To bid or not to bid, that is the question…

If I had a dollar for every client who questioned or pushed back on bidding on brand keywords, I’d be rolling in it! Lately, I’ve had this conversation with several clients. The most common argument is, “Why should I pay to appear for my branded terms when I already rank first organically?” There are plenty of reasons to target the top paid slot on the SERPs for brand searches, but today I want to focus on the most important one.

If you’re not bidding, your competitors are.

This may sound obvious, but it’s still a hard truth some clients don’t fully grasp. Some even want to “test” what happens if they pause branded keyword campaigns to see what effect it will have. I’ll tell you right now, the impact of “testing” by turning off branded keywords can be damaging long-term. Here’s a real-world example:

A client paused their branded traffic one quarter after they hit their annual budget earlier than expected. Their CPC at the time was around $1.80. When they reactivated their brand campaign a few months later, they saw their brand CPC jump to $2.60, nearly a 50% increase!

Taking seasonality out of the equation (there was an overall market increase in CPC, too), the first thing we checked was the quality score. The quality score remained strong at 9-10, as expected for brand terms.

So, what happened? Here’s the key: bidding on competitor brand terms is a common strategy. Even though quality scores are low, which leads to higher CPCs, competitors often find the extra cost worth it for the conversions and brand awareness they gain. When someone searches for your competitor’s offering, there’s a chance they may also be interested in yours.

After digging into the Auction Insights report in Google Ads, we saw that competition for our brand terms had increased significantly. More and more competitors were bidding on our branded keywords, which pushed up the cost to stay in those top positions.

Once a competitor realizes the value of showing up for your brand terms, they’ll continue to bid higher to maintain that position, driving up your own costs.

Let this be a reminder—next time you’re thinking about pausing your brand campaigns, consider this: Do you want to risk paying more for your brand keywords than you are now? If not, make sure to re-allocate funds, request more budget, or do whatever it takes to stay competitive on your brand terms year-round.