What's going on now?

[julian]

I while back I said we're seeing go to: #companyx at end of a TV advert etc, instead of go to companyx.co.uk

In the last few months we're now at:

'For more info go online and search for companyx!' (or keyword)

Isn't this an anti-marketing strategy?

I've noticed facebook/companyx has lost some ground and not used much at all now - the question is will it go back to domain?

 

[RobM]

Ouch. Might as well say 'search online and we may be one of the people listed.' Terrible marketing.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Ouch. Might as well say 'search online and we may be one of the people listed.' Terrible marketing.

Or clever marketing if they've got the search results sewn up and are generating a huge amount of brand searches off the back of it.

 

[RobM]

Clever marketing is ensuring your clients can *always* find you. Running off the back of another platform is a recipe for disaster.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Clever marketing is ensuring your clients can *always* find you. Running off the back of another platform is a recipe for disaster.

I don't think you understand why they're doing it. They want to be seen as a brand in search engines eyes and get better rankings off the back of it... one way to do this is to create a situation where people are searching for your brand and then clicking through to your site.

Of course it can backfire if you can't hold the top spots for your own brand name, and unless you trademarked it you're giving competitors the opportunity to piggyback and bid on your name in ppc.

 

[RobM]

I do understand why they're doing it. But why take unnecessary risks? At best you're going to be on a level pegging with people who DON'T take this route. At worst you're going to lose out. Nothing clever about it.

 

[Retired_Member42]

On top of brand name searches to establish a brand, the amount of click throughs they get will also be a factor - more click throughs = better rankings. Plus the time spent on the page as a result of it being exactly what they're looking will also effect the bounce rate metrics in a positive sense - which will again increase their worth in the eyes of Google.

 

[Retired_Member38]

"At best you're going to be on a level pegging with people who DON'T take this route. At worst you're going to lose out" - evidently you don't understand it then.

They're betting on Google rewarding them for more people searching for their brand. They're forcing people to do this by telling them to Google xyz. If they said 'visit dgkdhg.com' a lot of people will bypass Google completely.

 

[RobM]

If you have to get google to 'reward' you or appease them you have a seriously flawed business model if media advertising. But hey, let them carry on. Only one step up from the muppets that have facebook pages only for their business.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I just think that offline media advertising for your brand is a good way to influence the metrics that are now in play at Google with regards to brands. I do think it's clever marketing and all about the bigger picture. General TV advertising doesn't yield that much in the scheme of things. Even if you lose 50% of your would be TV audience to competitors, the gains you'd get by establishing yourself as a "brand" in Googles eyes would be massive. I'd take moving up for 100+ keywords in the serps over a few hundred people buying my product any day of the week.

 

[Edwin]

It's beginning to look like 1999 all over again, the way that brands seem willing to throw ad money down the drain without really caring about ROI.

 

[Retired_Member42]

It's beginning to look like 1999 all over again, the way that brands seem willing to throw ad money down the drain without really caring about ROI.

Not all advertising is about generating sales directly. This is the same as someone buying an "advertisement" on a website with a view of increasing their Google position without a care for direct sales or click throughs as a result of that ad. The advertising method discussed here is an extension of that. It's a way to influence the metrics in play at Google whilst no doubt gaining enough sales to cover their media buy in the process.

 

[Edwin]

Not all advertising is about generating sales directly. This is the same as someone buying an "advertisement" on a website with a view of increasing their Google position without a care for direct sales or click throughs as a result of that ad. The advertising method discussed here is an extension of that. It's a way to influence the metrics in play at Google whilst no doubt gaining enough sales to cover their media buy in the process.

Not sure about the "no doubt" part. Not all advertising works - far from it.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I'm sure it doesn't. My point was that the direct sales as a result of the ad are obviously a secondary concern. If it wasn't, they'd be advertising their domain directly. In my opinion any sales generated as a direct result of people seeing their ad are looked at as a bonus.

 

[jbworldwide]

If we make the assumption (easy one to make) that most people online when searching for anything then go to Google first.

Then if you reinforce the link between a google and a brand saying "dont worry you can search Google for a term (easier to remember than a web address in full) and we will be here for you to click on"

In terms of customer effort then it is a positive step, customer instinctively searches google so it isnt seen as an extra step to get to something and then the typing is reduced.

If you couple this with effectively buying ad space for the terms etc. then most of the time you will be at or very near the top and get the click through with the bonus of your website going up the page rankings due to the positive re-enforcement.

I dont want to make this tl;dr but I wanted others to consider the impact on growing the market as well, sometimes you don't mind competitors advertising etc. because it raises general awareness for a product and gets more people into the pool to buy and not just taking market share in a stagnant market. With this form of advertsing you might lose some people to competitors but you are growing the pool of people and more people talk about it and therefore you are more likely to gain in the longer term as you get a slice of a bigger pie.

 

[Sussexite]

I guess the one thing going for it is that search and hashtags have a degree of autocomplete about them - making it a bit easier for people who can't remember exactly what they were looking for to find it.

An exact match domain is great if your customers can all match it - exactly.

But for a company that doesn't have a particularly memorable domain name, this might be a viable tactic.