Why you should bid on your own name in a PPC campaign.
A question that comes up a lot is whether it’s cost effective having your company name and your brand names as keywords in a pay per click campaign. It can seem as though it isn’t necessary especially if your website ranks highly for these keywords in the natural search listings.
Avinash Kaushik ponders the issue in his blog and comes to the conclusion that it’s better to use pay per click for generic, non-brand names and allocate resources to search engine optimisation to make sure that the website is optimised for the brand names.
He received this comment in agreement “I would fire anyone who would spend my precious SEM money on Brand keyphrases”.
In fact there are some good reasons why you should include brand names in a ppc campaign:
- If you have a paid listing and a natural listing you occupy more of the real estate on the page. This multiple exposure can have the effect of enhancing the credibility in the minds of the searcher. People are more likely to click the organic listing just because they notice the paid listing.
- The more spaces on the screen you occupy, the less are occupied by your competitors.
- You have direct control over the wording of a paid ad so for example can include a strong call to action.
- It’s not always the case that you show up in the natural listings for your brand names. The natural rankings can fluctuate so by having two shots at it you are covering more options.
- You can target misspellings and variations of your name in paid search more easily than you can on your website.
Posted in Google AdWords Basics
April 2nd, 2007 at 6:58 pm
[...] I cannot believe that one of our newest clients is (was!) paying over $7 per click for their trademarked, proper name which they already own the organic results for! This fool actually recomends it: http://www.semfire.com.au/blog/?p=38 [...]
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
It was interesting to see a case study on this a couple of days after I wrote the post. This was Jonathan Mendez’s conclusion:
Conclusion: Running the PPC ads alongside the natural results for brand keyword queries provides a huge lift in orders and revenue for our client. The paid search ads clearly have a tremendous influence on user behavior. The ads did not drive more traffic but they drove more traffic that purchased.
Here’s the link to the full case study
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:31 pm
A point on the “conversationâ€:
I wasn’t thrilled about being labelled a “fool†by Israeli Rothman (link in comment above). However I figured that people would make up their own mind. Reading through other posts on the Rothman blog it’s characteristic of their style.
I was going to comment further but this post says it better than I could.
http://www.gottaquirk.com/post/489/its-the-conversation-stupid
(Edited to correct Israeli’s name)
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Hi christine,
My name is Solomon, my father’s name is Israeli (not Israeli Solomon as noted above). Sometimes I’ve overly critical in my blog posts (note that I actually didn’t write the particular entry calling you fool), but I think being passionate and making a strong case for your beliefs can actually lead to more conversation not less (even if you go a little too far sometimes).
A case in point, I recently wrote an article critical of Mike Levin’s response to my critique of Seth Godin’s SEO advice. I even used his name in the title. Afterward we had a comment exchange, we both added to the debate and now I’m reading his blog and he’s reading mine with no hard feelings. I think that is so cool.
I honestly believe your advice on bidding on your own trademarked name is foolish for the vast majority of clients, especially for small to medium size businesses with very limited PPC dollars.
Are you honestly telling me you’d recommend a client running a $10,000 yearly PPC budget to bid on their own trademarked name? I’m sorry I don’t see the ROI on that.
Anyways I invite you to join in the conversation and try not to take anything too much to heart. I realize our blogging style can be a bit strong sometimes. Keep on blogging - I hope to see more of your stuff on Webpronews!
thanks,
Solomon
April 4th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Hi Solomon,
First of all, apologies for my mistake over names (or rather apologies to Israeli). I’ve edited the post to correct it.
I read the posts and counter posts about Mike Levin’s response to your Seth Godin post. I subscribe to your blog. I can’t remember how I came across it in the first place but maybe from webpronews.
Being passionate and making a strong case for your beliefs is good. I’m also passionate about what I believe in and I’m trying to improve my skills when it comes to communicating that passion. Attacking the person, calling them a fool and putting an alt tag “the blind leading the blind†with the link to their name is a poor way to demonstrate that passion in my opinion. You say it can lead to more conversation not less “even if you go too farâ€. Possibly, although I think it more often leads to each side being unwilling to try and see alternative points of view.
Anyway, as you said, you didn’t actually write the post in question.
I said there were good reasons to bid on brand names and variations of those names even with a high visibility in the organic listings. I’ve seen a few studies saying that there is a measurable increase in roi when doing this. The case study I linked to is one example of such a study. I didn’t say it always made sense although maybe there was that implication. I’ll be clearer next time. It’s made sense for some of my clients and at nothing like the budget you gave as an example.
I could expand but I’ve got other priorities just at the moment.
Cheers
April 17th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
[...] I mostly work by myself and it suits me to do so. I like the focus and concentration that comes with a quiet, solitary work environment. However I’m not entirely ant-social Online communities are a good place to form peer relationships, share ideas, have the occasional spat and generally avoid the feeling that you’re in a vacuum. [...]
August 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am
normally the keywords which your client ranks for organically are their brand keywords. These are also the cheapest keywords with the best ROI.
With a ppc campaign you will always produce the best ROI on brand keywords, and this is the best way to show great results to a new client.
That said, it is probably best to bid on brand keywords in most cases.
Deciding factors include competitive adwords, client education level and the percentage of budget being eaten up bidding on organic keywords.
Personally I always run a seperate adgroup which contains the keywords the client already ranks for organically.
This way if the client asks I can show at a minimum how many new market visitors I converted.
I always try to spend at least half the budget on driving traffic from new market keywords.