5 Reasons Building a Brand Strategy for Search is a No Brainer
December 6, 2021
Should your brand use paid search advertising on your business name and brand keywords? The answer is yes — and it’s a no-brainer. Here’s why.
5 reasons to build a brand strategy for search
#1. Improve your organic results
At first, this seems counter-intuitive, but having paid results at the top of the page actually improves your organic results.
Most people assume that if they rank for their brand name, that paid ads are taking clicks they could be getting for free. But it doesn’t work that way.
In fact, Google did a study on this. They found that 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when the ads are paused.
At Marketing 360® we get a lot of brand traffic, and our experience syncs with Google’s findings. When we run brand campaigns for ourselves (keyword: Marketing 360) “last 180 Days,” we see a 92% increase in conversion rate over organic branded keywords and a 57% increase over direct search conversion rates.
Brand exposure is exponential. The more coverage you have, the greater your results.
#2. Control your brand voice
The search engines don’t always put forth or represent your brand in the best light. Run brand campaigns to control your brand messaging and include offers, promotions and more.
This is a powerful way to dominate the top of the page and is the same strategy that top companies in the US deploy for their SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, Chick-fil-a and Marketing 360.
These large brands are not just running brand ads because they have the money. I would argue this is where they see the best ROI on their SEM strategy — just like we do. So this becomes one of their most profitable campaigns from a customer acquisition strategy.
Far from being an afterthought, this type of strategy is the cornerstone that supports and improves their other campaigns.
#3. Control search results
You will not get total coverage on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for all the different queries as it relates to your brand. Just trying to rank organically is not enough.
Running a brand campaign with different match types will not only give you this additional coverage, but it will also help you discover keywords that could be used in expanding your campaign strategy.
For example, our brand term has more than 3,900 different search queries compared to the actual organic ranking of only 155 branded terms. In discovering these terms, we were able to drive more conversions and develop out these keyword concepts getting an additional 95% Impression share coverage for these terms. Essentially, we cast a MUCH bigger fishing net!
#4. Drive better results and higher ROI
The additional coverage that you gain in traffic not only drives better leads at a better cost, but will also help improve the overall ROI and the quality scores of your campaign.
This is important because it helps increase the health of the campaign holistically. We are seeing conversion rates on brand range from 10%-30% and for call campaigns upwards of 50%, while organic brand conversions are around 7%.
The point is you want key conversion content to be as visible as possible. For example, you wouldn’t leave your phone number on the bottom of your web pages because you don’t want to receive more calls. That would be a silly way to lower costs because it’s contrary to why you have a business phone in the first place. The same goes for your brand search results.
#5. Keep your competitors from stealing your clients
The more market share your brand controls, the more likely it is that your competition is bidding on your brand terms. These listings will show up above your organic listing, creating a painful circumstance where you could lose traffic from someone searching for you by name. This cannot stand.
For example, Marketing 360 is a big player in the SMB marketing space. As a result, we have a number of competitors bidding on our brand as a keyword, and/or they may be using “marketing” as a broad match keyword. Either way, we want to be sure to rank above them.
The good news is that you should easily be able to outrank competitors because your relevancy and quality scores will be better. If they’re trying to take top spots, you have to take them back.
Running a brand marketing campaign will ensure you get better protection from competitors looking to gain an advantage. Not being there for all search queries leaves your online presence vulnerable to the competition.
Make the most of your SEM and SEO campaigns with brand marketing. Get started today!
Originally published on 10/7/19
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