6 Benefits of Running Search Ads for Brand Keywords

As a marketer overseeing paid search campaigns, whether in-house or at an agency, you’ve likely encountered the question, “Why are we bidding on our brand terms?” This question often arises from a desire to cut costs, based on the assumption that users searching for your brand will find you through your organic listings anyway. So, why spend money on brand terms, right?

Wrong.

While the reason may vary by business, there is almost always a compelling reason to continue bidding on brand terms. So, paid search marketers, take heart! Equip yourself with these straightforward yet powerful arguments to support the continuation of your brand campaigns.

1. Brand Search Ads Are Cost-Effective

As we all know, Google’s bidding structure is influenced largely by how compelling and relevant your ads are to the searcher’s intent compared to the competition’s. People searching for your brand will favor your ads, and you clearly have high relevancy on branded search queries. As a result, you won’t need to pay as much to win an auction with your brand as you would on a non-branded term.

At Workshop Digital, we have found that Brand cost-per-clicks (or CPCs) are 45% more cost-effective than non-brand CPCs. This means you won’t break the bank to bring this traffic in. If you find you have to pay significantly more for this traffic, it means you have competition on your brand terms.

This brings us to the next very compelling reason to bid on your brand.

2. Branded Paid Search Campaigns Help Keep The Competition Out

Like it or not, Google’s search results are open to anyone willing to pay enough to win an auction. As of today, even owning a trademark on your brand does not prevent your competition from showing an ad when someone searches for you. While competitors will likely get disapproved if they use your brand name in their ad copy, it does not prevent competitors from bidding on your brand.

💡 Tip: If you do see a competitor using your brand name in their ad copy, you can submit a trademark complaint to Google Ads directly. More about how to proceed here.

People looking for brand terms are often well down in the consideration funnel, and by searching for your brand, they become a prime audience for your competitors. You want to make it as hard as possible for competitors to swoop in and poach these valuable customers, and the only way to ensure the top result on your brand SERP is protected is by paying for that ad placement.

Take the example below showing a search for “Chetu” in Google. As you can see, if Chetu was not bidding on their own brand term, competitors such as Frogslayer and Innowise would be at the top of the search results highlighting their value over Chetu’s. And with organic listing increasingly pushed further down the page through the years, this has become even more important for brands to maintain their branded traffic.

3. Paid Search + Organic Search = Better Results

While the Google team is quick to point out that their paid and organic teams are separate and paid ads do not give you a direct advantage in organic, it has been proven that having both paid and organic ads outperforms relying on either alone.

Studies have repeatedly shown that paid ads significantly improve results, even if you are the number one organic result on the page. A Google study¹ found that on average for searches where your organic position is one, the top paid ad results in an incremental lift in clicks of 50%. This incrementality increases to 82% for organic listings between two to four and to 96% for those with organic listings in position five or lower.

The big takeaway here is that even if your organic result is #1, Paid Ads can provide incremental traffic and value for both brand and non-brand searches.

💡 Tip: Google Ads offers a Paid and Organic report to help you better understand how paid text ads and organic search results work together, providing you with a holistic view of the SERP. This report will also glean optimization opportunities such as keyword expansions, keyword negations, and more.

4. Provide a Better Experience Using Ad Features Not Available in Organic Results

“But what if I own every result on my brand SERP and there are no competitor ads?”, you may ask. Well, bidding on your brand allows you to leverage many ad options designed to improve your visitor experience and increase conversions. Below are a few options to consider when building out your ad campaigns:

• Sitelink Assets (formerly Sitelink Extensions): These additions direct searchers to pages deeper within your website. For example, you can highlight promotional pages, important information on specific products or categories, or pages that are not indexed. The important thing here is to ensure all Sitelinks are complimentary of the ad being served.

  

• Callout Assets (formerly Callout Extensions): These assets let you educate searchers quickly on your company's offerings and differentiators.

  

• Call Assets (formerly Call Extensions): These allow consumers to call your business directly from the search results.

  

• Location Assets (formerly Location Extensions): These assets can display location information such as the store location, a map, approximate travel distance, and more.

  

• Structured Snippet Assets: Located beneath your text ad in the form of a header are structured snippets, which highlight specific aspects of your services or products.

  

While this is not an exhaustive list, all of these ad enhancements allow you to sculpt a brand ad that reduces the natural friction involved with any web experience. Therefore, searchers will learn more about your company and take more of the actions you desire.

5. Testing, Testing & More Testing

The marketer’s credo, right?

Paid brand search ads allow you to create controlled A/B tests to see which messages resonate best with your very best audiences. Using the ad experiments tool and sophisticated machine learning within Google Ads, you can quickly and easily determine which copy inspires the most clicks and conversions.

This messaging can then be repurposed on your website, in other marketing or remarketing channels, and even in your organic metadata. It also provides valuable insight into which features of your product or services are most important to your repeat customers or those searchers comparing you to your competitors.

6. Pairing With Remarketing Lists For Greater Control

Another great resource available to paid ads are remarketing audiences. Remarketing lists paired with brand ads allow you to customize your ads based on known details of a searcher’s behavior.

Have they bought from you before? Did they visit a particular product or category page? Are they a member of your newsletter? You can get all this information through tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics to help craft your strategy.

Not sure where to start with audience segmentation? Our Analytics experts can help craft a strategy that makes sense for your business.

These audience segments may be better served with a different brand search experience, and paid ads allow you to tailor the details specifically to their needs.

Still Not Convinced Paid Ads Works for Brand Search?

Why not dip your toes into the brand waters, so to speak, by excluding previous site visitors from your brand campaigns? By excluding repeat visitors, your ad spend will be focused with laser-like precision on those searchers just beginning their relationship with your brand. Put your best foot forward by creating compelling, informative, and helpful brand ads. Surely, providing the best experience possible to your new visitors is worth the small expense.

In short, while we all understand the desire to save money where possible in our advertising portfolio, the benefits of running brand ads will almost always outweigh the small expenses associated with them. So the next time you’re asked, “Why are we bidding on our brand terms?” don’t hesitate to share these six great reasons why.

This blog post was originally published on March 20, 2018, and was updated and republished on August 23, 2024.