Original Skateboards on building a brand and increasing sales in tandem

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Scott Imbrie, CEO and Co-Founder of Original Skateboards. His passion is longboarding, a popular form of skateboarding that blends elements of surfing and snowboarding. Scott started Original in 2002 with his brother, Brad. The brothers began selling longboards shortly after Scott's 20th birthday, when Brad was just 17. Original distributes its products in most surf, skate, and snowboard shops on the East Coast of the United States and in many other areas around the world.

My brother Brad and I started Original in 2002. We both loved board sports and saw longboarding as our ideal next adventure. At the time, it was almost entirely unknown. We wanted to build longboards and trucks that would allow descents of the steepest paved roads in the world. We also wanted to travel to those locations to prove it could be done. YouTube and Google AdWords have helped us to achieve those goals.

Since March 2005, we have been using Google AdWords for online search advertising. In conjunction with positive organic rankings, search placement (even on terms where our organic rankings are top 5) has helped us ensure brand presence for our primary keywords; it has also established us as a leading brand in our industry. Building on this strong search marketing foundation, we expanded our AdWords efforts to the Google Display Network. The Display Network consistently contributes additional conversions and expands market awareness of our brand.

In our experience, Display Network site visitors interact more often with our Brand Channel. Despite having an immediate conversion rate lower than search based visitors, they are more likely to share their experience socially. By providing these more active customers sharable content, such as YouTube videos, we make the most of our Display Network clicks.

That being said, YouTube is much more than a simple way to allow our customers to share our videos. YouTube helps us find customers globally through video. We now have more than 105,000 YouTube subscribers, and our business has grown by a factor of 10 since we aired the first video.

For more information on how Google AdWords and YouTube have helped us grow a successful small business based on global reach, strong branding, and consistent sales conversions, head on over to the YouTube Blog.

Posted  by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew