Do you need to utilize Brand terms in Search Marketing

Posted on May 17th, 2007 in Search Marketing, Paid Search.

Earlier we saw how to use navigational search queries in search marketing and pay per click campaigns. Today we will discuss how to utilize Brand Terms in your PPC campaigns. Brand terms include your product names, your company name, competitor product names and competitor company names.

Think of the situation where a user types in your brand terms and you are not showing up, you have lost your customer right there. People who recognize your brand have a high probability of purchasing from you. Even worse what if your competitor shows up for your brand term. Ethical arguments aside Google does allow bidding on brand terms, however Google dosent allow you to use brand terms and trademarked terms in your ad copy unless you have the permission from the owner. So it is up to you to capitalize on such opportunities.

Most websites do rank at the top organically for their brand terms and there comes the question should you still bid on those brand terms. I would say YES! Showing up both on the paid search and organic search definetly lifts the brand experience and a web savvy customer will sure recognize that you take your marketing efforts and your customers seriously. While brand terms may not bring ton of sales/leads, from my experience I would say it does make a significant contribution.

Associated Concept - Type in traffic: While we are discussing bidding on brand terms, I would like to point out that it is good idea to buy domain names with your product and company name. Lot of times people do type in product names in the address bar as if they were website names. And this traffic is called the type in traffic. If your site grows big, type in traffic will be a significant portion of the traffic you get. When Youtube.com was acquired by Google, there was another company utube.com whose server crashed because of the type in traffic and they even went on to sue Google.

Associated Concept - Reputation Monitoring: Again you need to vigilant of what is being talk about your brand online in blogs, forums, communities…If you someone searches for your brand term and all the search results on the first page of the search engine are negative reviews about your brand, well you know the result then.

These two associated concepts require coverage on their own and I will do so in a future post, however that shouldn’t stop you from start utilizing the Brand Terms in your campaigns.:)