Why would a brand use their own brand name as a paid keyword in Google? It simply does not makes sense unless you are not inspecting your Google Analytics reports.
We have come across this practice a few time over the last two years. Brand A decides to start a Google Paid Search campaign and then opt to use the keyword “Brand A” as part of a group of keywords. The goal is that if someone searches on Google for “Brand A”, then the link to their site would appear at the top of the search results.
Inspecting the Google Analytics data we, however, find that from the Organic referral traffic generated to the sites, the keyword “Brand A” was already being used by users to discover the brand’s website. In most cases, the Organic searched keyword generated 80% more traffic than the referrals of the Paid keyword. The bounce rate of the Organic referral is also much lower than that of the Paid referral.
It means that you are spending marketing budget on a keyword that is already generating traffic to your brand. You are extorting yourself and could have spent your budget more effectively on other competing keywords.
This month we investigated the Paid vs Organic keyword referrals from December 2015 to 2016 for Brand B. In December of 2015 they paid to have “Brand B” at the top of the search results but after two weeks realized the mistake by picking up that it is already working in their favor as an organic traffic driver. The budget was allocated to acquire traffic on keywords around their products.
Think of it like this:
- You are a new company called Brand C and you sell Product X
- People who search Google does now know about Brand C, they do know Product X
- When they perform a search it would be for Product X
- If your spent marketing budget the keyword Product X your are more likely to get them to come to your website
People associated brands with products. Only after establishing yourself, your products and services within a domain of trading do people start to associated your brand with a particular set of products and services.
You don’t search for John’s Mechanical Services, you do a search for Mechanics in Pretoria. The goal with paid search campaigns is to make sure that when people search for Mechanics in Pretoria that John’s Mechanical Services come up as one of the first results.
Talk to us if you need assistance with your next paid search campaign and let’s find the right keywords to build your brand.
