#22: Measurable Brand Marketing

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In today’s email:

• Affiliation Done Right: Discover how to build an effective affiliate program

• The Future of Poker: Insights from a a poker legend

• Measure Your Branding: Why this new brand marking metric is set to revolutionise iGaming

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Expert Mastery

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• 📺 How to Fix Online Poker with Eugene Katchalov: Watch here >

• 📺 Build an Effective Affiliate Program with Alona Bursak: Watch here >

Share of Search: The New Magic Wand for Brand Marketers

By Dmitry Belianin

In the early days of marketing, we were seen as wizards, locked away in our rooms, brewing mysterious potions to boost businesses overnight. It was an era of gut feelings and creative leaps of faith. But in today's data-driven world, particularly in industries like iGaming, such mystical approaches no longer cut it. We need real, measurable magic - and that's where "share of search" comes in.

How Google Became Our New Crystal Ball

Historically, we relied on "share of voice" to gauge our brand's presence in the market. It was a cumbersome process, requiring deep dives into marketing mix models, complex research, and collaboration with expensive brand agencies. But as marketing expert Les Binet points out, the world has changed. Most consumer interactions happen online, and Google has become our crystal ball.

Enter "share of search" - the digital age's answer to share of voice. It's beautifully simple: take your brand's volume of organic search queries and divide it by the total search volume for all brands in your category. What you get is a powerful metric that sits somewhere between brand salience and consideration.

Binet's research across diverse industries - from cars to energy to mobile phones - reveals a striking correlation between share of search and market share. More excitingly, share of search often acts as a crystal ball, predicting market share movements months or even a year in advance. Imagine having a six-month heads-up on market shifts - that's the kind of foresight that can transform your iGaming strategies.

Decoding Advertising's Short and Long-Term Effects

But share of search isn't just about peering into the future. It's a window into the present effectiveness of your marketing efforts. By examining the gap between share of search and current market share (what Binet calls "extra share of search" or ESOS), we can gauge our brand's momentum. A positive ESOS suggests we're building interest that may soon translate into market share gains.

Perhaps most excitingly, share of search offers new insights into advertising effectiveness. Binet's research shows a clear relationship between share of voice (your proportion of category ad spend) and subsequent changes in share of search. This validates what many of us have long suspected about the importance of maintaining share of voice for brand health and growth.

Moreover, the share of search model reveals both short-term and long-term effects of advertising. A burst of advertising typically produces an immediate spike in searches, followed by a more gradual but longer-lasting elevation in search interest. This pattern mirrors the "60-40 rule" observed in other marketing effectiveness studies, where about 60% of advertising's impact comes through long-term brand building, and 40% through short-term activation.

Now, while anyone can use tools like Google Trends to determine share of search, at Blask, we've taken it a step further. Our tool incorporates dozens of additional channels to provide a more comprehensive view of brand marketing effectiveness. We've aimed to make everyone's life easier, offering a handy way to track not just share of search, but also the broader impact of your brand marketing efforts.

Beyond Search: The Importance of Brand Attributes

Of course, share of search isn't a silver bullet. It doesn't distinguish between positive and negative interest - a surge in searches could reflect a PR crisis as easily as a successful campaign. And factors like pricing and product quality modulate how search interest translates into actual market share. That's why at Blask, we emphasise the importance of considering brand attributes alongside share of search.

So now share of search allows us to show the science behind the brand marketing magic. It bridges the gap between brand and performance marketing, offering a data-driven yet intuitive way to track brand health and predict future performance. In our industry, where there’s a reliance on performance marketing, mastering the insights provided by share of search is the key to measuring your brand marketing efforts more effectively.

iGaming Wisdom of The Week