The Impact of Brand on Paid Advertising
Today’s guest post is written by Max Sinclair. Max is based in London, UK and is the founder of Snowball Creations (a paid advertising agency) and Forzeit (an intuitive digital planner).
In a world where most of the population seems to have their noses stuck in some type of technological device, it’s no surprise that digital marketing has become the go-to method of marketing for many businesses.
Of course, there are many ways to market your product online, but I’m going to dive into my area of expertise: paid advertising. I run my own paid ads agency, Snowball Creations, so I know a thing or two about this. More specifically, I want to focus on the impact of brand on paid advertising. Brand is, of course, the specialty of Lab Creative, and their work is vital for us to have profitable ad campaigns.
I’ve worked on hundreds of different ad accounts across multiple ad platforms and managed millions in ad spend, and I consistently see the impact that brand has on paid ads. It’s big!
1. Trust
The entire aim of advertising is to get someone to select your business’s product or service over another. And while having a solid ad strategy in place is a great first step towards this, having a well-known brand will encourage users even more.
This is because a strong brand builds trust and credibility for consumers, which means they are much more likely to click on your ads and then purchase your offering.
2. Brand recognition
Something that goes hand in hand with trust is brand recognition. The more familiar a user is with your brand, the more likely they are to click on your ad rather than skip it. If your ad is competing with three other ads, having that recognition and recall from a strong brand will work in your favour.
That being said, you can’t solely rely on brand recognition - you also need to have stand-out creatives that tell the story of that brand beyond the logo and website design, so consider having a creative studio help with this if you’re struggling in this area.
3. Perceived value
There’s a reason why “brand names” often perform much better than non-branded products, even though there potentially isn’t that much of a difference in the quality of their products.
Simply put, the way people view your brand will affect how they perceive your product or service - specifically when it comes to value and quality. Your brand can help to multiply your profit. Just think of the classic examples like Apple, Volkswagen or Lego.
If you are a well-known brand, consumers may automatically think that your product is more valuable than if you had some obscure brand that no one’s ever heard of.
4. Stand out from the crowd
The paid advertising world is brutal and rife with competitors, which is why so many businesses require external help with things like their Google Ads. So, what’s the fix?
If you are swimming in a sea of competitors, you need to make sure that your ads stand out, and one of the most effective ways of doing this is to have a unique, stand-out brand that comes through in your ads.
In particularly competitive spaces, having a brand may be literally your own differentiating factor. This is the case especially within ecommerce where brands constantly battle with knock-off copycat products.
5. Consistency = key
If you have any hope of making paid ads work for you, you should at least consider advertising across a variety of platforms. And even though each of those platforms needs to be approached individually when it comes to your paid ads strategy, you also need to ensure that you are giving across the same message, trying to achieve the same goal, and that your ads have the same vibe (for lack of a better word).
Again, brand plays a key role in making sure that your advertising is consistent across all your platforms. Whether they’re scrolling on TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn, they should know it’s you.
There are a lot of ways to achieve consistency. A few of them include:
● Using consistent colours throughout your branding
● Using the same font(s) for your brand
● Sticking to the same photography style for visual brand elements
● Having a consistent tone throughout all your brand’s copy
Having a strong and consistent visual brand is a key factor in brand recognition.
6. Get the emotions flowing
Simply put, a strong brand will evoke a strong emotion, and consumers will thus connect with your brand more deeply, increasing the chances of brand loyalty when it comes to your paid advertising campaigns.
7. Speaking of loyalty . . .
Every time a customer clicks on an ad, they are essentially voting for that brand above another brand. Ideally, you want customers to click on your ads time after time. In other words, you want them to be loyal to you. As you can imagine, brand once again plays a role in this. If your customers are loyal to your brand, they will loyally support your ads as well.
A higher lifetime value is one of the best ways to improve profitability and give you more margin to invest into your paid ads. This is how you beat your competition. Loyalty = high lifetime value.
8. Increased rate of success
So, you know by now that brand plays a big role in making someone click on your ads, but it doesn’t stop there. The entire point of an ad is to get someone to then take a desired action, whether that means filling in a form or purchasing your product. And the simple reality is that customers are more likely to take those actions if they are familiar with your brand. Therefore, better brands lead to better conversions.
9. The long-term plan
Finally, you need to remember that advertising, and marketing in general, are both long-term efforts. That’s why you shouldn’t just focus on the immediate effect of building your brand and having a strong ad strategy; you also need to think about the long-term effects it will have on your business. Start building a solid brand now, and your future self will thank you.
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to marketing is that everything is related, and what you do with one aspect of your marketing will affect another. There are countless examples of this, but one of the key ones is the relationship between brand and paid ads. These two things cannot exist in isolation, so the sooner you start integrating them, the better.
Need help with telling your brand story? Speak to Laura at Lab Creative. Need help with building a profitable paid ads machine? Speak to the team at Snowball Creations.