Branded keywords are the “did Tony die at the end of The Sopranos” of the digital marketing world (spoiler: he did)—for every campaign in which branded keywords are the hero, you’ll find someone suggesting that they aren’t a good use of your budget. If you have spent any amount time in paid media, or have spoken with other digital marketing agencies about advertising your own small business, chances are you yourself have an opinion on this as well.
Despite what some of my colleagues will argue, bidding on branded keywords shouldn’t a controversial topic; nor should it be automatically discounted as part of small business advertising. As with all things digital media, there are situations in which spending budget on branded keywords wouldn’t align with your marketing goals; and in those cases, responsible digital media managers should advise against it. For everyone else, now is a perfect chance to dive in and see just why bidding on branded keywords is a recommended strategy in (most) paid media campaigns.
Defining Branded Keywords
Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to define what we mean when we say branded keywords. The heart of any Paid Search (or SEM) campaign are keywords: these are words or short phrases that represent an advertiser’s business. Let’s take a random example—Tony’s Towing, a full-service towing and roadside assistance company located in Lompoc. In this case, the phrase “tonys towing”, as well as modifiers (“towing tony”, “tonys towing lompoc”, “tonys toeing”) would all be examples of branded keywords. Phrases that did not include the brand name, e.g. “towing near me”, “i need a tow truck”, and “find tow truck” would all be considered non-branded, or category terms.
5 Reasons to Bid on Branded Keywords
Now that we’ve distinguished between branded and non-branded keywords, it’s also important to understand what we mean when we say “bidding on branded keywords”. When a Paid Search campaign is developed, your SEM expert will go through the process of selecting words or phrases to include. These keywords, as we appropriately deem them, become the basis of your SEM campaign: if and when someone goes to the search engine and if they enter one of your keywords, your Paid Search ad has the opportunity to show along the top, bottom, and sometimes right side of organic search results.
As part of the SEM build process, keywords will be assigned bids—this is why we refer to the practice as bidding on branded keywords. That now defined, what then is the rational for bidding and spending money on keywords so closely associated with your brand name?
1. They literally represent you.
In fact, they are the most identifiable quality about your business (though, not necessarily unique, as we’ll discuss). This is what makes branded keywords so critical to SEM campaigns: as a literal representation of the brand, they have the greatest chance of connecting your business with a potential customer. Because of this, branded keywords will typically have the highest Quality Scores in Paid Search campaigns, a crucial metric in determining cost and ad placement.
2. They are cost-effective. And also just effective.
With tens of thousands of digital media campaigns under my belt, I feel like I am qualified to make this bold proclamation: branded keywords will be the best performing tactic of your multichannel digital marketing campaign. Nearly every time. In nearly every instance. For nearly every goal. And yes, of course there are exceptions, because there always are: but chances are great your business isn’t one of them.
Even if your brand name is days old, your branded keywords will be the most cost-effective, both from a traffic and conversion standpoint. Why wouldn’t you want to give yourself an opportunity to connect with a potential customer, for pennies on the dollar vs. other digital and traditional media tactics?
(You wouldn’t.)
3. Maintaining control over broad match
When I first began my career in Paid Search some 20 years ago, match types meant something. If you told Google that you wanted to phrase match “tonys towing on ocean”, your ad could show up for a search for “tonys towning on ocean ave”, but not “tonys towing me because i’m stuck in the ocean”.
Nowadays, things are a little different. Match types aren’t as rigorous as they used to be, and your ad has a much larger window of opportunity to show up against an unintended search query. Bidding on branded keywords enables you to not only better control when and where your brand shows, but also where and when it doesn’t.
Broad match can cause you to actually spend more on branded keywords if you aren’t specifically bidding on them, particularly for small businesses that include their service or specialty area in their name. If Tony’s Towing decided against bidding on branded keywords, their ad still has the opportunity to show up when someone searches “tonys towing” if they are bidding on “towing”—only now, instead of a low-cost branded click with no competition, they will be paying a higher CPC based on the competition around the more generic “towing” keyword.
4. Prevent conquesting by competitors
For businesses in a competitive space (and whose isn’t?), a commonly-deployed SEM strategy is to bid on competitor’s branded keywords in the hopes of siphoning away some clicks and converting new customers. Google and Bing impose few restrictions against bidding on brand or copyrighted terms, and although including these terms in ad copy is not allowed, bidding on them can be effective tactics for bringing in new site visitors (to be converted later via email or retargeting efforts). If you are not including branded terms as part of your keyword strategy, you relinquish any control over competitors potentially stealing customers.
5. Your name may not be yours alone
As far as I’m aware, there is no Tony’s Towing here in Lompoc. But, there is one in neighboring Santa Maria; and also in Palm Springs, Minnesota, Pittsburg, and Louisiana. And that’s just the top of the first page of search results. Point being, small businesses in particular need to be concerned about competing companies with the same or similar names taking search traffic meant for them. Bidding on branded keywords ensures that your customers find you, instead of someone else.
The decision on whether bidding on branded keywords is right for your business is, when it comes down to it, usually an easy one. From being both cost-effective and high-converting, to ensuring you are owning search results for your brand, an effective digital marketing campaign will typically include a media strategy that incorporates branded keywords.
