{"id":33275,"date":"2015-12-07T11:12:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T11:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2015\/12\/07\/brand-name-bidding-should-you-buy-ads-for-your-brand-terms\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T19:04:47","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T19:04:47","slug":"brand-name-bidding-should-you-buy-ads-for-your-brand-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2015\/12\/07\/brand-name-bidding-should-you-buy-ads-for-your-brand-terms\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand name bidding: should you buy ads for your brand terms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today I wanted to visit Taskrabbit, so typed the brand name into Google to navigate my way to its website.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what was shown on the first results page\u2026<\/p>\n

\"taskrabbit-google-search\"<\/p>\n

Wow, Taskrabbit is so good they listed it twice!<\/p>\n

Obviously the top listing is a paid search ad, although perhaps that\u2019s not so obvious to the 40% of people who don\u2019t know that these results are actually paid for<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It begs the question: why do brands bid<\/a> on their own brand terms? Is it a good idea, or a bad one? Aren\u2019t you just paying for traffic that you\u2019d otherwise get for free?<\/p>\n

Personally, I\u2019ve never really bought into the idea of doing this kind of thing, but there are some very good reasons for buying these kinds of paid search ads<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1. Boost your Quality Score<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> I’ve been known to do it, purely because it increases the quality score <\/a>of the account and they’re usually relatively cheap<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jim Seward (@iamoldskool) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jim is right. This is typically a really easy way of improving your quality score without breaking the bank.<\/p>\n

Brand search campaigns are going to generate some of the highest quality scores you can attain, so if you do a lot of paid search and need to raise your average then this makes for an easy win.<\/p>\n

2. Keeping competitors at bay<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> to stop competitors, surely? Plus, there’s always the fear Google might usurp the #1 spot with some rich snippet, best to play safe<\/p>\n

\u2014 Bob Bamber (@Bobbable) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A defensive brand bidding policy is necessary when your pesky competitors play rough. I say fight fire with fire, and then some, but as a first port of call you need to protect your top position. Otherwise you\u2019re going to leach traffic, especially from those people who don\u2019t know that ads are in fact ads.<\/p>\n

Bob makes another interesting point about rich snippets. Some search queries barely show any organic action above the fold these days, and you may need to pay something to pop your head above the parapet.<\/p>\n

3. Traffic uplift<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> I’ve seen plenty of data that the traffic is greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jonathan Beeston (@beeston) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jonathan suggests that it\u2019s worth it as it affects CTR across the board. He reckons that it might not be much (\u201cless than 5% uplift\u201d) but if it works a little, it\u2019s worth doing. Especially for brands with serious scale.<\/p>\n

4. Hide something<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> @akcamiwik<\/a> @iamoldskool<\/a> are they trying to push something below the fold?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Richard Gregory (@SmartRich) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Richard makes a great point: what if you wanted to push another result down the page?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve had a bad time in the press recently, and one of the newspapers has a page indexed highly. In a few weeks that is likely to fade away, but the last thing an embattled retailer wants to see at this time of the year is negative PR placed prominently.<\/p>\n

In such a situation, you could tactically bid on brand terms and create some paid sitelinks, to bury bad news well below the fold.<\/p>\n

5. Persuasion<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> why rank first when you can rank first and second? if you\u2019re both, you *must* be the right answer.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tim Caynes (@timcaynes) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tim\u2019s point gets to the heart of what makes a search result look trustworthy, and clickable, in the mind of the searcher. \u201cThis is the result you\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right? Right.<\/p>\n

Click.<\/p>\n

6. Choose your own sitelinks<\/h3>\n
\n

@lakey<\/a> @gcharlton<\/a> @SmartRich<\/a> @akcamiwik<\/a> @iamoldskool<\/a> you can choose your sitelinks, eg sign-up?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Xabier Izaguirre (@Xabi_izaguirre) December 4, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You have some control over how organic sitelinks are displayed, but not full control over what Google chooses to show.<\/p>\n

If Google chooses to ignore one of your key pages, then replicating your organic listing in paid form allows you to determine your own sitelinks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

7. Make sure of the sale<\/h3>\n

Brand terms won\u2019t usually have tons of competition, so they\u2019re going to be relatively cost effective, and the user intent will already be strong as they\u2019re clearly brand-aware.<\/p>\n

Buying ads simply allows you to make it easy for someone to reach your site, and gives you an opportunity to make another sale. A small price to pay if you can entice that person to become a repeat customer.<\/p>\n

And finally\u2026<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m sure it wouldn\u2019t have published this unless the results were positive, but Bing\u2019s research suggests that there is much to be said for brand ads.<\/p>\n

\n

What do you think? Is this a tactic you use? Do you turn these ads on and off, or are they a permanent fixture?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why do brands bid on their own brand terms? Is it a good idea, or a bad one? Aren\u2019t you just paying for traffic that you\u2019d otherwise get for free?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":33276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4080,58,46],"content_type":[27095],"class_list":["post-33275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ppc","tag-brand-name","tag-ppc","tag-search-marketing","content_type-news"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/nike-google-search-ppc-370x229-120x90.png","category":"PPC","timeago":"10y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33275"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=33275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}