If someone is searching for your brand, they already know you exist. They will definitely find you organically, right? But in the increasingly competitive world of search, decisions are not so black and white.

Let's delve into the details of brand PPC, reveal the pros and cons, and help you decide whether you should invest money in your own name.

Why bid on your own brand?

Here's the thing: Bidding on brand terms can actually make a big difference, not just filling Google's pockets. If done right, it can also amplify your digital influence.

1. Control Competitors

The market is brutally competitive. Competitors can (and will) use your brand name to poach your potential customers. If their ads appear above your organic results, they might get clicks and possibly sales.

By bidding on your own brand, you can control and ensure your ads are prominently displayed, keeping your customers where they belong: your place. Some industries are worse than others, but you can see, when specifically searching for Admiral products, they do not appear in the top 3, meaning their only visible result is through organic ranking at fourth place. Clearly, you want users to find you, but I don't know how many marketing strategies rely on hope.

2. Control the Narrative

Organic listings are great, but they are not always so flexible. With paid ads, you can customize your message, highlight key promotions, direct users to specific pages, or heavily promote your five-star ratings. This is particularly important during holidays/sales seasons like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. If you want to attract business through various promotions, you can change promotions daily without being limited to changing meta titles and descriptions.

3. Increase Click-Through and Conversion Rates

Brand keywords typically have high click-through rates and low cost per click. Why? Because people searching for your brand are already hot potential customers.

If you combine powerful ads with excellent landing pages, you are likely to see a healthy growth in conversion rates. Moreover, a high click-through rate also improves your quality score, which in the long run, makes all your ads cheaper.

But isn't this a waste of budget?

Not always. But there are some considerations to keep in mind.

1. Cannibalizing Organic Traffic

If your ranking is already first, some users might click on your ads instead of your free listings. Essentially, you are paying for traffic you might have gotten anyway. Ouch. Unfortunately, the cannibalization issue is not as simple as people would like you to believe. Now, there is no doubt that organic traffic will be boosted, but due to various reasons such as competitors bidding, natural traffic cannot completely replace paid traffic.

We conducted a test, pausing a client's brand ads for a full three months and obtained relevant data. As you can see, although organic traffic did increase by 27% (which is very good), the overall traffic for the brand decreased by 33%. Clearly, this is not the case for every brand, but it is undoubtedly a point worth considering, that pausing brand traffic will increase natural traffic by 100%.

2. Limited Budget

If your funds are limited, brand campaigns might not be the best use of your money. You could allocate more budget to non-brand promotions to attract new customers, rather than preaching to converters.

3. "Pure" Brand vs. Brand + Product

Not all brand searches are the same. There is a big difference between searching for your brand name alone (pure brand) and searching for your brand + a specific product or service.

Pure brand is just the brand name, like adidas. If you already have a strong organic market presence and minimal competition, then bidding on pure brand terms might not be necessary. However, if other brands are trying to steal your traffic, it might be worth investing some budget to block bidders.

Brand + product/location searches Now, users show a clear intent in this type of search, for example, adidas running shoes, they show a very clear intent for a certain product.

The problem with these high-value searches is that competition tends to be more intense, as competitors will try to capture this intent.

If the budget is tight, brand + product campaigns should be prioritized over pure brand campaigns. By targeting users with stronger purchase intentions, they usually yield a better return on investment.

4. Low Competition? No Problem.

If competitors are not bidding on your brand, and your organic listings dominate the search results, then you might not need to bother with brand ads.

Should you do it?

Here's the brief:

Go for it, if competitors are bidding on your brand, or if you want more control over the information.

Maybe go for it, if you want to improve click-through and conversion rates through low-cost terms.

Don't go for it, if your organic marketing is solid, there is no competition, and the budget is tight.

What's the best way to find out the answer? Test it. Run a brand marketing campaign for a few weeks, compare overall traffic, conversion rates, and CPA. Keep a close eye on the ratio of organic traffic to paid traffic. If you are just shifting people from one channel to another without adding value, then it might be time to pull the plug.

Finally

Bidding on your own brand is not vanity, but a strategy. In the right circumstances, it can protect your brand, boost your conversion rates, and give you an edge in the competition.

But like all good PPC strategies, it needs to be backed by data. Don't just throw money at brand marketing campaigns and hope for the best—track your results, refine your approach, and ensure every click adds value.