Let’s save some time and get to the point: owning your brand – smart idea or a waste of valuable marketing dollars? Answer: Smart idea. And here’s why. Owning your brand terms in paid search allows control over the message and landing page, increased visibility on the search engine results page (SERP) and a low cost-per-conversion. This concept is, in theory, a no brainer; yet as planners and strategists, we are often asked to consider eliminating brand terms from our strategy and keyword list in an effort to conserve funds for other crucial keywords. Ranking well for your brand terms organically is the foundation of a successful website; the people (your potential customers, clients and advocates) have to be able to find you. Yet, many advertisers fall short of going the distance by leaving out brand terms in paid search to fully actualize the potential of their brand to their bottom line.

Recently, an automotive company made the decision to remove all brand terms from their paid search campaign which ranked well organically. The thought influencing this decision was, “We rank well organically already, let’s invest the dollars elsewhere (namely other media, GASP!).” To much dismay, the crucial brand terms were paused, however closer attention was then paid to the monitoring the overall performance of these key terms in the organic silo to track performance.

As many automotive retailers do, the advertiser ran a summer promotion in which they had special offers in place for each model. This particular promotion was a perfect example of utilizing paid search to provide custom messaging to potential customers. A potential customer searching for their brand in Yahoo! would see the organic search results for the auto company, yet not be alerted to the special offer. One might argue, “Well, if they click through to the site via organic, they would see the offer on the homepage.” However, this was not the case 50% of the time as the homepage was being rotated with a new model and the summer promotion. Had the advertiser been purchasing their key brand terms during this promotion, the ad copy would have spoken directly to the special offers of this event, as well as driven the searcher directly to a landing page detailing the promotion, thus driving the customer one step closer to locating a dealer or scheduling a test drive. This example is one of many in which advertisers miss key opportunities to target an already loyal customer base.

In addition to controlling the message and landing page, owning your brand terms in paid search gives you, the advertiser, increased visibility and a greater overall share of voice as you own more real estate and impact more of the SERP than you could through organic alone. As further evidence, an Enquiro study from mid 2007 showed a 7% increase in brand favorability when the advertiser appeared in both organic and paid search when conducting a branded search query. Put simply, owning your brand terms in paid search allows your name to be seen one more time, driving home your relevance to the query one more time, and ideally making the searcher more likely to choose your brand over your competitors.

My final argument (and I promise to rest my case after this) to owning your brand terms in paid search, lies in your bottom line. Your brand terms, by the very nature of being your brand terms, typically come at a very inexpensive cost. On the front end, the search engines tend to give you a break on these terms because you are perceived as most relevant to their users for the intended search query. On the back end, these terms convert! There is a greater chance someone searching for your brand terms has a high favorability towards you and thus a greater chance of converting than someone searching for a general term. There is also greater likelihood the searcher is further along in the purchase funnel when searching for your brand and your stellar messaging is going to push them towards the conversion!!

So, in conclusion, owning your brand in paid search is a smart, albeit wise, decision in developing a successful paid search marketing strategy. Leaving your brand terms out of your paid search campaign is like stocking the store shelves with products containing no brand labels on them. Who knows what they’ll buy?!

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