about the myths about the optimization of the content are discussed. The myths are about how people think that their content would be changed and how actually they are done. Thus the myths are to be cleared and a proper understanding about the process for optimization should be provided to the companies so that there is no controversy in future regarding the rank of the web page. As the optimizers do not provide any guarantees regarding the rank on the search engine.
Word Stream Inc(2009). says that Search Engine Optimization is the best practice to be used by the organizations for building a successful brand. It gives the best promotional results in a cost effective manner. Search marketing is a powerful and cost-effective means of expanding reach and acquiring new customers, but the world of search is getting more and more competitive and harder to master. SEO is not a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. If you try to
optimize your site based on a short, static keyword list, your SEO results will remain static as well
Graham Charlton (2002) discusses various benefits that a company can get by using SEOs as a tool for promotion and brand building. Use of search engine optimization can give greater visibility, increased return on investment and can have a long term effect on the minds of the customers. This paper basically analysis the various benefits that an organization can achieve by investing a small amount of money as compared to the profits.
Laric, Michael V. University of Baltimore (2010) ponders upon the importance of integrated marketing communication tools in building a successful brand. Communication is a vital part for any organization to create awareness about itself among the consumers and rightly positioning itself in the minds of the customers. This communication can be made more effective with the use of various communication tools called integrated marketing communication tools.
IV.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
A.
Role of integrated marketing communication in brand building.Integrated marketing communication tools are used by the organizations to create a brand identity of a product or a service in the minds of the target audience. This identity is created by constantly making the customers aware of the product or the service through marketing activities like advertisements, sales
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
promotion, personal selling, internet selling, social networking sites, search engine optimization etc. It creates awareness about the brand in the market which influences people or the consumers and persuades them to buy the product or induces trial purchase. Using social networking sites for the promotion or advertisement of the product creates a buzz about the brand among the audience of different target markets thus creating brand identity. Public relation protects and promotes the image of the company to the market and adds value to the imagery attributes of the brand.
Brand identity is the sum total of all points of encounter or contact that consumers have with the brand, and it extends beyond the experience or outcome of using it and these contacts can also result from the various integrated marketing communication activities like mass-media advertising, sales promotion offers, sponsorship activities at sporting or entertainment events, websites on the Internet, and direct-mail pieces such as letters, brochures, catalogues, or videos etc. Search engine optimization helps the organization in building a successful brand and provides various different benefits to the organization.
B.
Process of search engine optimization-
The process includes various simple steps that are used by the optimizers for optimizing a company’s website. These steps are:
a) Keywords in the title tag- Choose TITLE tag
wisely, and do not overload or overstuff your
TITLE tag with unnecessary keywords. Only focus on main keywords.
b) Keywords in the content or the body- Don’t
indulge into Body text keyword stuffing. It will only lower your rankings.There are no fixed rules, but keep your content natural and it should resemble what text you have in your TITLE tag.
c) Keywords in domain name- You should always
use less number of keywords for best results. Like
www.keyword-domain.com.
d) Keywords in image titles- The keywords within
Image Titles and Alt text are useful for image search rankings.
e) Age of your document- Most of the webpages
which are old and have quality content will rank higher. However, in the past few months search engines are showing more inclination towards Fresh pages with quality content rather than old pages.
f) Quality of your website content- There is an old saying in SEO industry that “Content is king”. If your content is good, then you will automatically gain links.
g) Frequency of change to you content- If your
website’s content gets updated regularly (i.e. addition of new content), then you can expect some Bonus points from search engines.
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012
C.
Role of Search Engine Optimization in BuildingBrands.
¾ Be at the top- It quite evident that if you are
looking to build a brand at the World Wide Web, your site must feature at the top result pages of the leading search engine and most likely in the first result page itself. It will not only guarantee increase of traffic to your site but also effectively build your brand image. To get that coveted top ranking at the organic search results of the leading search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, search engine optimization is the most viable solution you have got.
