Often at Anvil when we suggest to clients that they should create a brand awareness campaign to bid on their own brand name it’s met with some skepticism. The typical response always sounds a little, “why would I do that? Isn’t it a waste of money?” or “It’s Google’s job to bring my page to the top for my brand name!”. We understand completely, but unfortunately Google does not prioritize showing your site even if you are indeed the brand being searched. For this reason, it very much isn’t a waste of money, in fact it’s a highly recommended marketing tactic worth your consideration and budget. Below I have outlined three of the reasons Anvil always suggest creating a brand awareness campaign.

1. Bidding on your own brand name and brand related keywords terms defends you from potential competitors beating you to it. When a competing brand bids on another brands keywords this is called competitor conquesting. When you bid one your own brand name you are almost guaranteed to occupy the first position in Google search. This pushes out any competitors trying to push your brand name searches below the fold or off the first results page of Google all together. We see competitors bidding on branded keywords of our clients very consistently and one of the only ways to combat this is to bid on those very same keywords.
2. Creating a brand campaign is also a very effective way to maximize your websites presence on Google search. In the case that your website does not come up as the top organic search result, your branded Google ad campaign will more than likely fill that top spot for ads on the search results page. If your site already shows up as the first result in organic search bidding on one’s own brand name is a great way to have your site show up twice in the search results, giving potential customers not one but two chances to click through to your site. This will also maximize the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) real estate of your site. With the use of both site link extensions and ad extensions, brand campaigns can help your business take up the entire top portion of a search results page (above the fold).
3. Running a brand awareness campaign is very cost effective! Because you are bidding on your own brand name the cost per click on these keywords will be very low. Your brand name should be all over your site, in the URL, and on every page at least twice. This will translate to the quality score of your branded keywords being very high, if not 10 out of 10 resulting in a low CPC on each keyword. This will give you an opportunity to test different ad copy, ad extensions, and ad headlines because of the low financial risk.

In conclusion, utilizing a brand awareness campaign has multiple functions and advantages. These functions include, combating competitors trying to steal your traffic, maximizing the presences that your site has on the search engine results page, and being a cost-effective way to generate more leads and test new ad copy. For help creating the perfect branded campaign, contact Anvil media today!