If your business runs Adwords ads and you're not bidding on your own brand name, then you need to look at doing this.
It's something that seems at first to be a bit counter-intuitive.
People will often say to me "Why should I pay for clicks on my own brand name if I'm ranking #1 in organic search and could get that traffic for free?"
That's a good point, and if you truly don't have any advertising/marketing spend to spare then you might not be able to pursue this strategy.
However, if you've got any scope to bid on your own brand name, then I strongly encourage you to do it.
In fact, even if you don't otherwise advertise on Adwords, I recommend creating an account to bid on your own brand name.
Here's why:
1) Competitors can (and will) bid on your brand name.They can't use your business name in their ads but there is nothing stopping them advertising on your brand name as a keyword.
By bidding on your own brand name you can defend it from competitors looking to steal customers off you.
I should know, as I've successfully used this strategy for my clients to rank above their competitors who weren't actively bidding on their own brand name.
2) You get additional real estate in the Google search results. The more opportunities people have to see (and to click) your website listing, the better.
3) This approach generates additional traffic. A click on your paid brand ad doesn't necessarily mean you've taken a click away from the organic listing. A Bing Ads study found that bidding on brand name drives around 31% incremental traffic, with only an 11% overlap (i.e. clicks you could have got for free but wound up paying for).
4) Clicks won't be too expensive and conversion rates will be high. I've seen numerous accounts where brand terms have 90% lower CPCs and 10x better conversion rates than non-branded terms. Even a flood of traffic is unlikely to cost you too much money.
5) You can use your ad copy to show promotions and other marketing messages that Google may not show in organic search results.
For example, I've used this technique on a retailer/eCommerce site to great effect in the past.
If we ran a 72hr long weekend sale, I would create a new ad copy to call out this sale (making use of Google countdown ads as well)
Doing the same with the organic listing would require me to alter my page title, meta description etc and the update isn't reflected immediately anyway.
The Bing Ads study I mentioned earlier summarizes the importance of this concept nicely:
'Brand term bidding is a strategy that allows you to play offense and defense at the same time:
1) Play Offense
Brand term bidding helps deliver more clicks.
2) Play Defense
Brand term bidding means fewer clicks to competitors.
** Action Steps **
1) Check in your Adwords account to see if you're bidding on your brand name terms.
2) If not, set this up in a new campaign - you should "break out" brand terms/keywords into their own campaign.
3) Consider setting up an Adwords account just to bid on your brand name if you don't already use Adwords.
4) If you run Bing Ads, do the same on that network.
** Need Help? **
If you need any help setting this up, please comment below.
** Conclusion **
Bidding on your brand name in Adwords - even if you're ranking #1 organically - will mean more traffic (and great converting traffic) as well as allowing you to defend against the competition.
It's easy enough to do, and won't take you too much time. This is real low hanging fruit!
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