Your brand is being searched — are you making the most of it?
When people search for your brand, you expect them to find you right away. But relying solely on organic search can be risky. Competitors can bid on your brand name, placing their ads above your organic listing and drawing potential customers their way. Alternatively, if your brand shares a similar name with another company in a different industry, they may outrank you in search results, putting you at a disadvantage.
There are a number of reasons why targeting brand keywords can be a highly valid strategy. Let’s dive into these in more detail.
Brand Protection:
Bidding on your own brand terms allows you to control the messaging that appears when people search for your company. It helps safeguard your brand’s reputation and prevents competitors from leveraging your brand’s recognition. We’ve seen numerous instances where competitors bid on another brand’s keywords, placing their ads directly in front of that brand’s website in search results.
In many cases, competitors may present an enticing offer that convinces a potential customer to choose their product or service over yours. Running a brand-targeted Google Ads campaign ensures those critical moments don’t end with a competitor’s ad when someone searches for your brand. When people are actively searching for you, their path to your site should be as straightforward as possible. Instead, guide them there with a search ad focused specifically on your brand keywords.
Increased Visibility:
Even if you rank highly organically, a paid ad at the top of the search results page significantly increases your visibility. This is especially crucial in today’s mobile-first world, where screen real estate is limited. The very top of the search results page is the prime real estate for search results. For many keywords with commercial-intent, the only way to get to that position is a paid search ad. Even with strong organic ranking for your brand name, your website may not be presented above the fold in a search result.
Check out the example below for a search of “drapes and blinds” on a mobile device. It’s not until you head a fair way down the page that you eventually reach the listing for Drapes and Blindz Limited. Even though this search isn’t quite an exact match to the brand there are many people that will likely enter only this part of the brand name when searching for this business. By the time they have scrolled down to this business’s listing they would have seen some compelling offers.
As you can see, presenting an ad in the sponsored section of Google Search will maximise visibility when users search for your brand.
Higher Conversion Rates:
People who search for your brand are typically already familiar with your company or are further along in the buying process. They often know what you have to offer and what they want to buy or enquire about, which leads to higher conversion rates. Reduce the time for a potential customer to have a second thought on their intent to purchase by running a targeted ad for those types of brand keyword searches.
Cost-Effectiveness:
Brand keywords generally have high quality scores and high ad relevance. This helps to keep the cost per ad click low, meaning brand focused campaigns can be a very cost-effective approach.
Highlight Promotions and Control the Customer Journey:
Brand keyword campaigns give you the flexibility to highlight your current promotions or special offers right when someone searches for your brand. Unlike organic search, which lacks this level of immediate control, search ads allow you to direct users to specific landing pages, ensuring they see the most relevant information immediately and are guided straight to your offer.
Key strategies for brand campaigns
Below are some of our strategies for running brand campaigns. These are guidelines and not “set in stone” rules. Each business and brand is unique and may require some deviations in their setup.
- Budget: Brand campaigns should typically be 10-15% of your total Google Ads spend, and no more than 20% (our rule of thumb).
- Phrase and Exact Match Targeting: Use a tight combination of phrase and exact match keywords to ensure only searches for your brand trigger the ads.
- Negative Keywords: Exclude your brand name from other campaigns to concentrate spending in the brand campaign.
- Ad Copy: Highlight your brand name in headlines and descriptions, and include key products/services and promotions.
- Ad Assets: Utilise all ad assets, especially site link extensions, to showcase popular and new products/services.
- Bidding Strategy: Use a “target impression share” bidding strategy, aiming for the “absolute top of results page” with a high impression share (e.g. start with 70%) and a CPC limit based on your other campaign’s average CPC. Note however you should be able to bid relatively low on your brand keywords. As always, test and refine your max CPC limit in response to real campaign data.
- Search Term Audits: Regularly check search terms to exclude irrelevant searches with negative keywords and add new keyword variants as applicable.
In summary, bidding on your brand keywords gives you control over your online presence, helps protect your brand from competitors, and maximises your visibility. Even if your website already ranks well organically, a paid brand campaign offers valuable extra exposure and control.
Interested in learning whether a Google Search brand-targeted campaign could benefit your business? Take the next step and get in touch to discuss your options.