{"id":13026,"date":"2020-07-15T11:33:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T11:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=13026"},"modified":"2023-12-05T11:32:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T11:32:08","slug":"branded-keywords-sem-bid-not-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/branded-keywords-sem-bid-not-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Branded keywords in SEM: To bid or not to bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Should you bid on brand terms or not?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is an important question that almost all businesses and search engine marketers think about at least once.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are already ranking on the #1 spot on Google\u2019s first page for brand keywords (i.e., the name of your business), should you pay to have an ad on the top of the SERPs? Even above your website\u2019s organic listing?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CPCs seem to be rising continuously. If brand campaigns are not generating incremental MQLs for your business, why not save that money and invest it somewhere else or perhaps use it to fuel other campaigns?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The answer to this question, however, is not very simple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>Brand SEM campaigns: Pros and cons<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we dive into the nitty-gritty details of what you should do, it is important to take a look at some of the pros and cons of each option.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Pros<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here are some benefits of running brand campaigns.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You get more real estate on the search engine result page if you have an organic listing as well as an ad at the top of the page.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You control the messaging. With organic listings, you cannot always control the sitelinks that appear on the page. With an SEM ad, you can control exactly how your website appears on the page.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You get more overall traffic, MQLs, and sales. As we have often noticed, having ads as well as an organic listing on the same page increase traffic and MQLs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can send the traffic to a different landing page, instead of the homepage.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>Cons<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, here are some potential disadvantages of bidding for brand terms:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If brand campaigns are not driving incremental MQLs and sales, you waste money.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You run out of the marketing budget sooner, which means you\u2019re less likely to explore other areas and initiate other marketing campaigns.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>Should you bid on brand terms?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that you know some of the big pros and cons of bidding on brand terms, should you do it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unfortunately, only you can make that decision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In our experience, it is usually beneficial to bid on brand terms. However, that may not always be the case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, the best solution is to run a brand test and see whether paid campaigns are driving any incremental traffic, leads, and sales.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Running a brand campaign test<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here is how you can run that test and determine whether bidding on brand terms is for you or not.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure you have a separate brand campaign with only brand keywords in it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get a sense of how many MQLs you generate on a daily basis via SEM and organic channels.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Define the period of your test. A 14-20 day period is usually sufficient, but it depends on how much you\u2019re spending and the number of leads you generate per day.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Turn on your brand campaign on day 1, turn it off on day 2, turn it back on day 3, off on day 4, and so on.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On each day, make sure to note down the MQLs (or sales) you generated via SEM and organic channels.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a couple of weeks, you should get statistically significant results on whether bidding on paid terms is generating incremental MQLs\/sales or not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the days you turn off the SEM campaigns, the number of leads should remain more or less the same. Those leads would just be attributed to organic channels. However, if that\u2019s not the case \u2014 and if the total number of leads drops significantly on those days \u2014 it means you should bid on brand terms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>The Reinforcement Effect<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the above-mentioned test should give you credible numbers to determine if you should bid on brand terms or not, there is one more test that you can.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Reinforcement Effect test won\u2019t highlight the incremental MQLs or sales, but it will tell you how having an ad and an organic listing on the same page affects the overall CTR.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are connected.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Log in to your Google Ads account.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Go to Predefined Reports &gt; Paid and Organic.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Download the report and export it to Excel or Google Sheet.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Add another column to that report and mark whether a keyword is branded or non-branded.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Calculate the CTR for branded terms if (1) only organic listings appear on the SERPs, (2) only ads show, and (3) both ads and organic listings appear via pivot table.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are not sure how to do it, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oneegg.com.au\/blog\/adwords-paid-organic-report\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">check out this tutorial<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Usually, when both the ad and organic listing appear on the same page, the overall CTR increases significantly. But it may vary from business to business and is something that you should test.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Should you bid on brand terms or not? This is an important question that almost all businesses and search engine marketers think about at least once. If you are already ranking on the #1 spot on Google\u2019s first page for brand keywords (i.e., the name of your business), should you pay to have an ad [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":17883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[33,20],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Branded keywords in SEM: To bid or not to bid | IMSR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Considering bidding on brand terms? 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