Yahoo's Ron Belanger chats with our executive editor about the intersection between search and branding.

Ron Belanger, senior director of global advertiser strategy and development, joined Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture) in September 2005 to serve as an expert resource for clients and agencies looking to maximize the efficiency of their performance marketing infrastructure and effectively incorporate search marketing into their overall marketing mix. Prior to joining Yahoo, Belanger served as vice president of search and affiliate marketing for interactive advertising agency Carat Interactive, where he developed marketing strategies for more than 20 clients including Hyatt Hotels, America Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Radio Shack, Hyundai and Kodak. During his two years at Carat he co-authored the industry’s premier course on Search Marketing in conjunction with iMedia Learning. He also served in various positions for Inceptor, FairMarket and HSRI.

Brad Berens: Generally, if I asked somebody to make the false-dichotomy choice and pick either Direct Response or Branding as a bucket for Search, most folks would pick DR. How is search an effective branding vehicle?

Ron Belanger: I would agree; search is seen by most marketers as DR. In part, it is what fueled this industry’s rapid growth. Show me the money, marketers demanded, and we did. Now that search has been established as one of the greatest DR mediums of all time, there is naturally a hesitation with the branding argument.

What we need to look at when we begin the conversation on search and branding is the very nature of how consumers are introduced to brands. What we have seen through the Life Series research we conducted last year was that search engines are becoming the preferred method for consumers who are moving from one life stage to another to help them with all aspects of this move.

Take a student going off to college. There are a number of products and services that these students will need for the very first time. What we found was that over 80 percent of students looked to search to help them navigate these new needs. More interestingly, though, is the finding that these students found search to be the best source of information, beating out family and friends and traditional media.

The first step in the branding story is brand awareness, and search is becoming the top way in which brands are introduced to consumers. If a company is not there in search, they will not make it into the consideration set moving towards brand preference and eventual purchase.

Berens: Are we talking about SEM or SEO here, or the overlap?

Belanger: It’s both. In order to maximize share of SERP (search engine results pages), a soundly executed search strategy will not rely exclusively on one or the other. Where SEM plays an increasingly important role in branding is that marketers have more control over messaging and placement, both important when trying to keep a search campaign consistent with the rest of the marketing mix. It also allows for more flexibility in messaging.

Take the Super Bowl ads from Sunday. Super Bowl advertisers are able to launch unique creative for their campaigns to support their buys from the game. After the buzz and effectiveness of the Super Bowl buy wears off, they can modify their message to be more topical. With SEO, that flexibility is not as easy to do, but the value of being there is quite high.

Berens: The Search and Branding presentation you gave yesterday at the iMedia Brand Summit focused on one of the major auto insurance carriers. To what extent can you extrapolate your insights on search and branding out from high consideration purchases like autos to other products and industries? What sorts of industries would this not be relevant to?

Belanger: We know that over 80 percent of new car buyers conduct research online before they walk onto a lot to test drive. Other high consideration purchases like homes, vacations and education are seeing more and more consumers turn to the web and internet search to help with these daunting decisions.

This begs the question of “If I am selling a $1.25 soft drink, what do I care about search?” The answer lies in driving towards message association. What does your brand stand for? What does your brand offer? How is it different? A brand manager should find the intersection points between those answers and consumer intent through search.

Let’s take Red Bull as an example. They have aligned their brand with the racing theme, which I think, from a branding perspective, is a sound strategy. They have a great website dedicated to alpine ski racing, motocross racing, high speed kite-surfing and the like.

To drive that association, search can really help. By managing an appropriate keyword portfolio that enforces that message, a brand manager can really tap into the buzz and excitement created around an event like the Olympics.

Berens: How do you see the increasing growth of both mobile and local search playing out with regard to branding?

Belanger: I don’t think there is going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to branding with these two channels. Media consumption habits, especially segmented by demographic information, need to be looked at closely when evaluating the brand efficacy of mobile. The reason why we are talking about web search and branding in the first place lies in how ubiquitous search has become in consumer culture.

While mobile phones are equally as ubiquitous, consumption habits by demographic segments vary wildly. With younger consumers, however, there surely are some killer branding opportunities out there. 

Local search, in my mind, is the same as web search, only with a more targeted result set. I think all of the ways in which savvy marketers are using web search for brand and response apply to local.

Additional resources:
View Ron Belanger's PowerPoint presentation.

Brad Berens is executive editor for iMedia Communications.

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