In for a Penny, In for a Pound: The Role of Availability in PPC Campaigns

The consumer is loyal to the brand they can find. - John F Mars

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Let’s play Family Feud. I’ll name a product category, and you write down the first brand that comes to mind. Don’t overthink it. Ready?

Begin:

Quickly now! Think of a fast-food restaurant!

Quick! Quick! Now think of a smartphone!

Hurry! Name a family-friendly theme park vacation!

Now a hard one! What’s an example of a CRM system?

Ok, last one! Name a soda brand!

If we surveyed 100 people, the most common answers would likely be McDonald’s, iPhone, Disney, Salesforce, and Coca-Cola. This exercise highlights brand awareness. Brand awareness is beneficial, but it doesn’t necessarily drive sales growth. A consumer might recognize your logo or list you among brands in your category, but this doesn’t guarantee a spot in their consideration set when they find themselves in the market. Therefore, effective marketing communications should aim to build and reinforce the mental structures that not only help consumers recognize a brand but also think of it when making purchasing decisions.

The McDonald’s golden arches are among the most recognizable brand assets in history. However, the driving force behind McDonald’s revenue is not the golden arches, rather, its the number of consumers who find themselves in need of a quick meal and think, “Is there a McDonald’s nearby?” McDonald’s often comes to mind in these situations, even when consumers might prefer other options. This is because McDonald’s has strong brand salience, which allows it to be noticed or thought of in buying situations.

Yahoo! is a brand with strong brand awareness but low brand salience. Yahoo! is a digital media and technology company that does many things: it covers news and pop culture, provides email services, and is still technically a search engine. A large percentage of the population can recognize the Yahoo! brand and even name what they do, but when was the last time you went to Yahoo.com to read up on the latest breaking news story or to use their search engine for literally anything at all?

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Brand Salience and Mental Availability

Brand salience refers to a brand’s share of people’s minds, defined by the quantity and quality of memory links to and from that brand. The quantity involves the number of associations a buyer has with a brand name, while the quality includes the strength and relevance of those associations.

I married into a Disney family. My wife’s family joined the Disney Vacation Club timeshare in the '90s, and since then, Disney World in Orlando has been their primary vacation destination. After years of reluctantly joining these trips and rolling my eyes at the cult-like Disney fandom, I eventually gave in and embraced becoming one of those Disney adults that the internet loves to ridicule. 

Disney’s brand salience is astonishing because it extends to people who actively try to avoid the brand. Images of fairytale castles, princesses, theme parks, or families wearing matching shirts on vacation are likely to trigger the Disney brand, even for those who swear they’d never step foot on Disney property.

But for weirdos like me, Disney has rooted itself so deeply in my brain that many other cues trigger connections. Any mention of a piña colada brings my mind to Disney’s Boardwalk Resort pool, hot pretzels to EPCOT’s Germany pavilion, and rain ponchos to countless memories of getting caught in a surprise Florida downpour. Individually, these cues aren’t all that important, but together they explain why, each time my wife and I discuss options for upcoming vacations, we first think of Disney—and then everything else comes after.

Marketers can achieve brand salience by increasing mental availability with their customer base. Mental availability is the intentional act of ensuring your brand remains in the consumer's consideration set during buying situations. Unlike traditional brand awareness, which focuses on recognition, mental availability emphasizes the brand's presence in the consumer's mind when they are ready to make a purchase.

Mental availability is built through consistent, distinctive branding that creates strong memory structures. These memory structures are reinforced through repeated consumer interactions with the brand, whether through advertising, product use, or word of mouth. The aim is to ensure that when consumers think of a product category, your brand is one of the few they consider.

Jenni Romaniuk, research professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, notes that while our brains encode, store, and retrieve brand information in similar ways, the specific content varies based on individual experiences. For marketers aiming to increase their brand's mental availability, it’s crucial to develop and strengthen memory associations between their brand assets and various cues encountered throughout the buying process. It’s not enough for consumers to recognize McDonald’s golden arches; they need to associate those arches with specific needs like hunger, convenience, affordability, and taste satisfaction.

Identifying these cues, which Romaniuk describes as "category entry points," is the starting point. These are the situations or needs that trigger thoughts of a product category. However, category entry points have multiple layers of competition. McDonald’s might be attempting to develop mental connections between their brand and feelings of hunger; however, in this neurological arms race, McDonald’s isn’t just competing with other fast-food brands—they’re competing with every possible hunger solution that might come to mind at that moment.

Byron Sharp elaborates on this concept in How Brands Grow:

Different cues also mean that different competitors are likely to be thought of as options by the buyer at any one time. Competitive options don’t even have to be in the same product category. For example, 'Something to wake me up' can conjure a coffee, a Coca-Cola, a Pepsi, a brisk walk or a swim. When marketers think of competitors, they often think of functional lookalikes. However, it is better to think of competitors as 'cue competitors'. Competitors are all other options linked to the cue, as these are most likely to be thought of and compete for selection.

