Brand bidding plays a crucial role in a paid search strategy. It may not drive growth on its own. Still, when integrated into the wider marketing mix it becomes essential for brand growth, helping you to capture high-intent traffic, control your narrative, and remain competitive.
But, there’s a catch. Brand bidding isn’t suitable for every account. Before striving for 100% impression share on branded keywords - for your brand or your clients - it’s important to determine whether this approach is the right one.
What is brand bidding?
Brand bidding involves bidding on your own branded search terms and displaying ads to users who search specifically for your brand. This paid search tactic is relevant for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, including pure brand terms and longer-tail searches that include the brand.
For instance, sports brand New Balance bid on their pure brand keyword “New Balance.” They also show ads for product-related searches that include terms like “New Balance sneakers,” “New Balance 2002r,” and “2002r sneakers.”
They also show ads for product-related searches that include terms like “New Balance shorts,” “New Balance 2002r,” and “2002r sneakers.”
The goal of brand bidding is to capture high-intent traffic - people actively searching for the brand. However, it’s a topic that has sparked debate within the Google Ads community. Some argue that marketing budgets are better allocated to reach new audiences, those who aren’t yet familiar with the brand, rather than spending on those already inclined to purchase. In some cases this is true.
Despite this, numerous benefits to brand bidding outweigh this argument, making it a crucial component of a successful marketing strategy.
5 Benefits of brand bidding
Brand campaigns feature in more than 90% of the Google Ads accounts I manage, making them an essential part of how I structure campaigns. Here’s why brand bidding is so important:
1. Capture high-intent traffic
A key benefit of brand bidding is the ability to capture high-intent traffic. These are people who already know about the brand and are extremely motivated, actively searching for products, services and other trademarked terms that are specific to a brand.
Rather than falling short at the last hurdle, make it as easy as possible for high-intent users to find what they’re looking for and convert. A lot of effort goes into building brand recognition and awareness, so it makes sense to give users the best experience from start to finish, by providing a seamless and relevant experience.
2. Control your brand’s narrative
Brand bidding allows advertisers to control the narrative around the brand messaging by optimizing ad copy. Unlike organic listings, paid ads can be tailored to be more conversion-focused and action-oriented, or to tell a specific story.
This example from beauty and skincare brand Malin+Goetz shows a paid search ad next to their organic listing. The description in the ad is much stronger, referencing how their products are cruelty-free and suitable for all skin types and genders.
In comparison, the organic listing is less compelling and there appear to be several mistakes in the headline and description text. This highlights how paid ad copy can be carefully crafted to align with your objective and provide an optimized experience for potential customers.
Here are some other effective ways that I use paid search to benefit the brand by controlling the narrative:
- A/B testing different concepts
- Supporting promotions and sales
- Seasonal and topical messaging
- Further tailoring copy for audiences
3. Send users to high-quality landing pages
Generating awareness and driving users to the site, regardless of the channel, is 50% of the work. The other 50% is down to user experience once they have reached the website.
HubSpot reports that businesses using landing page optimization software see an average conversion lift of +30%, and personalized CTAs convert +202% better than default versions, supporting this claim that the landing page matters.
A benefit of brand bidding is the ability to direct users to the most optimal landing page, whether it’s a specific page on the website or a landing page that has been designed for bottom-funnel users.
Even if a user would have landed on your website via organic search, they may not have landed on the best page.
4. Defend your brand from competitors
A frustrating part of PPC is dealing with competitors bidding on your own brand terms. I’ve had clients in the past strike mutual deals with competitors so that they don’t bid on each other's brand terms, which can be a good way to exist in harmony. In reality, though, this is rare.
If competitors are bidding on your brand, an effective way to minimize this impact is to outbid them on your own brand terms, ensuring that your ads appear more prominently than theirs. The quality score should be higher for your own brand terms compared to competitors, so it’s an effective way to defend your brand in the SERPs. Target Impression Share is my go-to bid strategy for brand bidding under these circumstances, although experimenting with bid strategies is key.
In this example, VWO is bidding on their competitor’s brand name, “Hotjar”, and positioning themselves as the “#1 Alternative to Hotjar” in the ad copy:
This could quite easily tempt users who were initially interested in Hotjar, one of the leading brands in website analysis, into testing out an alternative. It’s a sneaky way for VWO to capitalize on Hotjar’s large brand awareness and highlights the importance of brand bidding in defending your turf.
5. Boosts overall conversion metrics
Brand campaigns perform well due to the high-intent nature of branded keywords that are generally lower down the funnel. These users know what they want and are familiar with the brand, leading to higher conversion rates compared to generic campaigns.
As well as that, brand keywords are usually less expensive, making them cost-effective and in a lot of cases only taking up a small portion of the budget.
