Top 5 Reasons You Should Bid On Your Brand Name

One of the most common questions PPC marketers receive from clients and potential clients alike, is “Should I bid on my brand name?” At first thought you may think to yourself “why would I pay for my own brand name,” but after testing this you may see that many times, branded keywords become some of the stronger performing keywords in the account. So while there are multiple different benefits to bidding on your organization’s brand name, there are five specific benefits that stick out amongst all the others.

1. You Control The Message That’s Representing Your Brand

When bidding on your organization’s brand name, you have the ability to control the message you’re communicating to users, be it a specific call to action or current promotions you may be running. You do this by including your call to action or promotion within the ad copy and directing it to the most relevant landing page. If your organization has relied on organic listings to communicate your call to actions or promotions previously, this isn’t going to be as effective since you’re not able to directly control, and most importantly, test what users are seeing.

Having the ability to run branded A/B ad copy tests in order to learn about what messaging resonates best with visitors is important. Also, it’s essential to learn the best landing pages to direct them to through your ad destination URL and site link extensions. To learn further about all of Adwords ad extension options, visit our Guide To Ad Extensions

2. Branded Keywords Are More Cost-Effective Than Non-Branded Keywords

Branded keywords are typically much more cost-effective than non-branded keywords due to the lack of outside bids. Although a competitor may be bidding on your organization’s brand name, you will automatically have an advantage due to an incredibly relevant landing page, which will help improve your keyword quality score and therefore will keep your bid prices low. This is one advantage no competitor will ever have over your organization. To learn more about how to maximize your quality score, see our post about quality score and landing page relevance.

In the following example, you can see that the Average Cost Per Click for the branded term “Nike” is over 90% less expensive than the Average Cost Per Click of other non-branded keywords they may be targeting with their PPC campaigns.

Keyword Nike Running Shoes Men’s Running Shoes Average CPC* $0.12 $1.84 $1.60 Competition* Low High High

*Average CPC and Competition data provided by the Google Keyword Planner

3. Dominate The Search Engine Results Page With Paid And Organic Results

When you take into consideration the amount of people that solely interact with search results that are above the fold, capitalizing on that real estate becomes a vital part of your pay per click marketing strategy. If you are able to own as much of that real estate as possible with PPC ads, organic listings, social media, etc., you are setting yourself apart as an authority. In fact, there have been multiple case studies that prove that by appearing in both the organic and paid ads, you are demonstrating to searchers that you’re an authority in your industry/market. Authority = credibility = trust = clicks.

4. Searchers Using Your Brand Name Are Highly Targeted

When a searcher is typing your organization’s brand name into Google, it’s likely because they are specifically looking for your organization and are closer to the point of conversion compared to a searcher who has clicked on your ads from one of your more generic keywords. Whether they’ve already visited your site in the past, heard about you from word of mouth, interacted with your social media profile or was re-targeted to, they’re looking for you specifically. You should make sure you’re capturing those searchers who are further in the buying cycle, especially if those clicks are more cost-effective to you and your organization.

5. Even If You’re Not Bidding On Your Brand Name, Your Competitors Might Be

As an organization, the last thing you want is for a searcher that is already familiar with your brand and further along in the buying cycle to search for your brand name, then see an ad for a competitor and decide to go with the competitor instead of your organization. While there are Adwords Restrictions and Policies formulated around not allowing competitors to advertise on your trademarked terms, there are less trademarked terms than you might imagine, and many competitors have campaigns specifically set up to target their competitors’ brand names.

If you’re interested in learning more about bidding on competitor terms, read our post about bidding on a competitor’s brand name.

Here at Vertical Measures we tend to be strong believers of running a branded campaign for our clients. However, ultimately every organization’s needs and goals are going to be different. The only way to truly determine if a branded campaign is going to be a beneficial addition to your PPC marketing strategy is to create a branded campaign, A/B test your ad copy, A/B test your landing pages, A/B test your ad extensions, measure results, optimize according to those results, and repeat. Once you’ve gathered enough data to determine if this is going to be a profitable addition to your PPC marketing strategy, then make your final decision with the factual data to support it.

Source: B2C_Business

Top 5 Reasons You Should Bid On Your Brand Name