Clients sometimes present the argument, “Why would I pay to advertise on my brand keyword when I come up #1 for organic anyhow?” Here are 10 reasons to always use your brand name and brand terms as keywords in your paid search campaigns and the smart ways to execute them to get amazing results. A note: if your brand name happens to also be an expensive keyword phrase some of this stuff will not apply. For instance, if your company is called “Car Insurance”.
- Location, Location, Location: You may have the #1 organic result for your brand, but adding another top slot means you can often control most if not ALL of the listings above the fold. Check out this search for “Walmart”. With Sitelinks Ad Extensions, organic sitelinks, places results in the plus box, 3 organic listings (Google’s max default), Walmart controls every result that I see when I search for their brand.
- Control Your Messaging: There is no guarantee that Google will use the meta description that you enter for a page in the organic results. Additionally, other site’s content about your brand may come up on Google’s first page. That external content could be flat out bad, like a negative review of your brand. Or, it could be good, but still not conveying the message that you want to convey. For instance, you may get somebody’s blog post talking about what a great cheap deal they got at your store, when the image that you’d like to convey for your store is about exclusivity and customer service. You CAN control your paid search ad text to convey what ever messaging you’d like and make sure your brand is represented the way you want it to be.
- Elbow Out The Competition: Your competitors ARE allowed to bid on your brand name keywords, trademark restrictions may prevent them from using your brand name in their ad text, but not from using your brand name as a keyword. That said, their quality score is most likely going to be quite low for the term, and thus their minimum CPC to get impressions will be high. The economics to produce suitable ROAS on your brand name get even worse for your competitors when you take the top slot for next to nothing. Which leads me to…
- Its Really Cheap!: In most cases, you will have a super low CPC on your brand term(s) which means that the costs are so negligible that if you pick up just one additional customer via this tactic, it has paid for itself.
- Elevated Performance Metrics: Generally, you are going to get a 10/10 quality score for your brand keyword(s) and a stellar CTR. This not only means you pay next to nothing for these clicks, but also that you are positively affecting the average metrics for the whole campaign/account. CPC is tabulated at a keyword level taking quality score and CTR history into account, but when you add new keywords, account averages are used to “set” the initial expected CTR and your related positions. An account with higher historical CTR averages and quality scores will get more exposure at a cheaper CPC for new keywords. Additionally, there is some pretty sound speculation that metrics such as bounce rate, time on page and conversion rate are being looked at for both Adwords quality score and organic algorithm – these metrics all will always be stellar for your brand terms.
- Elbow Out Your Affiliates: Even if you have a trademark protection on your brand keyword as part of your affiliate program, it is WAY cheaper just to take the paid search listing for your domain yourself (remember, Adwords only lets one ad per domain show) than to police your affiliates constantly to make sure they are in compliance.
- “Conduct” Your Traffic With Sitelinks: Think of a conductor, nudging people (or music, or trains) where he prefers them to go. You already do this via merchandising and site design architecture on your site, but by using Sitelinks Ad Extensions you can not only control a bit more space on Google, but you can “merchandise” Google, making sure that your customers are exposed to the promos, offers, brands etc that you want associated with YOUR brand. Note in the Walmart example above, that Walmart is pushing their “Back to College” page in their Ad Extensions. Because of the different ways that you would want to use Ad Extensions in branded vs non-branded terms, it is a good idea to place your branded terms in their own campaign.
- Customer Service and Engagement: Now that you have your brand terms in their own campaign, consider also adding a location ad extension (if you have a physical location) and a phone number ad extension too. While you are at it, you probably want to set this campaign to show on mobile devices and enable click to call and possibly show ads on the content network. For those already aware of your brand, make it easy to engage and re-engage. Imagine the customer, on their lunch break who wants to call and get tracking information for the package they ordered from you last week. They search for your brand name on their mobile phone while standing in line at the deli, the ad comes up, they click to call…You have just made it really easy for this customer to engage with your business. That kind of ease of engagement is what drives positive word-of-mouth and repeat customers. Speaking of word-of-mouth, look how Sears has gmail content targeted:
- Alternate Google Views: We default to thinking of “Google” as the main search results page viewed on a computer, but their are many other ways users see Google, and for many of them, your organic listing is nowhere to be found. Check out these examples for “Zappos” and note how important the ad is in these alternate views. When we think of all the Google properties, products, alternate views for different devices there are hundreds of ways that those interested in and searching for your brand will only get exposure to your site via an adwords ad… of course, that only applies if you have one:
Google Shopping Search
Google Video Search
Google News Search
- Humans are Fallible: People misspell things (did I mention to always also use common misspelling of your brand as keyword?), people don’t see things that are right in front of them, people click a few pixels off where the meant to. By placing as many “hooks in the water” as possible for your super-valuable branded terms you decrease the chance that any of these “oopsy” scenarios result in a lost customer.
Now, go forth and brand!
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