This gives branded bidding the ability to improve overall account performance, which is another benefit and useful for agencies and marketers that need to maintain results and hit CPA and ROAS targets.
For instance, an e-commerce account I manage shows the difference in ROAS between brand (9.8 ROAS) and generic (2.2 ROAS) campaigns last quarter, with brand ROAS more than 4 times higher.
The minimum ROAS needed for this account to be profitable is 4, therefore bidding on branded terms and using a blended ROAS helps us stay on target.
It’s important to report on brand and generic campaigns separately to avoid skewing results and painting an unrealistic picture of performance. This includes excluding brand keywords from generic Search, Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns and instead setting up dedicated brand campaigns.
When brand bidding doesn’t make sense
While brand bidding offers numerous benefits, there are situations where it may not be the best approach. For me, these apply less than 10% of the time and when they do, I question whether or not brand bidding should be part of the strategy.
Competitors don’t bid on your brand
If competitors don’t bid on your brand, brand bidding might be unnecessary. This links back to the main argument against brand bidding - why pay for traffic that would naturally be captured through organic search? Instead, let organic search pick up this traffic and redirect your ad spend towards new customer acquisition.
To check if competitors bid on your brand, do some Google searches and see if competitor ads show. Keep in mind your location and the target location of your brand campaign - using a VPN can help simulate different geographic searches.
Additionally, analyzing the Auction Insights report in Google Ads for your brand campaigns can provide valuable insights. This report shows other domains that are serving ads for your brand terms. For example, in highly competitive sectors like travel, it’s common to see multiple competitors bidding on your brand terms:
However, even if competitors aren’t bidding on your brand terms, brand bidding can still be valuable in certain situations. This could be the case if your organic search performance is weak, or if you need to control the narrative and customize landing pages to better align with user intent.
You have strong organic coverage
If your brand already has strong organic coverage and ranks well in search results, the need for brand bidding decreases. Capturing brand traffic organically can save on ad spend, allowing you to allocate those funds to other marketing activities that may generate higher returns.
This is the case for luxury department store Selfridges, who dominate the SERPs for brand searches:
Before deciding against brand bidding due to strong organic coverage, determine whether or not competitors bid on the brand and what impact not bidding on the brand will have on brand traffic. Even with excellent organic rankings, it may still be worthwhile to secure the top ad position to ensure maximum visibility and control over your brand’s messaging.
Don’t forget the importance of optimizing your data feed with brand keywords as a way to boost free product listings as well.
Budget constraints
Working with a limited budget is another reason to reconsider bidding on branded terms. When budgets are tight, every dollar counts. Prioritizing high-impact generic campaigns may deliver better overall results for the business. Although brand bidding can significantly boost account performance, it’s important to keep the bigger picture in mind.
Instead of allocating spend to branded keywords that could be captured organically, focus on areas that will generate new leads or drive growth. As a middle ground, finding a balance between brand bidding and generic bidding can also be a smart approach.
For example, in one of my client’s accounts, we chose to reduce brand bidding by 50% rather than eliminate it. Impression share decreased to 59%, leaving room to spend more on brand bidding if needed.
While reducing the brand budget has negatively impacted topline performance, the business has strong SEO, and strategically, the budget is better allocated to attracting new audiences through generic PPC campaigns.
Brand bidding doesn’t align with the objective
Another reason to avoid bidding on branded terms is when the brand doesn’t directly relate to the specific campaign objectives. For instance, if Selfridges wants to promote a new line of Gucci handbags, it might be more effective to maximize visibility for keywords like “Gucci bags” rather than terms related to Selfridges, such as “Selfridges bags.”
This consideration also applies to brands with well-known parent companies or products with high brand awareness that don’t align with the current campaign. Additionally, brands that are branching out with a separate offering may find that bidding on branded keywords doesn’t support their campaign goals.
The key thing here is to assess the relevance of brand keywords, in relation to what you want to achieve, and determine whether they align with your campaign objectives.
Conclusion: Is Brand Bidding Essential for Growth?
When considering the entire sales funnel, Google Ads brand bidding plays a crucial role in generating growth by capturing high-intent traffic and guiding potential customers from awareness to conversion.
However, it’s important to understand that brand bidding alone isn’t enough to drive growth; it needs to be part of a broader, more comprehensive strategy. As a mid to bottom-funnel activity, brand bidding is particularly important at the final stage of the customer journey, just before a purchase decision is made.
That said, the effectiveness of brand bidding varies based on the unique circumstances of each account, which is something you need to consider on a case-by-case basis. A recent LinkedIn poll supports this with 35% of respondents finding brand bidding essential, whereas 54% find it important, but not always.
This highlights that there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. While brand bidding is essential for many, for others, the benefits may not outweigh the reasons not to bid on brand terms.