Building Your Brand in Search

In my last post regarding reasons for bidding on brand name keywords, I touched on the importance of owning the space that people find when they search on your brand name. It’s an opportunity to provide the user with a rich brand experience that will enhance their visit and improve their brand recall.

Bing and Yahoo! offer an extended ad copy for brand name keywords called Rich Ads in Search (RAiS). These ads allow you to incorporate additional features to improve click through rates and user experience. Images, videos, deep links, and a short form within the ad copy itself offer searchers a more relevant ad, and a shorter path to conversion.

As a lead gen client in a highly competitive industry, 1800duilaws.com was seeking a way to improve their brand experience. By using Rich Ads in Search they were able to include a short form that pre-populates the zip code field when the visitor hits their landing page. Including this form in the ad indicates to the user that they have a nation-wide service area. It also takes the user directly to the lead form, and helps commit them to filling in the remainder of the form.

We also added an image to help with brand recall, and deep links to the Live Chat and Spanish Language pages for users that prefer these options. Rich Ads in Search take up more real estate in the SERP, and they are insured an exclusive top position (with other ads being pushed to the right) so you don’t have to worry about competitors infringing on your turf.

Google has a product in beta that includes a similar short form. According to our Google rep it is currently going through some updates, but here’s a look at it from a month ago.

If you’re not building your brand in search, then you might be helping to build someone else’s. By extending your brand name ads, you can protect yourself from competitors and foster loyalty with your customers.