Bid on your own brand terms.
When we suggest to clients they should be bidding on their own brand terms, it often comes as a surprise.
“Why would I want an AdWords ad for my own brand? – I already rank very high for my own brand.”
It’s a valid question. So why WOULD we want an AdWords ad AND the top organic spot? Let’s talk theory first, and data second.
What’s your Brand CTR?
Unfortunately, even for your own branded terms, you probably don’t have 100% of the clicks. If the name of your business is ‘Ray’s Manhattan Mexican Food’, and you have the top spot, you’re likely STILL not getting all of the clicks for your brand searches.
To check your brand’s CTR (Click Through Rate – Number of clicks over amount of ad views), log into Google Webmaster Tools’ keyword data section.
You may find that the amount of people searching for your brand who click on your website is much lower than you thought.
For our own site, Search Scientists only has a 71% click through rate:
While you may be in position 1 for your own brand, other sites are in position 2 through 10. What can you do? Add in another listing – a paid listing, above your organic listing. Not only will you be increasing your visibility – but you’re reducing SERP (search engine result page) distraction. The fewer other items someone sees after they search – the better.
And with more clicks, it leads to more revenue. 9 times out of 10, bidding on your own brand terms in AdWords is a great way to boost branded revenue. Give it a try. Measure you branded revenue over the past 90 days on AdWords. Add in a branded campaign with phrase and exact match keywords:
- “Brand Name”
- [Brand Name]
Be sure to give the exact match keyword a 20-30% higher bid than the phrase match. To top it off, add in a great ad (complete with some site links) and saddle up to more branded traffic, and more branded revenue. There are other reasons to bid on branded terms:
More Reasons to Bid on Branded Terms
- Making it more difficult on your competitors to bid on YOUR branded terms with an interesting offer
- The branded terms are super cheap!
- Your account-wide quality score will be lifted. Branded terms typically have a terrific CTR and terrific quality score.
- People searching for your brand are close to purchase! These are important clicks!
Google created a study which found that only having the organic listing does not make up for the power of organic and paid traffic. So – take advantage of this ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and bid on your own brand terms!
If you’re interested in digging in deeper into measuring the impact of using paid & organic as a one-two-punch, learn more about the paid and organic traffic report inside AdWords.
This post is part of a series: ‘100 Days of AdWords Help’.
