Clients always ask, “Why do I need to pay for branded traffic?”. While that might not be logical to do, it’s a great way to protect your brand and capture the traffic that your competitors are trying to capitalize on.
Let’s break this down: A user is searching for your brand on Google. You don’t have a branded campaign running, so if your competitors are bidding on your brand name (which is a common tactic in the PPC world), their ad shows up. You’ve been doing SEO for awhile, and therefore have some organic presence, so you’ll show up under the ads.
If a user searches specifically for your brand, there’s clear intent and brand recognition. So maybe they scroll past the ads of your competitors, see your organic listing and recognize your brand, then go directly to your site.
But what if they start looking at your competitor’s ads, and there’s an enticing offer, or a USP that sets them apart from your brand? Would you be willing to take that risk? Wouldn’t you rather close that sale for someone who’s deliberately searching for you, and not leave it to chance?
By running a branded campaign, you will be able to control the messaging in your ad. With organic listings, you are simply relying on your title tags and meta descriptions (most people might not even know they can set these up on their own website), and you won’t be able to customize what you want your audience to see.
On top of that, if you’re a new brand or you haven’t even started doing SEO yet, chances are search engines wouldn’t recognize your domain and won’t reward you with a high organic ranking. So back to the scenario mentioned above, if you don’t bid on your brand name, and you aren’t doing any SEO, you might not even show up on the page at all.
Back to the original question, “Why do I need to pay for branded traffic?”. A branded campaign will be one of your most reliable and cost effective campaigns. Since your branded keywords are generally inexpensive (unless you’re a big name and lots of competitors are bidding on it), if someone is already searching for you, and you have a relevant ad show up right away, you’d basically guarantee that conversion and not run into the risk of someone getting distracted by a competitor’s ad.
Therefore, our recommendation is always to include a branded campaign as part of your PPC strategy. In addition, if you can afford it, bid on your competitors’ keywords as well.
The reason is if a potential customer is searching for your competitor, you also have the opportunity to be a consideration and close on their sale.
As a caveat though, competitor campaigns are typically more expensive because you’re trying to win the business of someone who wasn’t looking for you to begin with, so the intent is lower. However, if you can convince the potential customer that you can solve their pain points better than your competitor, then you would have gained a new customer right under your competitor’s’ nose.
If you’re curious to learn more about the importance of protecting your brand or some other tactics, leave us a comment or send us an email. Let’s chat!
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