Should I advertise my brand is a common question. We often get objections from our customers about their need to advertise on search terms that contain their brand name. On the surface it makes sense to question why you should pay for traffic that you feel you might get organically anyway, but, by not, you could be leaving money on the table. So here are the reasons why you need to be advertising on your own brand.
Why Am I Paying To Advertise My Brand?
When advertising for our clients we often see an overall revenue increase. But we’re data driven marketers at Dynamic Creative and so we conducted an experiment to support our theory.
The Branded Google Ads Campaigns “Advertise My Brand” Test
The value of branded Google Ads campaigns was put to the test by running an experiment in which 3 results could occur when a customer searched for a brand search term:
- Only an organic result appeared
- Only a paid result appeared
- Both a paid and an organic result appeared
Examining the rate at which customers clicked through to the website from the search engine results page (SERP) under each condition revealed:
- When only an organic result was present, customers clicked on the organic result 76.5% of the time
- When only a paid result was present, customers clicked on the paid result 63.1% of the time
- When both a paid & organic result were present, customers clicked on one of the two 91.3% of the time
This means for every 100 people searching for a brand, on average, an additional 15 people ended up on their website by running a brand ad. That’s a 20% increase!
The brand Google Ads traffic was also seen to convert to sales at the same rate as other brand traffic. As a result, running paid search ads on brand terms increased sales by 20%.
Take Control Of Your Messaging With Ads
By creating ads that match your brand search terms, you have the ability to control what your customers see when they search. You can create ads with relevant offers and unique selling propositions (USPs) for each search. As you can see in the example below, the paid ad allowed the advertiser to show their offer of free delivery on orders over $30 and that they support AfterPay. The better the USPs in the messaging, the stronger the likelihood that a consumer will click on the ad.
It also allowed them to direct traffic to their presumably lucrative gift packs with a sitelink extension…
Adding Extensions To Your Ads
There are many different ad extensions at an advertiser’s disposal to help shape customer behaviour. These include, sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call extensions, store locations, promotions and more.
In the example above, the advertiser has used:
- A sitelink extension: as mentioned above this advertiser is directing traffic to an area of the site they want users to visit. They’re encouraging the click with the USP of free wrapping. You can link to sale products, focus categories or whatever suits your business goals and adjust the messaging accordingly.
- Location extension: the advertiser has used a location extension to show users where their nearest store is. This is another feature available on paid ads to help encourage store visits. The advertiser could also have a call extension, displaying their phone number, but these two extensions cannot show at the same time.
- Structured snippets: Finally the advertiser has used a structured snippet extension to show what tea varieties they have available. This can be used with a list of any products or services you want to communicate to users.
Use Brands Ads To Direct Traffic To Better Landing Pages
If you want users that are searching for specific search terms to visit specific pages, brand ads give you that opportunity. This can also be a safeguard against irrelevant landing pages showing for different search terms. In the example below, you can see the top organic result links to ‘Women’s Underwear’. For a male, this would have been an irrelevant link and may have resulted in a click away from the site. The paid ad in this example allows the company to direct traffic to their homepage so the user can navigate to their desired pages.
Brand Ads Ward Off Competitors
It is an unfortunate inevitability of business that your competitors will try and muscle in on your market. If you don’t have a brand ad, it opens the door for competitor ads. In the example below, there are 3 other ads before the organic results each trying to convince the searcher to go to their site. Without the advertiser’s ad at the top, they would be losing significant traffic.
Even if no one else is competing on your brand, it’s best practice to advertise to get in front of competitors. If you’re the only one in the auction, the cost per click is going to be cheaper, either for you or your opportunistic competitor…
No matter how big or small the brand, if you Google a business, they’ll likely be protecting their brand from competitors with a branded ad.
Save Money On Your Other Advertising
If you’re already advertising your products in Google Ads, brand ads give you the opportunity to reduce your CPC when people are searching for your business. For example, if you’re advertising tables, and someone searches for “(your brand name) tables”, you’re going to pay more for the click if you don’t have your brand name as a keyword. Google will let you pay less for a more relevant ad. By having brand + category ads that include your business name, you will have a more relevant ad, reducing your CPC and saving you money. For more information on how ad relevancy can save you money read our blog on search campaign structures.
Occupy More Page Real Estate
You may be the top organic result for a specific term but is your site the second, third or fourth search result? Having another link to your site at the top of a page can prevent users from seeing a page that you don’t want to direct traffic to. Hide competitors and unfavourable review pages with more SERP real estate. As mentioned in the first point, by having both, you’re statistically likely to increase clicks and sales because of the extra presence.
Why You Need To Advertise On Your Own Brand; Final Word
The reasons stated above go to show the opportunities you are leaving on the table by not advertising on your brand and there are even more that we didn’t mention. It’s also important to remember that because of your domain authority and relevance, your brand ads will cost a fraction of non branded search terms. If you want to increase traffic, sales and revenue without spending much more, you absolutely need to be advertising on your own brand. If you have any questions or would like to know how else to improve your Google Ads campaign efficiencies contact us today.
What To Learn More About Google?
Here are some blogs that will help you to further your knowledge.