¾ Break the digital divide- A successful SEO
campaign will not only improve your search engine ranking but also put you in the same bracket with the best and largest players in your industry. Being at the same platform with biggest names in your industry will surely increase your brand value.
¾ Leverage from your ranking - With the top ranking at the leading search engines, it is quite evident that traffic to your site will significantly increase. The best part of this traffic is that most of them are pre-qualified customers and hence major part of these leads will convert in sales. So, with a search engine ranking your customer base will increase rapidly. This increase in the sales will not only give you a financial gain but also build an interest and reputation of your brand thanks to the recent trends of blogs and online reviews and of course
word of mouth that spreads like fire in the consumer market.
¾ Improve the page rank - With more visitors,
greater sales volume, the importance of your site is improved significantly. With this improving reputation at the online world, your site is all set for a top ranking for longer period of time that will result is a sharper increase in the brand value.
¾ Be consistent in your SEO objectives - With a
consisting ranking at the leading search engine result pages, you create a long lasting and strong influence on the mind of your customers. This will guarantee the brand loyalty of the customers. Therefore, it is important that instead of one time SEO campaign to take a long time program for your SEO initiative that will definitely contribute to your brand equity.
¾ Brighten your online image - Online reputation
management that is the buzz in the present context can be successfully done with the help of SEO. By providing better ranking of pro brand sites and eventually lowering the ranks of the ‘boycott’ or ‘flame’ sites you can achieve better brand management through SEO.
V. CONCLUSION
Brand building is a very important concept for the marketers and the brand managers for successfully positioning their brands and thereby making profits. An established brand is the one which has a clear and a good image of itself in the minds of consumers. The brands which
Vol. 2, No. 1, 2012 can successfully communicate the desired message about
the brand to the target audience, becomes the preference of the people and gain brand equity. Building brand becomes vital for the companies to survive in the competitive world in the long run. The successful communication can be done with the effective use of integrated marketing communication tools. Integrated marketing communication tools are used by the organizations to create a brand identity of a product or a service in the minds of the target audience. This identity is created by constantly making the customers aware of the product or the service through marketing activities like advertisements, sales promotion, personal selling, internet selling, social networking sites, search engine optimization etc. These marketing tools help in the creation of successful brands. There are new IMC tools apart from the earlier ones. They are: Social Networking Sites and Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Optimization is used for optimizing the website so as to get higher ranking on the search engines used for finding about a particular product or service or brand by the increasing number of internet users. A successful SEO campaign will not only improve your search engine ranking but also put you in the same bracket with the best and largest players in your industry. Being at the same platform with biggest names in your industry will surely increase your brand value. Therefore, Search Engine optimization- the latest IMC tool helps in building a brand in an efficient and cost effective manner. It helps the organizations to be in the first 10 links on the search engines or on the first page of the search and keeps the growing organization in the same bracket as the well established competitors if optimizing is done effectively. This in turn helps in giving a high exposure of the brand to the rapidly growing number of internet users therefore, creating the brand recognition and recall value. Search engine optimization has become a vital part for the promotion which cannot be missed by any organization.
REFERENCES Research papers:
[1] Vertexera(2003), Lead Generation Programs published “Benefits of Search Engine Optimization”, journal of marketing research.
[2] Word Stream Inc.,(2009),” search engine optimization, best practices”, ANA Educator Procedures.
[3] Edward Charles, (2010), “myths about working of SEOs”, 4ps
[4] Wenyu Dou, (2006), “brand positioning strategy using search engine marketing”, business today- marketing journal.
[5] Seoguru technologies team, (1998), “ Branding through SEOs”.
[6] Laric, Michael V. University of Baltimore (2010), the role of IMC in Brand Building”
[7] Graham Charlton, business benefits of SEOs, journal of advertising.
Books:
[1] Kevin lane keller, strategic brand management, 2nd edition, pearson publication, 2007. Page 70 – 76
Websites:
[1] http://www.seohawk.com [2] http://www.visibilitysquad.com/
[3]http://brandpersonalization.com/services/search-engine-optimization-services/#axzz1UhLPEdgi
