Brand Launch with AdWords. Is it enough?

Search Engine Marketing is a powerful tool to achieve profitability of the campaigns carried out in these. The main one is Google, as we all know, although there are more and each time they gain more weight for international campaigns such as Bing (works well in US), Yandex (for Russia) or Baidu (for the Chinese market).

In my previous work as a Manager of Large Accounts of Latin American advertisers at Google, we almost always went to the argument of profitability as mana sales, efficiency first of all.

When the advertiser was of a sector and/or country not very competed, the efficiency of the campaigns in search engines was achieved with some facility, so the advertisers tried to cover the category to 100%, as far as possible, limited on many occasions by their Rigid budgets, almost always captive by previous negotiations in other means much less efficient.

However, when these conditions of competition are not given, see in countries or sectors more competitive with advertisers with years of filming, entering to compete under these conditions, becomes much more complex.

Adwords, as a search engine advertising tool, is a fantastic tool, but it is limited to generate brand notoriety, a fundamental objective when you want to launch a brand little known or generate branding. Advertisers need to be clear about this when they set expectations for Adwords campaigns. The branding with Adwords in search engines is insufficient.

LAN Chile, a successful example of Branding with Adwords and much more

A very well executed example of how to position a brand was the one that made the Chilean airline LAN when it bought in Colombia the Colombian airline Aires at the end of 2011 (LAN buys Aires, portfolio.co). In The following graph we can see how to change the tendency of users to search from Aires to LAN. This was achieved with a strong mass media campaign and not just Adwords campaigns in the search engine.

The change in Google search trends of both brands demonstrates the resounding success of this communication campaign. We see that the communication campaign during December 2011 changed the trend of Air searches in Favor of LAN and how the volume of searches of Airs faded.

From This example we learn that if we want to position a new brand in the mind of consumers (or change it), we must invest in mass media to achieve it and not have faith in the Google Adwords search engine exclusively; Branding With Adwords is not enough.

How to propose a brand launch?

Google teams pose the launching of a brand, subbrand or even a product in different stages.

• Pre-Release: This is the pre-launch stage of a product or brand. During This period we try to generate a certain brand recognition and expectation before the launch. Early-adopters will help spread the brand name. A concrete Action that we can carry out here is to be continuously in the search engine (always-on), so that if someone looks for us, we always find. Also Small niche campaigns (specific websites) in the Display network that generate cheap cost traffic. We are Basically looking to reach our most central or core audience and that, thanks to them, we can have more success and impact during the launch phase.

• Launch: During this stage we will remove the heavy artillery in terms of investment in the media. It Is time to make us known in a massive way and generate brand recognition gaining coverage and frequency of advertising impacts. During the launch, KPIs should not be aligned with generating sales and return on investment. Traditional search Metrics, such as CTR, Average Position, etc… They’re not useful here. The High-level objectives here will be: generate brand exposure, conquer brand territory and, through this interest, generate traffic to the Web.

• Post-Launch: Once users arrive consistently to the web announced, it is time to capture this brand recognition and generate sales and return on investment. The actions that are developed during the post-launch are actions whose KPIs are usually related to economic terms such as cost per sale, cost per registration, ROI, ROAS, etc. Here we will seek to capture all the existing demand for both the brand and the products or services associated with that brand; It is what is known as Always-On actions. Remarketing is also a good option to attract those less determined customers.

If the brand launch process has been done properly, during the Post-launch stage we will collect the fruits of the investment and make it profitable. Also, it is very necessary to create brand recognition actions or campaigns during the post-launch stage.