Should you bid on your name?
For almost as long as there have been search ads—Oct. 23, 2000—the question has loomed as to whether or not you should serve ads to those individuals whose search query is your brand name. It’s a common question we get asked.
So, let’s get right to it. Buying branded keywords for your search engine marketing ads is a good strategy for most businesses. And here’s our top four reasons why:
- Organic results combined with paid brand keywords see 89% more clicks than organic listings without ads.
Organic + Ads = RESULTS
The burning question is: will my ads cannibalize my organic search clicks? In other words, am I paying for something I would have received for free?
A well-known study of more than 400 paused ad accounts found that a full 89% of the traffic generated by search ads was not replaced by organic clicks when the ads were paused. Combining both the ads and organic brand efforts returned significant CTR.
- 70% of the people who searched on you don’t make it to your website.
Even if you rank first place in organic search for your branded keywords, clicks to your homepage are only estimated to be about 20% to 30% of the available traffic.
Having both ads and organic results on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) helps you to better dominate the available real estate.
There are multiple reasons: organic results are often pushed down well below the fold, and users need to scroll past competing content to get to your one organic listing.
Google and other search engines are increasing the real estate for ads, creating multiple types of ads, and giving ads lots of features to entice searchers down the paid path. All these new ad types – shopping ads with images across the top of the page, and text ads below—push down the other new features Google has added over the years.
So, if Google can’t get you to click on an ad, then they would like to answer the question for you with a no-click search.
What’s a no-click search? That’s where Google pulls enough data onto the SERP to answer the search query without sending anyone to a website. Things like scraped answers and featured snippets (that helpful list in the middle of the page that might be titled “People also ask”), along with the knowledge panel (images and content pulled from sources like Wikipedia) can take up lots of room and push your organic listing out of sight.
- Branded keywords are usually some of the best priced terms and often convert much higher than generic terms.
Your Ads Have Power
Does it just chap your hide that search engines are playing favorites with people who buy your brand name? We totally get it, but there are some real good reasons to pay for your brand keywords.
Your ads have very tailored messages that speak directly to your customer’s needs and you can send those customers to landing pages like your online store. Your organic listing content is pulled from your meta description or contextual information on your page, whichever appears to best answer the query. You don’t get to choose.
People who search on your brand name, and click on your ad, are individuals who are interested in your product. They convert more easily, and in higher numbers, than those who came to your pages via generic search terms. And these keywords are usually very well priced.
- Are you in a competitive sphere? If yes, it’s likely that your rivals are bidding on your name with the hope of plundering your traffic and swiping your customers.
You know what they say: Nature abhors a vacuum. Even if you don’t buy your brand keywords for search ads, your competitors will.
One client who Buzzgen started a search campaign for had heavily advertised in print, but not previously search. Many businesses, however, had stepped in and were buying the brand’s name as a keyword and offering everything from competing experiences, to wholesalers who were reselling the brand’s experience. So, while the company was successfully investing in building its reputation, others were using that cache and traffic to divert the customer to their own product.
In our experience, almost all of our clients benefit from a brand keyword search campaign. Brand keyword search ads deliver multiple benefits from higher click through rates, higher conversions, lower cost, and a stronger competitive posture.
Have questions about creating a customized brand search campaign for your company? We’d love to assess your position in the market to see if buying your brand’s keyword is right for you.