Should You Bid On Your Own Brand Term In Google Adwords?

People are always asking ‘should I bid on my own brand term in Adwords’ with the main issue being ‘is it a waste of money’?

We look at each client on an individual basis and will look at a variety of different factors when advising you.

#1 – Competition 

Firstly, we look at the competition. Are your competitors bidding on your brand term? If they are, they could end up stealing people who are trying to find your website. If someone is at the point of typing in your brand term, likelihood is they want to find your website and is highly interested in your company. Therefore, this could lead to a lot of wasted budget from your competitors with high bounce rates but, you could save them from ever finding this competitor by ensuring you’re bidding on your brand. One brand that use brand bidding is Diet Chef due to the PPC competition bidding on their brand name:

On the other hand, if the whole of the first page only had your brand then you really are wasting your advertising budget and would be better off utilising the budget in other marketing channels. An example of a brand who wouldn’t need to brand bid is Superdrug. As you can see, anyone typing in their brand name is only ever going to land on a brand related page:

#2 – Exposure 

The exposure that a PPC advert gives you is much greater than any organic exposure you can gain. This is due to the amount of extensions Adwords offers such as callout extensions, sitelink extensions, structured snippets, table extensions etc. Therefore, even though some brand won’t have competition on PPC, they will still bid on their brand term to get across more messages. A good example of this is Boots who use PPC to really get across all the different products they offer, their opening times, nearest branch, promotions and click and collect service. Therefore, we could suggest for a client to use brand bidding tactically when there are specific messages to get across to a potential customer.

#3 – Cost per click 

The cost per click for brand related keywords are really cheap. This is due to the low competition, the high CTR and high-quality score you will receive for your brand. This is definitely a factor to consider, but not a deciding factor for us as to whether you should make the final investment into brand bidding.

#4 – Remarketing

People who are searching for your brand know about you, and most of the time will have visited your website before. Therefore, these people will be more likely to convert. Therefore, why not use brand bidding strategically….you can set-up a RLSA (remarketing list for search ads) campaign to target those who have been to your website previously but not converted. This allows you to target a highly captive audience with your brand term who are most likely to convert.

#5 – Test 

Still not made up your mind as to whether brand bidding is for you? Why not run a test during a month and see if you see an increase in traffic and conversion? You don’t know unless you test your options.

To find out more, or speak to one of our PPC experts, call us on 01159325151 or e-mail hello@peakydigital.co.uk