Business to Business Marketing News posted by Arketi Group: Does Branding Clash with Search Efforts? You Bet It Can...

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Does Branding Clash with Search Efforts? You Bet It Can...

Great article in BtoB's Hands On enewsletter...one of the best comments in this piece is: "These companies want to differentiate themselves and, with a normal sales message, I understand that. But this isn’t a normal sales message. It’s matching up searches."

It makes you think. Doesn't it?

Branding efforts can clash with SEM

Story posted: July 1, 2009 - 2:52 pm EDT
Source: BtoBonline

Ian Harris is CEO of Search Laboratory Ltd., based in Leeds, England, which helps companies’ search engine marketing and optimization efforts. BtoB recently asked Harris about best practices in search engine marketing.

BtoB: You’ve said that b-to-b companies spend too much time thinking of new ways to describe what they do in terms that prospective customers don’t understand. Can you elaborate?
Harris: Let me give you an example. We do some work for a big video conferencing company, and the marketing team there spends its time trying not to be a video conference company. What I mean is, they try to brand themselves as a “video communications” company, because all their competitors do conferencing.

They get so obsessed with this that they put it on their home page, title tags and paid search keywords. The problem is, their clients do not see them as a “video communications” company. Their clients want video conferencing, and that’s what they see them as.

Believe me, this is a common theme. Again, we do work for a few companies that do IT support and services, but without fail they brand themselves as something like “system care.” or “logi-care” or “integration change.” It’s like “IT support” is a rude word.

Read More.