Should you bid on your own brand name?
It’s a common question, why pay for clicks when you can get them for free organically? Lots of companies, big or small, can be hesitant about putting Google ad spend into their own brand terms.
What are brand keywords?
‘Brand keywords’ refer to your top branded words, so basically just your company name. You can use exact match keywords, for example [cadburys], but it may be wise to include some variations and common misspellings too like [cadburies].
You could also use brand-plus keywords in your branded campaigns. A brand-plus keyword is a keyword phrase that includes the brand term plus a qualifying phrase. For example “cadburys + twirls” and “cadburys + website”.
Here, I’ll talk you through 7 reasons why you should bid on these type of keywords and have branded PPC campaigns.
Why bid on brand keywords?
1. Get That Number 1 Spot
Maybe you’re a new company and haven’t made it to the top spot organically yet. Google Ads is a great way for you to make sure your customers can still find you.
2. Direct Traffic Where you Want
The top organic listing for your brand search term will probably be your homepage. If you have a sale going on or a top performing landing page that you’d rather direct visitors to, you can do that with a PPC ad.
3. Improve Overall Account Health
The relevancy of your branded keywords, ad copy, and landing page should give you almost perfect quality scores. This will help bring up your overall account average up and raise click-through-rates.
4. Takeover the Page
Use ad extensions to take up as much space as possible on page one of the search results page and better control your message.
5. Low-Cost Option
Pure brand clicks are often the cheapest, or most cost-effective, campaigns to run. They can provide some easy wins, especially if you’re new to Google Ads and not sure where to start.
6. Hide the bad News!
If your company has made the news for the wrong reasons, you can use PPC to push those results below the fold and reduce the chances of those negative news pieces getting a valuable click.
7. Deter Competitors
If you’re in a particularly competitive industry, you may find your competitors bidding on your own brand name and diverting traffic meant for your site to theirs. With great ad copy and the right ad extensions, you should easily be able to regain your position at the top.
Branded campaigns could be right for you
Regardless of what stage you’re at in your PPC journey, branded campaigns can add real value to your Ads account.
If you need help running your Google Ads campaigns, get in touch to discuss my PPC management service.