Are you struggling to generate Ad revenue from Brand Search campaigns? Perhaps your brand name is generic, or shared with another business in a different vertical.

Due to the limited nature of search terms it’s very easy to recieve poor traffic mixed up with other brands audiences.

Struggle no more, we have worked with a number of brands on this issue and I have a full checklist that should ensure you are able to successfully launch a brand search campaign.

Why Launch a Brand Campaign?

It’s very easy to discount the value of brand traffic, a common question we get asked is whether or not you should bid on brand keywords? My organic traffic is strong so I know I’ll always be in top spot.

Then in the case of generic or common brand terms the traffic is expensive, so brand is never explored. Unfortunately due to Google’s increasing reliance on Smart bidding, broad match keywords, and the lack of control that comes with Performance Max your brand terms are being bid on whether you like it or not.

For a deeper dive on the topic of brand keyword bidding take a look at this great post by a colleague of mine.

Traditional Brand Campaigns

At the time of writing this blog post there is the most profitable way to create a brand campaign. But this relies on the business having a relatively unique brand name, and strong awareness of this name.

Manual bid strategy with a relatively low CPC. Which can be increased incrementally depending on desired traffic levels and performance.

The strong/unique brand campaign CPC cost should be very low and cost very little per month to run, so it’s always worth doing.

Google wants more than ever for you to use a smart bidding strategy such as Maximize conversions for this campaign, but time and time again the costs just increase without the relative performance gain.

Generic Brand Campaign Success Checklist

Here is a full list of actions to take and test to get your brand campaign up and running:

Location Location Location

Start small and increase over time. This will depend on the type of business you run. Here’s a few ideas for where to start:

  • For a brick and mortar store based in San Francisco, you might only advertise on the West Coast to start.
  • Perhaps the business is weather dependant, so certain states/regions do better
  • Take a look at your historical trends across top performing campaigns to see which locations have the best KPI’s and start from there.

Then make bid adjustments once you have enough reliable data to work with.

Bid Strategy

Unfortunately Manual CPC just doesn’t cut the mustard. We need to leverage some of Google’s smart bidding automation.

Here’s a couple of strategies we’ve had success with:

Max conversions + tCPA. Set the tCPA to around the same as the account average to start. Can increase or decrease depending on traffic levels, of course give this at least 14 days to run first before making changes.

If the CPC cost is too high you can also try testing Portfolio bidding with Max conversions, this enables the ability to add a max. cpc cost. Here’s how to find that setting:

Navigate to Portfolio bid strategies and either create a new strategy or select one you created directly in the campaign. Clicks settings as shown below.

Select advanced options.

Then you see minimum & maximum bid limits.

Choose your desired maximum CPC.

Keywords

It seems match types are becoming more diluted as the day goes by, but for something like this launch conservatively first. Exact match on it’s own, or Exact & Phrase is fine.

Later on you’ll have the ability to test Broad match, and then even Brand inclusions. I’ve seen some positives to implementing this. But only once I have enough data, and confidence in performance.

Customer acquisition

One key area that I think a lot of brands don’t clearly define or correctly implement is there customer data. Defining existing customers with customer match lists, and automated Google customer lists.

Goals > Conversions > Summary > Edit Goal

Then use conversion data only.

Note: The customer match list should only include data form the last 365 days to keep

Since we are now relying more on smart bidding to find new customers let’s make sure Google knows exactly who our existing customers are. That way our traffic is less likely to get mixed up with the irrelevant business with the same name.

Recap

So to recap I would say don’t give up on brand traffic. If you don’t see results from the traditional methods, then try this method and see if you can make brand work.

As we’ve already discussed the competition is most likely using your terms anyway whether they mean it intentionally or not. So don’t wait to start defending no.1 spot for your business.