Search Advisory

I get asked all the time “Why should we pay for people to click on a pay-per-click ad for our own brand name when we’re already ranked #1 organically?”  It’s a legitimate question, but there are more reasons to bid on your own brand name than you’d imagine.

I’m writing about this today because an excellent article on the topic just came out from MarketingSherpa called “Branded PPC: Search Ads Can Offer Great ROI, Along with Some Challenges.”  (Important: this article is only available to the public until February 19;after that, you have to be a MarketingSherpa member to acccess it.)

In a nutshell, here are the benefits of running paid listings for your own company or product names, according to MarketingSherpa:

1. Relatively low cost, compared to other search terms.
2. High ROI — obviously, these people are looking for you and you want to capture them.
3. Your ads will push competitors’ ads lower on the search engine results page.  I’m always a fan of taking up as much geography in the search engines as possible!
4. More control over messaging and links — it’s easier to have your listing say what you want it to say, and link to the ideal page on your site, with PPC as opposed to your organic listing.

There are a few other reasons for bidding on your own brand name that I didn’t see in MarketingSherpa’s article.  First and foremost, when you have a top paid and organic listing, you look like the market leader, whether or not you are.  There’s an intangible credibility factor that kicks in — your prospect thinks, “Wow, these guys are everywhere — they must be the big player in this category, so I’d better check them out!”  Research has found that not only are searchers who see paid plus organic listings more than twice as likely to click on one of the listings, but they’re also disproportionately likely to convert on your site.

My friend and colleague Gord Hotchkiss at Enquiro is fond of talking about people using search as a navigational shortcut.  When I’m trying to find a particular company’s website, I’m not that likely to guess their URL and type www.companyname.com into my browser.  I’m much more likely to go to a search engine and type the company name into the search box instead.  As Gord says, “Not holding the #1 spot (organic or paid) is like letting your competitor put their sign over yours in front of your store.”

The analogy I’ve used in the past is similar.  It’s like having a store with two doors on either side of the building and only opening one of the doors to your customers.  If you could have both an organic and paid listing for the searchers who are actively looking for you, why wouldn’t you throw both doors open wide and welcome them inside?