Brand in search campaign - is it worth considering?

Why pay for displaying ads in Search when someone has already typed my company’s name, and the website will appear in organic results anyway? - this is a question clients often ask us.

Is this approach a waste of the advertising budget? Not at all. Why? Here are a few arguments:

When someone searches for your company name, the first results they see are paid ads, followed by organic results. Even if your website ranks highly in organic results or you have a unique name, this doesn’t stop competitors’ ads from appearing above your organic listing.

Any advertiser can target keywords—including your brand name. Many companies bid on their rivals' names to redirect traffic, and while a 2023 ruling (case Cinkciarz.pl vs Currency One) may eventually change this, it’s still common practice.

Ads displayed for phrases related to our brand don’t necessarily result from unfair practices. For example, if a user searches for the phrase “marketing agency 4822,” they may see ads from agencies targeting phrases like “marketing agency” in addition to our website. In such cases, a branding campaign helps maintain a strong position in paid search results.

Brand-related keywords are typically much cheaper to advertise on. Your website and ad copy closely match the brand keywords, giving you a higher quality score than competitors bidding on the same term. Higher quality scores result in lower costs per click (CPC) and better ad positioning. As a result, clicks on brand-related searches are both cheaper for you than for competitors and significantly cheaper than clicks on other non-branded keywords.

Organic search results offer limited control over what is displayed. A branding campaign provides the ability to control the message and offers greater flexibility. Brand campaigns allow you to tailor your messaging with:

1. key brand claims / USPs in ad text or headlines
2. promotions or sales via ad copy and promotion extensions
3. featured product categories or pages using sitelink extensions
4. core benefits in explanation extensions
5. personalized ads: for example, users searching for specific product categories can see tailored ads directing them to the most relevant page
6. additional information such as location or phone number through ad extensions

Until recently, the first page of Google search results was the most important. Now, Google Search no longer uses pagination, but the visibility of results still drops significantly as you move down the list. Combining a paid branding campaign with organic search results allows you to dominate the top of the search engine, while also taking that space away from competitors.

Running a brand campaign gives you access to additional insights unavailable from organic results alone. These include:

1. demographics of searchers Advanced Google Ads reports provide demographic and geographic data on users searching for your brand, helping you better understand your audience.

2. brand awareness tracking Monitoring brand search volumes gives a sense of how brand recognition changes over time (pro tip: exclude brand keywords from other search and Performance Max campaigns to get clean data).

For brands with generic or very common names, a brand campaign might result in unnecessary spending. In such cases, ads are likely to be shown to random users who aren’t interested in the brand but are searching for unrelated information. This can lead to accidental clicks and unnecessary costs. However, if a brand’s recognition and budget are very large, such campaigns might still be worthwhile—for instance, think of a brand like "apple." These cases are exceptions to the rule.

Need help with online campaigns? Let’s talk!