Does Branding Have to Hurt Your Pocketbook?

MoreVisibility - April 30, 2007

The information superhighway can feel more like information overload — a saturated market with site after site popping up vying for attention like a pack of preschoolers. So how can you stand out — how can you effectively be seen without breaking the bank? Many smaller outfits shy away from any branding campaigns with the argument that paying for their own name is not worth their while or that banner media doesn’t show the return, but these arguments are short sighted.

A recent article in Neilson//NetRatings Newsletter, focused in on the importance of seeing the bigger picture, mentioning that “While 84% of transactions occur after people directly key in the URL of the site that they buy from, a third of all retail site visits result from referrals”. In other words, direct type in users had to find you somewhere and building a bit of brand awareness can pay off in higher converting re-visits.

Each acquisition has to originate from somewhere and the connection may not always be a one-to-one — so a push on branding terms or a banner ad may not have a huge direct ROAS, but just watch type-ins creep up and the conversions roll in from that “source”.

So get creative when looking at analytics and remember every user found you somewhere!