Why pay for search advertising for branded keywords when free organic results rank well? This seems like a reasonable query at first glance. Chances are that you have asked yourself this question. Well, if you are considering taking this route, let us save you from making the wrong decision. Although organic results may rank your site as number one for all queries linked to branded searches, you are giving money to your competitors. You have to ensure that brand search campaigns are part of your digital ad strategy. This is the only way you will discover the importance of brand search campaigns. We are now going to look at the benefits they can add to your company.

What are Branded or Brand-Plus Keywords?

Search phrases that have the name of the brand and other terms used in the brand are known as branded keywords. These keywords can be made up of the brand name, or the brand name plus the product name, product type, or any other type of description. 

Examples of branded keywords include “Nike” or “Nike running shoes.”

On the other hand, a brand-plus keyword is a phrase that consists of a brand term and a qualifying phrase. A few examples include:

• Brand plus the word “review” e.g. Nike Boost review
• Brand plus the word “website” e.g. Nike website

When searchers know about the brand of your business, they will use your branded keywords. An SEO campaign is used to ensure that your target audience can easily find your website even if they have never known about it.

The Importance of Branded Keywords

Controlling Your Messaging

Organic listings are boring. When you have branded keywords, you have a chance of crafting your own message so that you can entice your searchers to visit your website. Since organic listings do not drive searchers, it is important to realize that paid ads offer the advantage of sending your visitors to the appropriate landing pages.

In case you are using a partner (affiliate, resellers, dealers or franchisees, online retailers) strategy, ensure that they coordinate their offers and ad copy to avoid causing any confusion when they are viewed; they should all be in sync.

Branded Keywords are Affordable

We all aspire to have inexpensive keywords that can offer search volume. The keywords that can offer the required volume may be phrases like the name of your brand. Take a step and bid on the name of your brand or your website’s URL to avoid competitors from using them. These terms are easy on the pocket and they will give you higher quality scores and click-through rates.

The CPC (cost-per-click) of branded keywords is often cheap because of low competition.  When a few advertisers bid on a keyword, it will cost a few cents to display the ad. So, if you want to stay within a budget, it is important for you to use branded keywords for ads with low cost-per-click.

You Can Easily Get High-Quality Leads

People using your keywords already know about your company. They might have heard about your company from friends, a return customer, or through an ad. There is a chance that your customers know that you are offering what they want and they would want to purchase a product or service from you. These are the types of customers you want to convert, as compared to those who are searching for items using generic keywords. This is a great advantage that will help you increase your revenue due to increased SEO.

If you combine PPC and SEO, they complement each other to synergize on SERPs. The net effect of combining PPC and SEO is increased CTR. You will realize that when you add both PPC and SEO results, the combined CTR gets to 90% while the usual SEO CTR is usually 50%. This strategy is a great way to improve traffic to your website. 

Keep Your Competitors at Bay

One of the major reasons you want to advertise on branded terms is to ensure that your competitors are not stealing your revenue. Your competition will bid on your brand names all the time. If they bid on your brand name and you are not, then your visitors are being snatched away from you by the competition. 

Your competition can also bid on the misspellings and alterations on exact match phrases of your brand’s name. For instance, when a user searches for “MyCoolCo” instead of “MyCoolCompany”, and your competitors bid on these types of phrases, they also have an advantage of getting to your customers.

Now, in case you find that your competitor is using your brand terms, you can notify them that you will respond by bidding on their brand terms. This notice will give your competitor a reason to avoid an all-out bidding war, which will cause additional expenses per click on both parties.

If you want to capture your brand’s misspellings, you can use Search Query Reports. You will be able to view phrases people are using and then bid on the keywords you find.

To Protect and Increase Your Visibility

As a company, you need to ensure that when people are searching for your products and services, they land on your pages and not your competitors’. The success of your online store depends on its visibility online. Bidding on your branded phrases will create additional links as well as protect the keywords from your competition. Having more links will ensure that you have dominance on SERPs. This step happens by taking up more real estate which will establish your company as a trustworthy store.

The first page of Google’s results page is often limited to a few results. But when you use branded terms, you will be protecting and positioning yourself on this page. Since the screen of mobile phones is usually small, you will have to scroll down to view all the results. So, if you want to be discovered easily by mobile phone users, you have to bid on your brand terms.

Conclusion

Some people will prefer to click on paid searches over organic results. With the additional variety of paid searches (e.g. email sign-up box, image ads, site links), sponsored ads will become an important part of ad campaigns.

Paid search can fill in the gaps in SEO and supplement your organic listings.

• You can experiment with copy and CTA (calls to action) with paid search, which can help to optimize web pages to increase click through. These improvements can then be applied to your organic pages to optimize SEO activity.
• Paid searches help you to reinforce your brand’s authority and to increase the likelihood of people clicking your organic listings. 

As we have seen, brand bidding is the secret weapon to brand growth. With a good digital advertising strategy that maximizes on mobile and covers working with affiliates and partners to block your competition, you will be on a good start of positioning your brand at the top of search pages.