The thought is, well, we’re going to be #1 in Google, Bing (Microsoft Ads), and other search engines, so are we paying for traffic that we’re going to receive anyway?
It makes sense, and there is no right answer, however when taking on that debate, here are the five biggest reasons to buy your own brand keyword?
In the image above, bidding on their brand terms allows Jeep to own the blue area on the search results page, otherwise their competitors could swoop in there and take it.
Own Your Brand
When someone searches for you, you want to be the top spot. Don't give your competitors a chance to take over the top spot above your inevitable #1 organic ranking - because that's what they'll do. It's a common practice to bid on competitors names in search. It's perfectly legal - some search professionals think it's a bit on the unethical side, but I think it's part of the game.
Drive Traffic Where You Want
Your organic result will most likely point people directly to your homepage. With ads, you have the ability to send traffic to specific landing pages or parts of your site that you want to drop visitors to, whether they've never heard of you before or are a potential customer.
Gauge Your Popularity
Organic search can do this to some extent with the search console, but it's not a great gauge. And Analytics stopped showing most search terms years ago, instead showing "Not Provided" - with paid search, you're able to see how many impressions you are receiving on any given day, what device, and where they're coming from.
Terms are Relatively Cheap
Compared to more generic terms, brand campaigns usually have low cost per clicks and high conversion rates. Leading to low cost/conversions. (one of the reasons to not use a last-click attribution model, we want to know what campaigns initially drove them to your site, not just what they converted on)
It Helps Your Account Overall
Part of what Google looks at when judging your campaigns is your overall account health. Having a strong, healthy campaign (like a branded one) can help out your other campaigns within your account that are targeting more generic terms.
If you do decided to buy your own brand keyword, and my opinion is that you should. It’s important to properly set-up attribution so that the campaigns that drove awareness receive credit. This helps to know which keywords and ads are successful – otherwise all of the credit will go to your brand campaign.
