Ecommerce marketers often focus on direct response advertising. It’s easy to measure, after all, and can lead to instant sales. This seemingly pragmatic approach to ads ignores the importance of brand awareness, which drives performance across all marketing channels.

Marketers who grew up in the pay-per-click era often only have a textbook understanding of brand advertising. They define it in technical terms without understanding its benefits.

These marketers might say, “Brand advertising focuses on increasing awareness, fostering customer loyalty, and building lasting connections with customers.”

So, theoretically, if marketers are trying to hit sales targets this week or this month, brand promotion may seem like a futile effort.

Brand and Search Traffic

To be clear, marketing teams should start with direct response advertising. But don’t stop there. Brand promotion is the next step in improving any marketing effort.

Take search traffic for example.

During an interview, a top marketer at a company with annual sales of more than $10 million complained to me that consumers searched Google for his competitor’s name more often than their own.

This otherwise accomplished pro should have realized this was a battle of brands. Its competitor had more brand awareness. Many potential customers searched for the brand they already knew instead of the product category.

Google Trends confirms that the $10 million store (in red) has fewer searches than its competitor (in blue).

The difference was branding. Placing branded ads on YouTube, streaming video services, and even traditional channels almost certainly gave this company its competitive edge in search traffic.

brand and trust

Buyer trust is complex. A strong product, timely delivery and value for money are confidence builders. And so is branding.

In his Dreamforce keynote 2021, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff presented the “Trusted Enterprise” concept.

To earn trust, Benioff argued, companies must prioritize stakeholders, operate transparently, and be accountable. He emphasized that building a trustworthy company is a continuous effort with a customer-centric strategy – prioritizing data security and privacy and investing in employee well-being. It’s not a quick process.

But trust is not the same as celebrity. A company can communicate this trust through branding campaigns. Shoppers are buying brands they know and trust. This applies to first time and repeat buyers.

Salesforce branding campaigns, like this example from 2019, inspire trust.

Nike has long featured brand campaigns with its ubiquitous Swoosh and slogan “Just do it.” Both awaken memories and emotions in many consumers.

Nike’s ubiquitous Swoosh and the slogan “Just do it” evoke memories and emotions for many consumers.

Better performance

Brand advertising makes all campaigns work better.

“Companies can reject brand advertising because it has no immediate ROI,” wrote Diane Callihan, president of Callihan Content Creation. “But building brand relationships over time can drive sales you don’t know about. For example, attributing all credit for a purchase to a search ad conversion can be misleading. Even if the search ad did close the deal, that may not have been the primary marketing activity that made the customer make the purchase. Consistent and steady brand promotion very often lays the foundation for successful search ads and other conversions.”

Callihan’s argument is consistent with Edelman’s 2019 Trust Barometer Special Report: In Brands We Trust? (PDF). It found that brand awareness and trust resulted in a 28 percent improvement in ad receptivity.

And that includes direct response ads. Imagine two direct response campaigns for nearly identical products and prices; the advertiser with the brand with the highest recognition value always gets a better response.

The bottom line is that branded ads improve performance across all marketing channels.