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The 5-hour Energy brand navigated this well with their iconic 2:30 Feeling ad campaign. Historically, most ad campaigns for caffeinated beverages targeted sleepy consumers in need of a morning pick-me-up: The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup!

The folks at 5-hour Energy recognized that the morning isn’t the only time of day when people need an energy boost—in fact, it’s scientifically proven that the circadian rhythm of a standard sleep schedule results in a low-point (crash) between 1:00 and 3:00 pm each day. By highlighting their brand as a solution to “That 2:30 Feeling,” 5-hour Energy solidified itself as the most mentally available choice for millions of consumers experiencing that midday crash.

While mental availability is the tactic used to build strong memory structures, brand salience is the ultimate goal. Achieving high brand salience ensures that your brand is consistently part of the consumer's consideration set, thereby increasing the likelihood of being chosen over competitors. By focusing on building and reinforcing mental availability, brands can create lasting associations that keep them top-of-mind in relevant buying situations.

Returning to the fast-food example, it’s possible that a hungry, on-the-go consumer might have a strong craving for In-N-Out Burger. However, unless they’re physically on the west coast of the U.S. at the time, it’ll be impossible for them to satisfy that craving. So instead, they think, “Is there a McDonald’s nearby?” Therefore, it’s not enough to achieve brand salience if consumers can’t physically buy your stuff…

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Physical Availability

You want to know the real secret behind Coca-Cola’s success? It’s simple: they are everywhere. Walk into any convenience store, restaurant, or sporting event, and the odds are in favor of you finding a Coca-Cola product.

They also dominate shelf space. If you were to walk blindfolded through your local gas station’s drink aisle and randomly grab a cold beverage from the refrigerator, chances are it would be a Coca-Cola product. Based on what we already know about light buyers and satisficing, more shelf space translates to more visibility, which leads to being bought more often by more people.

Physical availability refers to the ease with which consumers can find and buy a brand’s products. It’s about ensuring your products are available in as many places as possible, so when the need arises, consumers can easily purchase them. Essentially, it’s about making your brand always within arm's reach of desire. Physical availability also involves reducing friction in the purchasing process—the easier it is for consumers to find and buy your product, the more likely they are to do so.

In the physical world, this means getting your products into the right stores and securing enough shelf space to catch the eye of potential buyers. In the online world, physical availability means selling through the channels where your customers are most likely to shop. Successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that sell through their own Shopify store may be reluctant to list their products on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, or Walmart; however, if this is where their customers often shop, it might be in their best interest to reconsider.

In the physical world, the shopping experience begins when a customer enters a store; online, the experience might start with a Google search, social media, or other places before a consumer digitally enters a store or marketplace. Therefore, in an online shopping environment, it’s often not enough to simply sell your products through popular marketplaces. Google’s Messy Middle marketing funnel emphasizes a brands' need to secure a place in the customer’s consideration set during the Exploration phase and stay there as they narrow their choices through Evaluation. Savvy marketers aiming to maximize physical availability must recognize that customers vary widely in their shopping behaviors, and even the same customer’s path to purchase can differ from one occasion to the next. Never always, never never.

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Three Components of Physical Availability: Presence, Relevance, and Prominence

According to Sharp, Romaniuk, and Nenyz-Thiel, physical availability has three components: presence, relevance, and prominence. Presence involves increasing your physical footprint and minimizing the chances that someone shopping in your category can’t find your brand.

Relevance refers to whether your brand is buyable; that is, whether your products or services are available in formats that buyers can or want to purchase. This includes barriers to purchase, such as price point, product range, and payment options. For example, an excessively expensive dress, available in only one size, and purchasable only with Bitcoin, is not relevant to many buyers.

The final component of physical availability, prominence, concerns whether your brand is easy to spot amid a sea of competitors. Total Wine & Spirits is a discount liquor retailer with more than 240 locations across the U.S. When you walk into one of their massive stores, it feels like stepping into a Walmart that exclusively sells alcohol—it’s a wonderland for spirit enthusiasts. A small winemaker might be thrilled to land a deal with Total Wine, as this will certainly increase their physical footprint. However, if their label is boring and their price point average, they’ll struggle to stand out to a critical mass of customers.

Distinctive brand assets are one way to improve prominence and therefore physical availability. One brand that seems to have broken through the noise in my local Total Wine is 19 Crimes. With a low price point under $10, these distinctive and evocative wine bottles stand out among the sea of traditional brands that mostly convey a sense of chic elegance. 19 Crimes takes the opposite approach: Their labels don’t project a sophisticated brand with romanticized fonts and imagery; instead, each label features a harsh photograph of a British convict, surrounded by bold typography and printed on a rugged, sepia-toned parchment-style label. When walking down a crowded wine aisle, these bottles are sure to capture your attention.

