Should I Bid On My Own Brand?

Many advertisers have definitely bought into the practice of bidding on search terms that include a brand name, but often we will see clients question the validity of this. They ask, and fairly so, what’s the point if I’m going to show up anyway? That is the question as Paid Search marketers that we need to answer. Ultimately, we should be bidding on brand terms, and here’s why:

1. Control the results page

It is certainly a good question as to whether it is worth bidding on your terms as you will appear naturally. However, by adding in your own adverts will take ownership of more of the real estate on that page. You will then have an advert at the top, then ideally 5/6 organic links and two or three going to other websites. Without the advert, you may see 50% of the results page going to other websites.

2. Keep competitors at bay

Paid Advertising is a cut throat industry where people are competing for every click available. You can be sure if you don’t bid on your terms, then one of your competitors will be. If somebody is actively searching for you, but your competitor shows an advert, they could quite easily steal that click from you and in turn, take your revenue.

3. Cheap clicks

Bidding on your brand is going to be relatively low in terms of competition even if your competitors bid on them. If you bid on the brand term that has been searched, you can be sure that Google will prefer your advert to the competitors due to the relevancy and you will not have to pay a lot for it.

4. Incremental Revenue

A study by Hanapin Marketing found that taking off brand bids did have a negative impact on the overall revenue. The organic results do not make up for the missed revenue from Brand terms so it is a small price to pay for those clicks when they are bringing in a strong amount of conversions and revenue.

5. Valuable Data on Keywords

As part of your brand strategy, you should look to include “brand plus” keywords. For example, things such as [brand] blue curtains, or [brand] leather sofas. We can take the high performing “Brand Plus” phrases and then apply them without the brand into a non-branded campaign to see if they still perform well without the brand.

These are just a few of the reasons we recommend bidding on brand terms. In a nutshell, they don’t cost very much and provide some excellent rewards. You protect yourself from the competitors whilst improving your own performance. Ultimately, organic results do not make up for the