Why do I need a Branded Search Campaign/Why do I need to spend money when someone is searching for my brand name?

The common thought process is “why are we allocating budget in order for an ad to appear when someone is already searching for our brand? It seems like a waste of budget.”

Here’s why:

Don’t Leave the Hot Leads Exposed to Competitors:

• You don’t want to leave the brand exposed to competitor campaigns. When a lead searches for the brand name, you don’t want a competitor ad to be the first thing they see (and you especially don’t want that lead to click on the competitor ad).

Gain Extra Data For Optimization Opportunities:

• Statistically it takes 2.5 clicks on average before someone is able to convert. Most people come back later. Without a branded campaign, you can see which keywords developed a conversion, but you can’t see how long it took them to convert and what path they took to come back (meaning did they Google your brand name or simply go back to your website, did they sign up for an email marketing campaign and then click on a link in an email, did they find a social media ad instead and click from there to convert, etc.).
• This is because Google isn’t able to re-tie all the session data from the first interaction to the subsequent interactions.
• If you set up a branded campaign, then you’re able to optimize fully because you can see which keywords have a shorter time lag, which have a heightened time decay, what is their top conversion path, etc.
• Branded campaigns usually see about a 50% click-through rate and a 30% conversion rate, so they manage to catch a good chunk of the hot leads to help you see this data.
• So, if you’re wondering how well the other campaigns are at driving traffic to make a return visit, you will need to raise the bid on the branded campaign.