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Physical Availability and Digital Marketing

In essence, physical availability refers to how easy it is for consumers to buy your brand. The key aspect is being present and available when consumers are shopping for your category. This is why building a strategy around a single channel is a mistake. Years ago, some brands successfully scaled their business by focusing on one advertising channel, such as Google Search or Facebook Ads. Today, however, these stories are rare exceptions.

Google's Messy Middle study demonstrated that the consumer journey is becoming increasingly complex. Google, once primarily used for price comparisons, is now a tool for comparing everything. Simply paying for the top placement on Google is no longer a guaranteed path to profitable conversions, especially if your competitors are taking a multi-channel approach.

Consider a homeowner in need of HVAC repair. They search "HVAC repair near me" on Google and see a list of blue links on the search engine results page (SERP). Your brand, "Joe’s HVAC Repair," sees this as a prime opportunity, so you set up aggressive bids on these searches through your Search campaigns.

But before you proceed, try this search yourself. What do you see? At the top of the SERP, above the traditional Search ads, you’ll likely find “Google Guaranteed” results—these are Google Local Service Ads (GLSA), a separate ad format that requires different setup and optimization (managed outside of your traditional Google Ads account).

Beneath the GLSA ads, you’ll see Search Ads and Map Pack ads, which require proper Google My Business (GMB) setup. Then come the organic (SEO) links. So, running a Google Search campaign alone will only get you placed in a small portion of the available Google SERP real estate.

No problem, right? You’ll just invest in Google Search and GLSA and ensure your Local SEO team is optimizing your ranking for that keyword.

Not so fast! What’s the first organic result you see? It’s likely a Yelp listing (or a similar local directory, depending on your location). Do you think your local SEO team will easily dethrone Yelp as the top organic result? Probably not.

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While your SEO team should still strive for organic traction on core keywords, the simplest way to improve your local SEO strategy is to buy Yelp Ads. Many prospective customers will end up on Yelp at some point during their messy middle journey. There are significant benefits to maintaining continuity and appearing in all the places your customers visit to evaluate options. If “Joe’s HVAC Repair” shows up on Google, Yelp, and in my social media feed, I might assume they’re the best choice, right?

And if you don’t secure that placement on Yelp, one of your competitors certainly will. Is that a risk worth taking?

Instead, for a small investment, you can buy a top result on relevant Yelp listings and earn an additional impression on a listing site that your customers will almost certainly consider.

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If You’re In For A Penny, You’re In For A Pound

The downside risk of low physical availability extends beyond Google SERPs and Yelp review pages. I recently conducted a simple experiment for one of my clients who installs greenhouses on residential properties throughout the United States—let’s call them Jenny’s Greenhouses. Jenny wasn’t yet a client; we had just met, and I had never visited her website. As someone who has never been in the market for a greenhouse, I knew nothing about the space and wasn’t actively seeing ads for any greenhouse supplier in my social media feeds.

Jenny was running ads on Google and Meta, but she was skeptical of Meta’s impact on her bottom line. She said something we hear often: “Most of the conversions are attributed to view-throughs on the retargeting campaign. I’m not sure how many of them would have happened anyway…”

While we spoke, I went directly to their website, jennysgreenhouses.com, and browsed around. To be clear, I didn’t perform a Google search or interact with any of their social media accounts—Google Analytics would classify me as a first-time, direct traffic visit. If I were a prospective customer, at that moment, Jenny’s Greenhouses would be the only greenhouse brand in my consideration set.

Few items are bought after a user’s first visit to a website, especially high-involvement purchases like a greenhouse, HVAC service, or an outfit for a friend’s wedding. These decisions require some thought and consideration. You might need to take measurements of your home, or perhaps you need to get approval from your spouse. Most marketers understand this and are willing to dedicate a portion of their budget to retargeting—ads that exclusively target previous visitors to their website. In my experience, however, most marketers don’t invest enough in retargeting. More specifically, they’re not aggressive enough. This negatively impacts both mental and physical availability as their target audience navigates the messy middle journey.

Here’s why: Jenny’s website has the Google Analytics tag and Meta pixel installed (as well as pixels from other platforms like Microsoft and Pinterest). All these platforms have one singular goal—to sell ad space to brands looking to get in front of high-quality prospective customers.

It’s estimated that over 90% of Fortune 500 companies have the free Google Analytics tag on their websites. Have you ever wondered why Google is willing to give away this analytics solution for free?

The second I landed on Jenny’s website, all these platforms received a signal that I was now in the market for a greenhouse. As they see it, why else would I be on Jenny’s website? Google and Meta have historical data on the kinds of customers that visit Jenny’s website, how and when they convert, and what other products they might be interested in. Therefore, with just one direct visit, I became a valuable asset for these ad platforms. They can now alert all other greenhouse providers, saying, “Attention greenhouse brands! We have a new prospect in the market for a new greenhouse! We are selling ads that we promise will get as close as six inches away from his face, morning, noon, and night. Placements go to the highest bidder!”

