A branded product is essentially a name, symbol, tag, design, tag or any characteristic that identifies one seller’s merchandise or service as distinctly different from those of other similarly situated sellers. The distinguishing mark is typically a trademark that involves the combination of colors, fonts or images that the business uses in association with its particular trade. Branded goods and services are sold without regard to whether they meet the quality standards of others.
For instance, while the most popular search engine on earth is Google, it does not hold the monopoly on all the synonyms for all the words people type into the search box. One may enter the search box using the words “car,” “car accessories,” “car care,” “auto accessories” and so on. If you also add the word “links” in this context, things get really interesting. Google has the right to take action against your site if it believes that the brand you have used violates one of its proprietary rights, namely the use of branded keywords.
The use of a logo or distinctive graphic representation, accompanied perhaps by a brief description and possibly by links, constitutes human branding. Branding, in the sociological perspective of branding specialists, is a process that makes certain that individuals who come in contact with a certain business or service identify that business or service with the help of some sort of association or symbol that has been associated with it. For example, a set of branded watches is more likely to be worn by someone than by someone who has no idea what watch is being referred to. In fact, we would hardly recognize the watch as a brand if we did not know anything about the brand – in other words, the watch simply became part of our consciousness because it was branded. This is very different from the situation where, say, a set of pens is branded in the same way that Rolex watches are branded.
Branding also involves the rewarding of certain co-workers and customers with special treatment or rewards. The reward for human branding, then, is the confidence that your brand is respected by others, and that the reputation of your company will be spread. In other words, the brand makes people more likely to do business with you. A well-known brand is likely to be trusted by consumers even more than a less well known one. Consumers tend to trust only those co-workers and customers whom they have come to know and trust implicitly, and not those whose names they barely remember or whose faces they seldom see.
Branded content is another one of the most common types of branded advertising. This kind of advertisement is mostly used in electronic media, but it can also come from printed media, especially on T-shirts, caps and other items that many people would expect to place on billboards. Examples of the more common types of unbranded advertising include the ones that feature slogans. These are relatively easy to spot and easy to recognize. There are also famous brand names that have become generic. They already have an established image that has been adopted by consumers; they have nothing left to achieve.
So the lesson for businesses seeking to create a more positive and noticeable presence online through branded keywords is not so much to simply start placing your company’s name in as many places as possible, but rather to think carefully about the kind of promotional method you choose, whether it’s a traditional label-focused strategy or a more modern and innovative online marketing effort using branded keywords. For Google AdWords, there are now several different options for paid search advertising, but the most effective ones tend to be the ones that allow you to track branded keywords and apply optimization to get maximum results from your ads. Tracking and optimizing your ads let you see which of your keywords are working best and enables you to make quick refinements to your online marketing strategy that may yield greater benefits than you originally intended.