Here at Anvil, we are inspired by delighting and elevating not only our clients but also the community around us. This is why every month Anvil hosts a Lunch & Learn Webinar series, where we cover a host of industry topics, including pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, social media marketing, local SEO, and content marketing. The goal of these webinars is to provide you with the pertinent information you’ll need to succeed in today’s quickly changing digital marketing landscape. For the month of May’s webinar, Anvil’s President Kent Lewis discussed the importance of brand marketing and why its important to buy your branded terms on Google Ads.
What are Google Ads?
Google Ads are ads within Google’s advertising system, where advertisers can bid on keywords in order for their ads to show up on the Google network for searchers to click through. Since advertisers have to bid on these keywords, Google Ads generated nearly 97% of Google’s revenue. The Google Ads network includes Search Ads, which only appear to those who are searching for terms your business is bidding on and Display Ads, which are ad placements based on a number of different targeting parameters, such as retargeting and topic interest. Google Display ads are seen by 90% of internet users due to these targeting parameters. More importantly, at the time of this writing, Google controls 75% of the search share.
What is Brand Awareness and Why is it Important?
Brand awareness is the extent at which consumers recognize, and are familiar with, the distinctive qualities and images associated with a particular brand, goods, or service. Brand awareness is important because it drives the consumer’s decisions when making a purchase between two different companies. It also encourages repeat purchases, which leads to an increase in your business’s market share. Many brands overestimate their own brand awareness and the true value of always having a branded campaign. An example of this was during the Great Recession, where Anvil saw an experienced a 30% decrease in performance (ROAS) from clients that decided to cut back their branded campaigns.
5 Reasons to Buy Your Brand on Google Ads
Protect Your Brand
If your competitors are clever, you can bet that they’re bidding on your branded terms. As a result of this, when someone searches for your branded term, they may be met on a competitor’s advertisement pushing your organic listing down the search engine results page. This is easily combatable, as when you buy your own branded terms, your optimization scores based on the webpage and name will always beat your competitors, thus protecting your brand from being pushed down the results page. It is also very affordable buying your own branded terms, as you are only paying when people are clicking to your advertisement. The space will generally have very low competition, thus the bidding amounts for your brand will be extremely low.
Manage Your Reputation
When you are buying your own brand’s name, it gives you the power to control the real estate on the page. That doesn’t mean that you have total dominion over Google’s search results, but it gives you the opportunity to control the space above the fold by pushing down undesirable content below the results fold. An example of this is if one of your products has a 3-star rating showing up on the Google results page but that same product has a 5-star rating on your site, you can use a branded ad to push that 3-star rating down the Google search page and have your 5 stars show up on top. You are also able to control the messaging your searchers see as your ads will show up on the top of the page with your desired language and how you want your brand represented.
Enhance Performance
When advertising on your own branded terms, it can actually increase your organic click-through rate by 10%-20%, a majority of searchers nowadays have trained themselves to ignore the first result and skip to the first organic result. This results in an increase in traffic at no additional cost! With an increase in your branded searches, this gives your brand more opportunities for visibility on the Google platform.
Increase Revenue
Branded terms can help your brand increase revenue, as having these ads can boost your brands quality score which is crucial when we are talking about your business’s organic search results. With a higher quality score your business is more likely to show up in the number 1 position on the Google results page. Branded terms also have the highest ROI out of the advertising mediums as branded terms are generally cheaper than other options. With how little it costs to invest in your own branded terms, any conversion coming from a branded campaign will be profitable.
Test Messaging
Having a branded campaign running allows you to test your messaging across Google, as it is incredibly easy to create and modify text ads within the Google Ads platform. While using the branded campaigns, it also allows you to test offers and the landing pages your ads are directing to.
If you are interested in learning more about why branded terms are so important, listen to the full webinar here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsWjwrvxM4c&t=23s, and contact Anvil today to see how we can help you meet your business goals!