When to use performance advertising and when to use brand support in online marketing?
Is performance advertising alone sufficient for the success of your e-shop or company, or would it be better to work on strengthening awareness of your brand? When is it worth thinking about branding in addition to PPC ads? You will learn this from the article created in cooperation with the Key Advantage agency.
Every e-shop and many other companies that do not sell directly on the Internet, but for example obtain requests, work mainly with performance advertising. It is based on the basic idea of offering people what they want at the right moment, i.e. at the moment when they are looking for something on the Internet. The performance part of marketing is mainly represented by PPC advertisement.
On the other hand, when buying new shoes or a mobile phone, many people do not surf the Internet, but order goods from their favorite brand straight away. Why is it? They trust a brand that is close to their heart. And branding, or brand building, takes care of making it so.
PPC campaigns are the basis of performance marketing
Performance advertising is a tool of performance or performance marketing and is primarily represented by so-called PPC advertising, which is text and graphic advertising placed on paid positions in search engines and content networks. The principle of PPC, i.e. "pay per click" in English, is payment per click - you pay only for the actual click on the advertisement and bringing the Internet user to your website, not for the mere display. The most common goal of performance advertising is a measurable action (so-called conversion) on the website. It can be, for example, a direct purchase of goods or services, leaving a contact, sending a request, etc.
PPC advertising and its advantages and disadvantages
Among the advantages are the wide targeting options of PPC advertising. The ad will only be displayed to people who have entered a given keyword into the search engine, it can also be targeted geographically to a certain area or according to the type of device, e.g. only mobile phones. PPC campaigns can be freely set practically in real time (turn on, turn off, change their content, etc.) and the client has full control over their expenses, for example by setting the daily budget of individual campaigns.
Disadvantages of a PPC campaign include the complexity of setting up an effective ad, and with higher amounts, you cannot do without professional help. With the increasing competition of advertising on the Internet, we can observe the inflation of the cost per click. By this we mean the ever-increasing price per click, and the crowding out of smaller or start-up companies. Rising prices reduce the return on investment in advertising, and for some companies this type of advertising may not pay off.
Stand apart from the competition with brand advertising
You certainly know from your own experience that you will prefer a brand that you know when making a purchase. And this applies all the more, the more expensive the product you want to buy. The goal of brand advertising is to strengthen trust and a positive attitude towards the brand. The goal is to be engraved in people's memory, to become a known quantity in their minds and, thanks to this, to gain their preference when buying.
The most common tool for brand advertising in online marketing are banners. If you already use PPC in search engines, then banners will support this campaign and the given product or brand will be searched for more. In a similar way, a banner campaign will also support your offline marketing activities. You can read about how your banner campaign should look in the article < a href="https://www.key-advantage.cz/velky-pruvodce-bannerovou-reklamou-na-internetu/">here.
Is it worth investing in brand building even for smaller companies?
Most of us certainly have a favorite that we can't let go of. A brand doesn't just mean a logo or a company name, it's mainly about associations and the feeling they evoke in you. What you imagine when you hear Adidas, Mercedes, Ducati or Alza. What emotions do these companies evoke in you.
Companies with such a strong brand do not sell, but build a brand. Most of the time, you don't go to buy sneakers of a certain brand because they targeted you with advertising or because they are the cheapest. You buy them because of their brand, which represents the experience with that company. Branding involves two phases – creating a brand and spreading awareness about it.
In practice, we often encounter the objection that a company that does not belong to large corporations cannot financially afford brand promotion. And that he doesn't really need the brand that much. At the same time, it is exactly the opposite. Branding should be one of the most important marketing activities of any company. If the company does not have the budget for a massive advertising massage on TV, it can focus on branding only on its target group. Even in the online environment, this can be solved very effectively, for example, through Google Display technology & Video 360 (DV360), which enables accurate targeting users with specific characteristics, interests, income, etc.
In summary – performance campaigns are a good foundation for your marketing, however
