For challenger brands looking to make the most of their marketing budget, focusing on increasing their organic traffic is the best way to increase their brand awareness and visibility with engaged customers. 

In this article, we will look at three main areas where challenger brands can leverage their disruptive ethos to help them to stand out in search optimisation marketing, from storytelling to social search.

Focus on story-telling and building a brand voice 

One advantage that challenger brands have is their unique story. They often have inspirational origins, and founders who are incredibly passionate about their business. By leveraging this with strategic storytelling and creating a clear, bold brand voice, challenger brands have an advantage. 

Translating your brand mission and story across all your marketing touchpoints will help to create a consistent customer experience and a cohesive, creative brand.  

Focus on your content marketing strategy to tell your story across different areas of your online presence, and ensure your messaging and tone of voice is consistent, from your website to your social media profiles, and even in the way you respond to customers' messages. 

This can help you to create a compelling narrative that, when paired with a strategic approach to content creation and targeted keywords, will lead to increased traffic to your website and keep these customers engaged, resulting in a better conversion rate. 

Define your niche and target long-tail keywords 

While it is important to target broad keywords for SEO to capture higher volumes of traffic, researching long-tail keywords can be the secret to climbing the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and driving traffic from potential customers with high-intent.

Challenger brands often address a gap in a market, and their niche is clearly defined. Undertaking some keyword research, on free platforms such as SEMrush or Google Search Console, can help you to identify keywords that are specific to your brand, services or product. Even if the search volume is lower compared to broad search terms, they are likely to have much higher intent. 

Targeting these long-tail keywords and creating content with these in mind can help to improve your conversion rate. Ensure that your content prioritises Google’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, or E-E-A-T principles, to increase your chances of appearing in search results. 

Create content with your customer in mind, and avoid ‘keyword stuffing’. Instead, focus on creating content that can naturally include short- or long-tail keywords in relevant places across your website - from product pages to blog posts. 

Tap into social search 

Young people are increasingly turning to social media for research and discovery. Research suggests that TikTok is currently ranking as the fourth most-popular search engine, falling just behind YouTube, Bing, and Google.

For many brands, social search is something that they are having to turn their attention to and pivot their strategies. For challenger brands, social media marketing has been central to their success from the very beginning, giving them an advantage against bigger brands. They also have the benefit of being able to be agile and adapt their focus more easily than larger companies.  

This allows challenger brands to create creative marketing campaigns that can repurpose written content, like blog posts, in formats that are optimised to specific social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram. This can help you to grow your visibility when people search on social media platforms, especially if paired with optimised caption copy and relevant hashtag usage. 

Final Thoughts 

When it comes to standing out in search, challenger brands have an advantage that, when paired with strategic storytelling, a targeted approach to keyword research and creative content marketing, can lead to gains in organic discoverability and cost-effective conversions.