Most marketers have probably noticed that branding (what we want to say about ourselves) and search engine optimization (trying to figure out what people want us to say) are sometimes in opposition to one another. For instance, a client of ours that is a custom home and home remodeling company is developing their brand around the experience they provide, yet when people are searching for remodeling companies, they don’t search for “remodeling experience”. They search for kitchen remodeling, or bath remodeling or custom home builders.

So, how do these two seemingly different marketing approaches work together? Well, you wouldn’t want to throw your brand out the window when doing search marketing. You want to use it to inform a few key things:
- Keyword quality–if you are living your brand well, you probably know your audience well. Use what you know about your audience to inform the types of keywords you choose. In our client’s case, they are trying to reach professional women, age 35-55 who are looking for high end remodeling services and not just a contractor. Therefore, they want to choose keywords like DESIGN, LUXURY HOME BUILDERS, etc. rather than words like contractor or remodel, as a) these will be searched by many of the wrong types of audiences for them and therefore be too competitive to make it cost effective, and b) they don’t really reflect what the audience they are targeting will value.
- Ad language–if you are doing Google Adwords or other paid search marketing, you will want to make sure your ad language uses both the keywords you have established for your audience, as well as the brand benefit they will receive with your company specifically.
- Landing pages–when developing landing pages to pay off your keywords, use your brand to inform the language, imagery and design you use to set you apart and give the search user a reason to choose you over others. In this game, it’s not really about search volume, it’s about stickiness of your landing page with the right people (your targets).

–Jen Travis

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