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When business owners and marketers talk about PPC ads, a lot of the conversation is about conversions, clicks and driving revenue. These are not the goals that every campaign strives for. Sometimes, marketers take advantage of online advertising strategies because they want to build awareness for their brand.
This discussion will delve into ad format types that help build brand awareness and how to implement them into your own PPC efforts.
In the Digital Age, customers have thousands of options to choose from. And all of these options are competing with your brand for attention. Successful brand awareness means garnering more consumer attention than these competing brands.
It’s about familiarity and quick recall, especially when consumers are about to make a purchase. You can no longer be the only brand that customers think of, but you can align your business to be the first one that comes to mind.
The importance of branding and recall has grown in recent years thanks to the multitudes of digital channels available. All the options that customers have means that gaining a competitive edge is less about having a better product than it is having the best brand and experience.
In other words, today’s customers often need to be sold on your brand, before they feel compelled to buy your products or services.
A core component to winning marketing and advertising strategy is placing messages where your target audience gathers the most. Well, the average person uses the Internet for 24 hours a week, with some individuals consuming as much as 40 hours of Internet content in that period.
That’s a substantial amount of time that marketers miss out on if they don’t advertise online. If you want to keep your brand and products fresh on the minds of customers, then you must take advantage of online channels.
It is not just about timing; online advertising opens up a lot of doors that traditional advertising methods (TV or radio ads, billboards, direct mail, etc.) don’t.
For one, there are many different formats of online ads. Thus, its a very versatile means of marketing. The hardest part is knowing which ad format is recommended for building brand awareness.
The other advantage is the data created by online advertising activities.
Marketers have much clearer visibility into how well their advertising messages are performing. Not only can you measure how many people see your online ad, but you can also see how many people engaged with the content and made a purchase as a result of that message.
Thanks to this data, remarketing is exceptionally easy. You can target ads specifically to customers that have visited your website.
These are the customers that are highly qualified because they have demonstrated a past interest. Re-targeting them with brand awareness ads helps facilitate a future conversion.
As mentioned, one of the hardest challenges for advertising online is choosing which ad format is best. When your advertising goal is focused on building brand awareness, you need to think differently about the ads that you create.
It’s not about encouraging clicks and driving conversions. Instead, you just want to get the word out about your brand and generate that crucial familiarity that is needed to stand out from the competition.
Ad formats that have worked in the past may not be as effective for this awareness-focused goal. So, which ad format is recommended for building brand awareness?
When it comes to brand awareness, you want to create ad content that is visually attractive and eye-catching. Remember, it’s about gaining attention and keeping your brand and products fresh in the minds of potential customers.
Image ads are the best ad format for building brand awareness. They have the visual aspect that search-based text ads, and many other formats, lack, without costing too much money. And, they come in many different shapes and sizes, from banners to large square image ads.
Through Google’s Display Network, you can target popular websites that your customers visit frequently. These customers may not be ready to purchase yet, but when the time comes, your products and services will be the first that they think of.
While video advertisements are more expensive than images, they are much more engaging. In-stream video ads are particularly powerful because viewers have to watch all or part of the ad (depending on if it is a skippable or non-skippable ad) before returning to their video. This guarantees engagement and strongly grows brand awareness.
There are, however, some drawbacks to video ads. For one, most video ad format types are limited by where and how they display. The majority are restricted to YouTube videos.
While YouTube is a mega-popular video platform, it’s far more popular with younger audiences than older ones. Thus, some customers may not see your video ad content. And, video ads disrupt a viewer’s normal video, which can create a negative brand experience.
Essentially, video ads are much more compelling and engaging, but they come with some risks.
If you wanted to know which ad format is recommended for building brand awareness on a budget, then rich text ads are the answer.
This format uses your existing text-based advertisements and enhances them with images, logos and other materials gathered right from your website.
There is no added cost to enable rich text ads and you don’t have to create visuals of your own. Google automatically gathers and displays them for you.
It’s a perfect solution for marketers with low budgets or little time on their hands.
Stimulating brand awareness is about getting your messages and brand in front of the eyes of the target audience. For this reason, any ad format delivers some degree of brand awareness because these messages are designed to be visible.
That said, the ad formats that are recommended for building brand awareness are images and videos. The visual and highly engaging aspects of these format types are memorable and help customers quickly recall your products and services when the time for conversion comes.
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