The results of a not so recent survey reported by Econsultancy say it does- by as much as 40 percent! The participants of the survey were asked what evoked them to search online for a particular company, product, service, or slogan. The results were as follows:
• TV Ads: 44%
• Word of Mouth: 41%
• Magazine/Newspaper Ads: 35%
• Radio: 23%
• Billboard: 13%
The internet is now such an overwhelmingly powerful part of successful commerce, but whatever happened to offline branding?
Is it no longer relevant?
If done correctly, offline branding actually works!
It’s not an archaic act, and it allows you to expand your brand to the point of full recognition. It’s funny that many of us thought that it was useless to focus on offline branding, considering how the biggest companies in the world still take out radio, newspaper, magazine, TV and billboard ads.
Impacts of Offline Branding on SEO
Google is not closing its eye to the impact of offline marketing on online search. Brand mentions (or more accurately “entity mentions”) are now an important part of Google’s search signals, and there is overwhelming evidence to support it.
Links vs Brand Searches
What this actually means is that when a user searches for a particular keyword (or your brand name) and then clicks on your website, Google notices and counts it as a “brand search”.
A connection is established between that particular search term and your domain, and the number of such connections or “reference queries” is used for modifying the number of express links and implied links (especially, brand citations/mentions) pointing to your domain. Hence, if you have a huge number of incoming links and very few brand searches, the value of your inbound links is discounted for the purpose of calculating your search ranking.
Express Links
The patent also hints that Google seeks to discount the value of express links from the same group of websites (i.e. websites having the same owner) and gives more value to incoming links from discrete domains. So the practice of hosting clone domains may soon finally hit a wall – a battle which Google has been fighting for decades.
Remember that the update I’m emphasizing here is separate from the “real-time” Penguin update that’s now imminent for release. The Panda update deals with domain quality and authority and content usefulness, whereas the real-time update will determine the quality of incoming links.
Mentions and Implied Links
The “express links” that the patent talks about include both follow and no follow links. In fact, follow links have been played to the limits by digital marketers, but no follow or implied links still accord a more accurate picture of the real brand authority for ranking purposes.
Undoubtedly, a popular brand or entity will have more people talking about it online. Hence, implied links and brand mentions are a more logical way to rank sites based on their actual brand authority and not on the tactics exploited by people who are too good at manipulating algorithms and buying high-authority incoming links.
Online Mentions and Offline Branding
But what exactly do the online brand mentions and implied links have to do with offline marketing? Actually, everything! The survey I mentioned at the beginning of this post highlights the blazing fact that a huge number of searches are prompted by offline branding. In the context of the new Panda algorithm, all these searches are reference queries or implied links, which mainly control the way your site is ranked.
In other words, your offline branding will now matter more than ever in getting your site ranked higher. Mentions could become the future of link building, and there’s nothing that sets off online mentions quite like offline marketing. A thrilling news release, an unusual TV Ad, or a video reported in even conventional media has more chance of getting online mentions and shares than something similarly exciting that you share only through your own online channels.
Impact of Online on Offline
The impact of offline branding is not limited to SEO alone. Bonobos, a men’s clothing brand that was born online, experienced that the people who shopped at their e-store after visiting their bricks and mortar outlets spend almost 75% more. Another survey by Accenture found that 72% of the respondents purchased the product digitally after having seen it in a physical store.
Contrarily, 78% of the respondents researched online before purchasing the product at a store. This helps back up the notion that consumers have unified the boundaries between online and offline and turned it into a single shopping experience.
The massive spill-over effect between offline and online branding is already prompting e-Commerce retailers to merge offline and online shopping experiences.
The new Panda update may become the reason for every online business as well as the digital marketers to have a new look at their offline branding strategy.
So as you can see, it turns out offline branding does have a place with search engine optimisation. It’s wise to conduct research before completely going all out with your offline marketing campaign.
For example, some industries and companies perform well with billboards, while others are just wasting their money. It also helps to target based on demographics who may see your ad.