Let’s assume your SEO is top notch and you have the glory of position 1 on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Chances are, you’re not going to be the first thing people see – in fact, you could have your top 4 competitors right above you!
How do you fight this? With a brand campaign.
But wait! You’re #1 organically… do you really need to pay for brand ads?
The common assumption is that you were going to get those prospects anyway right? They’re looking for you by name – surely they’ll spend the extra 3 seconds to skip the competitor ads & find the organic link & click. Right?
Well, ultimately, you’ll want to run the numbers to help make the decision. Your analytics can help, but often an experiment is needed to prove this one way or the other.
Pausing brand ads in one geographic location, while continuing to run in another is a great way to start gathering some insights. Please note that this won’t give perfect data – but it will give useful data.
We’ve helped many advertisers over the years design tests like this, some massive brands, some hardly known. So far all of them have shown enough incremental revenue from Brand ads that those ads always got turned on again.
Combine that incremental revenue with the other benefits shown below & you’ll probably agree, they’re worth running.
Page Control – Generally the page that ranks #1 is your homepage. But what if you have a page you think will convert better than that? Run a quick ad test & find out! Once you have data, you might even want to change your homepage.
You also get regional control, so you could have location specific messaging on certain pages like phone numbers and location info. Makes your site seem that much more local!
Stick it to the Competition – bid up your brand terms. Even with a high bid, your brand terms cost very little per click, and your higher bid makes any competitors (that are bidding on your brand terms) pay more & forces their ads further down the page (or even to page 2).
Messaging Control & Testing – You control the brand messaging. Got a promotion going on? Chuck it in an Google Ad and don’t mess with your website. Have a few variations on your brand? Great – different brand terms can have entirely different messaging, and you can customise the offer for each one!
Blocking Strategy – Running your own ads stops others from stealing the prospects that are looking for you. These are people you’ve cultivated through various marketing channels or past experiences, without a brand campaign you’re risking other competitors getting their hooks into your customer!
SERP real estate. Showing up twice is better than showing up once. Plus, with enhanced sitelinks, callouts and other features in Google Ads you’ll occupy more screen space at a very reasonable cost.
Typos & Misspellings – pobody’s nerfect, everyone makes mistakes. Even on your business name. And people can butcher your name. Badly! By bidding on variations and common misspellings of your brand terms, you can ensure your ad at least is shown to these tragic typers.
