It takes a strong brand to stand out in the age of AI Overviews. As artificial intelligence soaks up search queries and provides general, amalgamated answers, only well-known brands with recognizable authority can continue to break through the artificial white noise.
This is why I’ve been paying more and more attention to brand marketing. This is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on broader elements like brand positioning and your brand’s image, values, and identity, as opposed to typical product- or service-oriented marketing messaging.
With AI overtaking everything in online search, brand marketing has never been more important. Our team has found that Google is prioritizing brands that have a strong identity and clear content marketing goals that reinforce a delineated brand identity.
Successful brand marketing will do more than land you references in AIO summaries, too. It can help you rank in those blue links and stand out to your target audience. Overall, brand building should be an integral part of any growth marketing strategy you have in place today.
If your branding is struggling in 2025, here are some tips to boost recognition, engagement, and SERP ranking through marketing your brand.
A solid brand strategy works from a place of data-backed knowledge. Start your branded marketing initiatives with a thorough analysis of your branding. Here are a few questions to ask:
Where are you doing well? Where could you be doing better? Gather this information as your starting point so that you can first determine your brand marketing goals and engage in effective brand marketing that builds on what you’ve already accomplished.
Every brand marketing strategy should have clearly defined areas of excellence and knowledge. These are your swim lanes, as we call them. They are clear areas of expertise that all of your onsite content should focus on, reinforce, and connect to in some way. Vectorizing your website is a great way to see how well your content lines up with your swim lanes. It’s worth the effort to clarify where you want to focus and then invest in those areas.
For instance, when I was working with a greens powder company, after a thorough review, I found that the site only had a few blogs—and they were unrelated to greens powder. My response was to build brand awareness by implementing a content strategy focused on brand identity and topical authority.
I created content about greens, drinking greens, and their health benefits. Given time (SEO can take months to fully flesh out), we saw clicks for queries related to "greens" go up by 31%. Impressions for those same queries went up by 131%.
Creating content in your swim lane helps you perform better in your topical areas. It generates targeted brand engagement, builds brand consistency, and associates your company with the topics you want to be known for.
Everyone knows by now that Google wants to see people-first content. This is also a critical part of being a brand marketer. Brand recognition must come from content that doesn’t just rank for the right queries in SERPs. It has to actually provide genuine value to readers.
While it’s good to create foundational content within your swim lane, AI Overviews and related tools are already answering those queries, often without click-throughs to the sources they use. If you want to serve your readers (and coax them onto your site), you need to back up your basics with content that demonstrates your specific industry expertise.
From what I’m seeing right now, the brands that are shining aren’t the ones offering 101 knowledge. They have those content pieces, and it helps signal their topical authority to Google.
However, they reinforce the rudimentary knowledge with unique, helpful perspectives. These integrate subject matter expert knowledge and show a new angle, process, or solution search engine users might not have thought of before. This kind of association with quality, mid- and bottom-of-funnel content is what builds a strong brand marketing strategy.
Your branding won’t have substance without thought leaders. Consider the people within your leadership, teams, and departments with innovative ideas and industry-leading knowledge. How can you build these people up? How can you promote your brand story through their unique takes on the industry?
You can interview an expert for a piece of content on your site. Use quotes from them in your social media marketing and in your email marketing, too. This is important for Google's Knowledge Panels and new SERP features that highlight individuals at companies. The more publicly authoritative your experts are, the more likely your branded content will show up.
I built up thought leaders when working with the founder of the new kids' phone company, Gabb. Along with posting on their own site, we worked to get the founder bylined on major sites like Entrepreneur and Forbes. We also reposted his commentary and insights on Medium and LinkedIn.
I encouraged him to talk about relatable things surrounding the struggle of kids having phones. This built his thought leadership and, in turn, helped to build the brand for the company overall. They saw a 26% increase in branded traffic, as well as a 605% increase in organic traffic and a 1586% increase in the number of ranking keywords during our time working together. Emphasizing a thought leader helps not only improve the brand but also helps all the marketing efforts you have in place be more successful.
Finally, make sure your brand story is always putting its best foot forward with each piece of content that you create. Highlight what sets you apart whenever it organically makes sense, and make sure you’re communicating your areas of expertise across your website. To do this, have a strong grasp on your brand story, set brand guidelines in place, and always keep an eye on your goals.
Our team saw the benefits of the cohesive messaging of a telehealth company we worked with—not just on their website but across all marketing and communication channels. From their email newsletter to their social profiles, the brand voice, messaging points, and unique value proposition were the same.
They also featured their clinicians on their social channels (subject matter expert power!). And while we weren't in charge of those channels, it was integral that their messaging was consistent, regardless of its location online, and was supporting their overall branding for a cohesive strategy to support a strong brand. That work helped to increase the success we saw with their SEO strategy and led to a 358% increase in keywords ranking in position 1 and a 319% increase in organic traffic during our work together.
The wave of AI content is building, and brands that remain passive will eventually fall behind. Building up your brand equity is the best way to safeguard your business against whatever the future of search may hold.
A strong brand identity provides consistency in messaging, clear areas of topical authority, and unique perspectives and expert advice. These are the building blocks of a business that can weather the AI-driven future, no matter what that future looks like.
If you’re looking for support in building a rock-solid brand that can thrive in an AI search world, reach out to our team for a free consultation. We can get started on step one right away, evaluating where you stand and considering what steps could help you reinforce your brand story. I look forward to hearing from you!
