Did you know that branded traffic can bring twice as many conversions as regular traffic? We’ve found that not every ecommerce business is running ad campaigns on branded searches, with some of them not even trying to enhance their brand awareness. You would think that businesses would be doing everything they can to maximise reach, but we at Blindfold have often found that some businesses do not know or fully understand what branded traffic is or how to utilise it. If you’re in that same boat, we’ll be taking a deep dive into this world to explain what it is and how it can increase your sales volume.
Brand traffic…What Is It?
Branded traffic is traffic that has been generated based on people’s online searches of terms directly related to your brand. This could be your brand name, the website address, or keywords related to specific products, e.g. “Michelin tyres” instead of “Car Tyres”, or “Sketchers running shoes” instead of just “Running shoes”. Instead of just being a broad search for a product, this type of search reflects specific interest in your brand directly, and it is crucial to determine user engagement with your brand and overall recognition of the brand.
Why Is It So Important?
It demonstrates that your brand is being recognised through previous buyer experience and recommendations. Consumers, like you and me, are always more willing to part with our cash if we know and trust the brand or if it has been recommended by a trusted friend, and this is proven since website brand traffic accounts for at least 40% of all clients, with even higher numbers for some online retailers!
What Are The Benefits?
With plenty of loyal, returning customers searching for your website, along with new customers finding you directly via search engines, this ultimately leads to a higher conversion rate. These customers, generally, already know and trust your brand and products, or have been given recommendations by trusted friends or family. It’s these loyal customers that help to create more sales and boost your long-term SEO and search ranking growth.
How is Branded Traffic Related to SEO?
There are several reasons for branded traffic and SEO being interlinked:
- Regardless of any changes to wider search engine algorithms, your website will always be in the top list for branded queries.
- Branded traffic increases your click-through rate (CTR), along with website attendance and returning users. All of these have a NET positive on your organic search engine results.
- Search engine algorithms will take note of your high levels of relevance in relation to your branded searches, so your site will be made more visible in various searches.
- As you grow your branded traffic, this will help to grow direct website visits, as your relevance on search engines gradually increases your search engine position.
- As a result of increased direct visits to your website, search engine algorithms will gradually increase your position in organic search results.
Preventing Website Traffic Loss
A good way to acquire additional traffic is to create ads on search engines using competitors’ search queries. This will place your ads at the top of search listings, however, those same competitors can do the same to your brand, luring those customers away from your site.
The best way to avoid this is to create your ad campaign based around your branded queries. Google Ads is the most commonly used tool for this, but whichever search engine ad tool you use, it will mean that your links will always take first positions when anyone searches for your brand or brand-related queries. Additionally, the price per click will be lower since the search system will give preference to your ads, since they’re most relevant to your branded search.
Bear in mind that users do make mistakes when typing your brand name and may not be able to find your website. To counter this, you can create “contextual ads” which can cope with any search query errors and prevent lost views.
How to Increase Branded Traffic (A Few Helpful Methods):
Media adverts are one of the best ways to increase brand traffic and they fall under the umbrella of contextual ads. An effective media campaign can increase traffic to your site and subsequently demand for your product or service. To increase effectiveness of these ads you can target them based on a number of pieces of info including:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
- Type of Device
You can start your ads with a message or image that attracts the users’ attention, creating interest and demonstrating your brand USP or advantages. Over time, as long as your ads are effective they will create a positive association with your brand, and this type of display advertising (e.g. site banners, search engine banners, etc), performs well for both known and start-up brands.
As a test for your ads and brand queries you can run a brand traffic cannibalisation test. Cannibalisation can affect your SEO and is caused by publishing the same/similar content over time, creating multiple paths to the same product, and over-using keywords. This test will display your incremental traffic ratio (ITR), which is a share of additional sessions received from the ads for your brand queries. As an example, if your ITR is 64%, this means that your contextual advertising took 36% of traffic from SEO, with that 64% of clicks being new clicks.
TLDR; it’s a good indicator of how well your ads are performing.
- Social Media Marketing
With the total Instagram audience in the UK exceeding 24 million people and total monthly Facebook users exceeding 36.34 million, it’s no wonder that thousands of brands around the world use these platforms for advertising their products. Social media is a great opportunity to reach customers directly and interact with them in a more direct manner as well. Users can see adverts for your brand on their feed and then click through to your profile(s) to view your products, and with the addition of Instagram and Facebook shops, you can list your products directly to get additional sales there. - Youtube Marketing
With an average of 1 billion hours of Youtube videos watched every day, placing adverts and content on Youtube is also a fantastic way to attract and introduce new customers to your brand. According to research by Edgar Dale, people can recall just 10% of information they have read vs 50% of information they viewed or heard two weeks ago, proving the importance of stimulating video content. It is certainly worth creating a Youtube channel to showcase your products and adverts, and you may also want to collaborate with other Youtube channels using affiliate links and special offers. - Crowd Marketing
This particular branch of marketing is more of a “direct” social approach which involves bits of other types of marketing previously described. This can involve responding to social media/Youtube comments, responding to reviews, getting recommendations in blogs and forums, and more.Essentially, it’s a great way to introduce your brand to your intended audience, and helps to create a reputation to attract additional traffic to your website. - External Content Marketing
Posting regular content on third-party blogs and media can also expand your audience reach. This can include things like articles, blog posts, case studies, and reviews of new products. However, when choosing a website to post on, make sure you pay attention to important points:- Make sure that the overall theme of the website you’re posting to is relevant to your product/service.
- Ensure that the website has a fairly high level of traffic and a good reputation.
- Ensure that your posts line-up with the website’s editorial and publishing policies.
- Directories
Local catalogues of businesses, thematic directories, online directories; all of these directories can be a great source of website traffic, as you’re introducing your business to audiences who may not be searching specifically for your brand. - Google Business Listings
This is one of the most common ways to get recognition for your business. If users perform searches linked to your brand, Google will normally display your business listing first, introducing your products and brand to new users. You can add photos, news and blogs, contact details, and display customer Google reviews! - Offline Marketing
The methods of advertising offline are generally the more “traditional” ways of doing things, which can include outdoor posters, leaflets, TV and radio ads, newspaper and magazine adverts, and more. While these may seem outdated, these methods can still help your brand to reach new audiences, especially audiences who may not be on social media as often as your main target audiences.
Analysing the Volume of Branded Traffic
There are multiple platforms that can provide an analysis of your branded traffic, including Google Ads keyword planner, Yandex Wordstat, The Serpstat, and more. However, to get the most detailed information about the number of users that have clicked on your website, you’re best to use Google Analytics via your Search Console account.
You can also create an advertising campaign on Google Ads, which can be linked with your Google Analytics and Search Console accounts, and this will help to provide you with the total number of clicks for your brand queries.
In Summary…
Using all of the above methods to increase your brand recognition can really help to take your business to the next level, however, you must also remember that once you have attracted those new users and customers, you need to work on their retention and nurture the customer/brand relationship. Successful brands are able to build long-term relationships with their customers, and it will be those long-term relationships that also help to continually bring-in new customers on top of those existing ones.
