Google Ads Brand Campaign: 6 Reasons to Invest

Introduction - Google Ads Brand Campaign

Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions about a brand campaign?

1. Is it really worth investing in Google Ads for your brand words?
2. If I already appear organically on Google, why should I invest in appearing again?
3. Wouldn't the recipe I have from the brand campaign come naturally through organic?

These 3 questions are super common when evaluating investment in the famous "Brand Campaigns".

However, despite being simple campaigns, they can make a big difference to your income at the end of the month!

So in this article, we're going to give you the main reasons why you should advertise your own brand.

What is a Brand Campaign and how does it work?

First of all, a Google Ads Brand Campaign is a Search Network campaign.

The difference is that it makes ads appear every time a user searches Google for the name of the advertiser's company.

So, for example, in the case of Pareto Group's brand campaign, whenever someone searches for Pareto Group on Google, an ad for it appears to the user.

In practice, the advertiser invests in the brand's own keywords by targeting a specific geographical location.

Who searches for the Brand Keyword?

It's important to note that users who search for your brand terms are usually highly qualified traffic, as they already know your service or are considering buying from you.

For example, for company XYZ, some searches could be:

• XYZ prices
• XYZ coupons
• XYZ Complain Here
• How does XYZ work?
• Is XYZ good?
• XYZ login

As a result, these searches usually have a conversion rate around 3x higher than other campaigns.

Why should I invest in my brand?

Pareto has listed 6 main reasons why you should invest in Brand Campaigns:

1. Avoid overlapping competitors
2. Dynamic Communication
3. URL or Landing Page Test
4. Take to Purchase Page and Other Pages
5. Increased conversions
6. Public Relations

1) Avoid overlapping competitors

It's very common for companies to advertise for their competitors' brand keywords.

As well as being legal, this gives the user who has searched the power to choose alternatives for the service or product of the company they are looking for on Google.

Let's take a practical example: when you search for Salesforce on Google, you see 4 ads. All of them above the organic result for Salesforce Brazil.

It is possible that the user searching for Salesforce intends to find out more about the company, log in or hire it. In all these cases, it is advantageous for competing CRMs to have their ads displayed, as it invites this user to find out more about alternative CRMs.

For Salesforce, however, this is a bad thing, as it could lose customers and potential customers with every search it performs.

To minimize the negative impact of this strategy, it is recommended that you advertise for your own brand in order to reach the top position among advertisers.

An important point is that, in many cases, even if you test a Google search and don't see your competitors advertising for your brand, they may be advertising in places or segments that you don't have access to. To confirm whether this is the case, it's worth looking at the Auction Information reports for your Brand Campaign.

Special cases of overlap

There is a special case of overlapping competitors caused by broad keywords, product + brand combinations or other cases.

In the case below, when searching for etna children's bed, the Search Network ads that appear are from Casas Bahia and Mobly. Both above Etna's organic result.

Analyzing this case, there are 4 possibilities for Mobly and Casas Bahia

1. They advertise for the keyword children's bed, making them appear for any search containing these 2 words;
2. they advertise specifically for Etna 's brand keyword, making them appear for the majority of searches involving this brand;
3. they advertise for the keyword Etna children's bed, making them appear when someone specifically searches for it;
4. they advertise for broad match type keywords, such as the brand itself or its products, making them appear for cases such as competitors or main products sold.

One way or another, the potential sales lost by Etna to its competitors is clear.

In the example, it's also interesting to note that Tok&Stok appears much more prominently on Google Shopping than Etna. There could also be several reasons for this, but we explore this case in this other article on the Pareto structure of Google Shopping.

2) Dynamic Communication - Special Ads for the Brand

Another great advantage of advertising for your own brand is testing different communications.

Let's say, for example, that you want to launch a promotion and want to check which communication is most effective. You could use the Brand Campaign to test which would be the best communication to use. Once the test is complete, you could apply the best one to your website, other ads and other on and offline media.

