Top 5 Reasons Why Advertisers Should Bid on their Branded Search Terms

07.25.12

Anne Garcia, Senior Campaign Manager

Clients often ask me why they need to bid on their branded terms in their Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns if they are already ranking well organically within the search engines. Clients tell me that they would rather allocate funds to non-branded terms instead of bidding on terms that already give them above-the-fold results. Here are five key reasons why advertisers should bid on their branded terms.

1. Your competitors may already be bidding on your branded terms. Regardless of whether you are showing up for your branded terms, it is likely that your competition is, and you aren't, you could be losing out on valuable, qualified traffic to your site. Take advantage of your brand name and leverage these terms in your PPC campaigns. Using terms like "official site" and "authentic" within your ad headline or description will make your PPC ad stand out even more and inform searchers that they are clicking on the correct link.

2. The average cost-per-click (CPC) of your branded terms is typically much lower than the average CPC within your PPC account. Depending on your industry, branded terms can be just a small fraction of the cost of search terms because they are not likely to be searched as often, thus leading to a less competitive auction. What's more, because brand keywords are more apt to have a high quality score, your ads will benefit from a high click-through rate (CTR) and thus a low CPC.

3. Bidding on your branded terms in conjunction with ranking well organically will give you extra real estate on the search engine results page (SERP). Branded terms are likely to rank well in both organic and paid search, and together all of the results should give your web site ample visibility. By implementing ad extensions like sitelinks, reviews and other available extensions from the networks, your PPC ad becomes more prominent and as a result pushes the organic listings further down on the SERP.

4. Organic clicks do not always replace paid search links when ads are paused. Google found that across many verticals, 50% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused. In addition, not all searchers are aware of the difference between paid search ads and organic links and merely click on the results that are most relevant to them.

5. You can easily update calls-to-action and current offers to paid search links. Are you offering customers free shipping for the long weekend? Or are you currently promoting 20% off a specific product line? What's nice about PPC ads is that you can change ad copy as often as you like and the customers that know you best and are searching for your brand terms will see your ad and current promotion at the top of the SERP.

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