Google and Meta also have enough data on me to know that I recently moved into a new home, spent several hundred dollars on garden supplies, and have been reading articles and watching videos about winterizing tropical plants. This information wasn’t collected from Jenny’s website; it was gathered from dozens of other sources that allowed Google and Meta to track my online behavior. As a result, greenhouse suppliers will have to pay a premium to serve me an ad in my social media feed or when I perform a Google search for greenhouse-related keywords.

If Jenny isn’t willing to buy those ads, her competitors will. Google and Meta have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to maximize the value of their ad platforms, so they will make it very easy for competitors to bid into these auctions if Jenny is not willing to do so. (This is one reason why these platforms push for their broad-targeting solutions like Broad Match Keywords, Performance Max, and Advantage+. These AI-driven campaigns have the freedom and flexibility to help advertisers bid into valuable auctions they otherwise would have ignored). 

Back to my experiment: After our first phone call, I left Jenny’s website and paid close attention to the Instagram ads I was served over the next 48 hours. Among the slew of ads from athleisure brands, dog toys, golf training aids, and lion’s mane supplements, I was served 12 different ads from greenhouse suppliers. Jenny’s Greenhouses represented only two of these ads. I received ads from two other greenhouse brands similar to Jenny, as well as catalog ads from Home Depot featuring residential greenhouses available on their website. Here’s the impression breakdown:

• Jenny’s Greenhouses: 2
• Mike’s Greenhouses: 2
• Dave’s Greenhouses: 5
• Home Depot: 3

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Two days earlier, Jenny’s Greenhouses represented 100% of my consideration set. Without doing any additional shopping, I became aware of three more competitors, reducing Jenny’s brand salience share to 25%. Then there’s Share of Voice, or the percentage of messages received from each brand. In this case, Jenny represented just 16% of the total impressions I received. And finally, there’s the brand equity of Home Depot. I’ve been a Home Depot customer for decades and had never heard of these other brands before. Before this Instagram ad, I didn't realize Home Depot (or Costco, or Amazon) sold Greenhouses. Ironically, I learned about this because I had visited Jenny's website! Now that I know this, why would I choose Jenny over Home Depot?

This flaw in modern digital advertising strategy is so prevalent that it justifies another example. Not long after my experience with Jenny, I spoke with the owner of an ecommerce store that sells men’s bespoke belts and other formal-wear accessories. He’s been in business for 30 years and has watched the market shrink significantly as casual attire became more prominent in the workplace. Despite that, low barriers to entry and the ease of selling belts and cufflinks through Amazon or Etsy have increased the number of competitors. Market prices for advertising are influenced by supply and demand, and in this case, more competition fighting over shrinking demand has led to a drastic increase in advertising CPMs/CPCs.

The owner mentioned that his Google Ad spend outweighed Meta by a factor of 5:1. He didn’t fully believe in Meta advertising because, when viewed in a vacuum, it never seemed profitable (especially when you discount those pesky view-through conversions that might have happened anyway!).

His Google Ads account had been set up more or less the same way for multiple years, bidding on belt and cufflink keywords as you’d expect. But CPCs on those keywords were up 20%, and the conversion rate was down 35% year-over-year. The business was struggling to maintain breakeven profitability.

Keyword strategy for a bottom-funnel demand capture campaign in an established market like men's belts doesn’t require a special degree. There was no secret trick or hack that was suddenly going to unlock profitability. Instead, the team running the account should have been asking themselves, “We’re bidding on keywords for people searching for neckties. We sell exactly that, but we can’t seem to profitably convert Google Search traffic. What else might be wrong here?”

They were paying $5 per click on bottom-funnel keywords for a product that costs around $50. I described physical availability and the implications of not aggressively retargeting these customers as they navigate the messy middle. “You can’t afford to pay $5 per click on a Google Search ad if you’re not willing to spend an additional $5-$10 to ensure that user comes back and converts on your site. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.” The simple recommendation was to increase the investment on other channels to ensure that they weren’t losing potential customers to the competition.

Mental and physical availability are the twin pillars of successful brand strategy. Mental availability ensures that your brand is top-of-mind when consumers are in buying situations, while physical availability makes it easy for them to find and purchase your products. Together, these strategies work to keep your brand within the consumer's consideration set throughout their journey. However, achieving strong availability in both areas requires a commitment to a holistic approach—if you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound. This means not only investing in broad and deep distribution channels but also being prepared to engage potential buyers at every touchpoint. Without this comprehensive approach, your brand risks being outmaneuvered by competitors who are more visible and accessible in the marketplace.

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