Written by Ted Dhanik
Branding is a nebulous term that includes anything you do to get your brand more public exposure. But branding in the true sense requires a keen eye for testing, a method to develop passive traffic, and an idea that will help you market your business.
Content Marketing
Writing about areas that you have the most expertise in helps spread your knowledge around the Web. It’s great for branding, either for an executive in your company or for the company itself. Content marketing puts you on popular blogs with a lot of traffic. Use this strategy in conjunction with your banner advertising to create brand awareness. It’s also excellent for link building, as long as you take the time to include links that are actually valuable to your target audience.
SEO
Search engines are where people start when they want to find something, and if you’re not paying attention to it, then you’re only paying for traffic. If you made some changes to your content and improved the quality of your site, it is usually enough to start seeing some search traffic. In combination with your display advertising, you will find that it is much easier to spread brand awareness when you are getting passive traffic in addition to your more active efforts. Even B2B companies can generate content that helps their customer base solves a problem, perfect for passive traffic generation during a display ad campaign.
Banner Ads
Banner advertising can be tricky if you’re new to it because it demands so much careful testing. The best approach is to review the ads of your competition and benchmark your results against theirs. You can find these ads through affiliate networks, which will commonly list the conversion rate next to the banner itself. Even if your product is superior to the affiliate’s, try running an A/B test to see how their ad performs against your own. See if you can match the conversion rate, drawing elements from the ad to use in your own work.
It also helps to review other ads in your market to see if you notice commonalities like a keyword or call to action.
Final Thoughts
If you want to increase branding, you need to take a more practical approach in securing traffic. It helps to have a plan where you secure traffic and conversions from display campaigns, while you generate passive traffic for branding purposes.
Bio: Ted Dhanik is a display media expert with over fifteen years in sales and direct marketing. Ted Dhanik has co-founded the advertising network engage:BDR. For information on display ads for your business, contact Ted Dhanik.