In the Age of Google, corporate
brand internet identity will be built around What We Are rather than Who We
Are.
The "brand
name" concept was born in the Industrial Revolution and raised in the
20th Century. Standardized manufacturing
produced consistent
products. Distribution networks placed bottles and boxes of the same stuff
everywhere. National billboards, magazines, radio and television allowed
manufacturers to foist their names upon people otherwise engaged in motoring,
reading an article, listening to music or watching The Super Bowl.
In the 21st Century,
the Brand Name will give up some ground to the Branded Keyword. People
will search for "things" rather than "names." Media
buyers will turn over part of their budgets to Search Engine Marketers. CPM,
reach, and frequency will yield to PPC, CTR and TSOL. The standard "200
GRPs per 2
to 3 week purchase cycle" will give way to
"share of SE clicks per 2 to 3 minutes." Everything will speed up, including the time
to bring a "brand" from concept to market rollout.
Marketers must learn to
fish with hooks as well as nets.
Why? The cost
of imprinting your
corporate or product brand name in the minds of millions of disinterested strangers through
push
media is becoming exponentially higher than the
cost of capturing sales from thousands of steam
heat shoppers - people who search for your sort of "thing" using keywords and keyword clusters that are already
familiar to them. 
The disciplines of
image advertising, direct response inquiry/conversion, and Search Engine
Marketing must and will converge - whether you sell direct online,
or use web pages to deliver product specs, coupons, driving directions, or other
useful information to support a sale in a store or face-to-face. Like
the Colt 45 revolver, the Internet can become "The Old Equalizer."
You can beat P&G to the draw!
In the creative corner,
where I operate, building a corporate brand internet identity requires the
same sort of "logical analysis leading to a leap of faith" as does
building an effective TV spot or DR radio :30. The
Marketing Communication Process, my basic strategic template, now includes
a critical fifth question I ask you to answer before I start writing ads or web
pages:
 SE or TV?
1. How much time and effort will
you spend on Search Engine Marketing to identify those keyword clusters that produce the
highest traffic to simple web pages and then convert the highest percentage of browsers
to buyers?
2. How much will you spend
producing ads and jingles that please you and the boss, get high Recall Scores,
"move the needle" a few points, and perhaps, win Addy Awards?
3. How much will you spend on push
media to develop "brand name awareness" among demographic clusters
of people who never or
rarely shop in your category?
4. How much will you spend Per Click to a
SEOP page aimed at today's active keyword shoppers? What will you do with
them when they arrive at your "store?"
How should you build a
corporate brand internet identity using both SEM and push media?
Here's a leap of faith approach
that makes inherent sense, but may require some internal arm-twisting to pull
off (you have to get your web techies and agency creatives to co-operate!).
A metaphorical example illustrates.
Say you want to introduce a new high-powered laundry detergent
for people
who work in very, very dirty factories, machine shops and coal mines.
Call it SCRUBBY
(my apologies to P&G for the blatant rip of the Tide logo. You
would NEVER do such a thing, of course!) Call your homepage scrubby.com. Before you produce any
"Scrubby comes clean!" TV
commercials, though, do some keyword mining of your own.
 1) Use
SEOPs to identify
high count
keyword clusters people already use to shop the category. Optimize landing
pages on scrubby.com for the best KWs. Watch which pages convert the highest percentage
of incoming eyeballs to on-line sales. SEM meets Direct Response.
2) Integrate the winning keywords into
your push media copy. If lots of people who ask Google for "laundry detergent for greasy
overalls" hit your SEOP page and buy, then those EXACT
words should appear in your ads. You want to own them on- and offline.
You'll pay Overture high PPC rates to get those clicks. You'll be more
than willing to spend some CPM money associating "Scrubby"
with a phrase that already exists in the hearts and minds of tomorrow's
searchers.
3) Build web pages, even domain names, that reflect the
image, tone and manner of your push media. You might get more traffic to an
URL like greasyoveralls.com than to your homepage. Great! People who come in through the front door or
the SEOP page should meet the same looking company online. That's
where your techies and art directors get to collaborate. One
may build cloaked pages or redirects to satisfy the rational scoring
algorithms of MSN, AltaVista and HotBot. The others will build
beautiful pages to satisfy the aesthetic desires of humans. If Madge
the Mechanic's Wife is your hero on TV, she should be on your website,
too!
4) Ultimately build a corporate brand
internet identity based on features & benefits,
your primary keyword clusters, and your brand name - all working together. Then ask, "What else can we do with
'greasy overalls?'"
5) In the Age of Television companies introduced brand name line
extensions that often cannibalized master brand sales. New
Scrubby Liquid!
In the Age of Google, you may
wish to introduce new product and service concepts
driven by branded keywords you own. Maybe there's a market for New
Scrubby Grease-Resistant Overalls, sizes
S, M, L and XL? Maybe you can sell them elsewhere?
Now at aisles
34 & 18.
You don't really care if anyone
remembers your Name
as long as they buy your Thing.
The point of this exercise
is that traditional and new-tech means of imprinting YOU on the minds and
wallets of prospects needn't conflict. SE & TV should
converge. Build your brand name in push media. Build your branded
keywords in pull pages. Fish with nets and hooks.
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
How have I
built a corporate brand internet identity using push media?
Advertising isn't going away any
time soon. You can use it effectively to drive customers to your
website. My case
history on dice.com is worth a review (click the pic for the complete
story).
To move this IT recruitment 
board from $14 to $40 million in revenues in 18 months I used corporate image creative,
direct response radio and TV media planning & tracking to increase HPH
from 120M a week to well over 1.5MM. I worked with
dice's operations and sales departments to ensure that a) the site easily
delivered the opportunities the ads promised to job-seekers, and b) the
recruiters and HR people who paid the media bills up front got the DPVs
and resumes they needed to place IT pros in 128,000 extra jobs and earn an
extra $1.2 billion in commissions.
</COMMERCIAL BREAK>
Here's a current work in progress example for a
totally
unknown brand in a hotly competitive niche market about which I knew NOTHING
until a decision-maker far away picked up the phone and called (407) 895-3092.
Fuel Charger Power Cells.
"diesel performance" v. "diesel emissions"
If you'd like this sort of
thinking applied to your next corporate
brand internet identity project, click the link, or pick up that old fashioned telephone on
your desk. Your first three minutes are free.
(407) 895-3092.
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