For us marketers, we all do know or speak about as to how search marketing helps in increasing Brand awareness or ‘lifting’ your brand. For the sales guys, this has been used constantly to get prospects to advertise in the search engines. However, there has never been any research to prove that “Yes, search marketing does lift your brand”. Finally, Enquiro has proven this last year. The research company ran an online survey and interact with a mocked up Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) in order to test the effects of branding through Search.

The results were staggering:

• A 16% increase in Unaided Brand Recall by having a brand presence in both the top sponsored and top organic listings of a SERP.

• Users are 5% more likely to recall your brand if you have a top sponsored listing in addition to your organic listing (for non-branded queries).

• The gap between your brand and a competitors grows if your brand is in both the top sponsored and organic positions and theirs is not.

• When the brand was in top sponsored, subjects spent 22% of their total sponsored fixations time on the brand.

• When the brand was in the top organic position, subjects spent 37% of their total organic fixations time on the brand.

• When a brand is in both the top sponsored and top organic listings a subject is 10% more likely to recall the brand when asked specifically whether or not they would consider it as a purchase.

• There is less brand lift from the top sponsored listing amongst subjects with a natural affinity for the brand; however, having the brand in the top sponsored listing garners a 10% lift over not having the brand anywhere on the SERP.

• There is a higher purchasing intent for the brand in the group with an affinity, by nearly 7% - and this gap is carried forward until the top sponsored listing is factored into the equation.

• A branded query seems to have a 50% brand lift effect - making the query itself the largest contributor to any brand lift via the SERP.

• There is no statistical difference between the brand recall - whether or not the brand was in both the top sponsored and top organic or top organic only - so long as the query is branded.