What's more, by using ads, you can easily personalize and improve the communication that people will see when they search for your brand on Google.

A practical example of this can be seen in this Spotify ad:

In this case, it's interesting to evaluate the change in communication: in organic results, Google uses the site's indexing information to display titles and links. On the other hand, in the paid results, there is a much more commercial communication, directed at the main conversion pages through sitelinks.

3) URL or Landing Page test

Let's move on to another advantage of the brand campaign.

Imagine this: you own a business that sells software.

Your brand campaign ads lead to your homepage. However, it has many elements that are not focused on the main product.

In this case, you want to do an A/B test to see if it's worth optimizing your homepage.

You can use the ads from the brand campaign to run a controlled test for a new landing page with, for example, 20% of users.

This allows you to easily carry out Landing Page tests before modifying your Home Page.

4) Take to Purchase Page and Other Pages

Another strategy, still related to URL testing, is the possibility of taking users to more relevant pages than the homepage.

To understand this opportunity, it's worth reflecting on the search intent that a user has when looking for your brand.

If they are looking to buy or to find out more about the service, it is interesting to take them directly to a page that meets their interest.

For example, if a user searching for Salesforce may have an intention to buy, it's better to take them directly to a Platform Demo Request Landing Page than to the Home Page.

A practical example is Spotify:

1. the organic result takes you to the homepage https://www.spotify.com/br/
2. the ad for the conversion page https://www.spotify.com/br/premium/

So, to assess whether the result is better, you need to define a metric as a goal, such as conversions, and test whether this page generates a significant increase in this metric.

Other options to test against the Home Page are the pages of:

1. Plans and prices, in the case of software;
2. Best-selling products, launches or discount coupons, in the case of e-commerce;
3. Request for commercial contact, in cases of service.

Finally, we suggest that you test which pages your competitors' ads take you to, as this may give you some good suggestions to test.

5) Increased conversions

Despite all the above benefits, the question may still remain: if I invest in a brand campaign, am I not simply directing organic traffic to a paid campaign?

In tests carried out by Pareto Group, it was concluded that investing in a brand campaign generates incremental traffic. Consequently, it generates a higher total volume of conversions compared to not investing in it.

A clear example of this can be seen in the research that indicates a 57% increase in traffic when displaying ads to users.

The results in clicks were as follows:

1. Not showing ads: 56% in organic
2. Displaying ads: 50% in ads and 38% in organic

So, by displaying the ads, there was a 57% increase in traffic. From 56% to 88% (50% + 38%).

6) Public Relations - Crisis Control

The last benefit is also a very interesting strategy.

Every company is subject to negative comments and news on the internet. The problem is when these facts start to tarnish the company's brand, alienate customers and bring down its market value.

In this way, it is possible to use brand campaigns as a tool for Public Relations. That's right! Your company has a few options:

1. Taking people to pages on your site, such as FAQ, company information and customer opinions, in the case of searches for, for example, Reclame Aqui + your company name;
2. Take people to pages that disprove false news or comments, in the case of Fake News;
3. Take people to pages with up-to-date content on the management/compensation of a crisis, if they search for news about it.

In each of the applications, the ads will target exactly what you want users to see first about your company.

This feature is even more prominent on mobile. The ad, along with ad extensions, especially sitelinks, can take up the entire screen before scrolling down.

The 3rd case presented can be seen in the advertisement below, made by Vale after the dam collapse in Brumadinho - MG.

As a result, Vale preferred to announce its compensatory actions, given that searches for the news had grown so much. In this way, it was able to reduce the negative impacts caused by the information available organically on the internet.

It's also worth checking out the Landing Page created by Vale to inform about the actions taken.

Conclusion

Finally, with these benefits in mind, Pareto Group uses brand campaigns for almost all of its clients.

Pareto Quantic's optimization algorithms even have special conditions and functionalities to meet the specific needs of brand campaigns.