Brand campaigns – why do we need them, are they worth it?

One of the first campaign types we learn about at the beginning of our SEM adventure is the brand campaign. In Google Ads, we say yes to a text campaign (on the search network), in which keywords related to the brand being promoted play a major role. The matter seems simple – you create a new search campaign, drop your company’s name into the keywords, set headlines, texts, budget and it works. However, before you start creating a campaign, it’s worth learning more about it.

What is a brand?

Before turning on the Google Ads panel, we need to know what a brand is in general. A marketer would say that it is the general awareness of a brand – its name, logo, colors, musical theme – everything that is associated with it. In this case, we boil it down to just the name: “Nike”, “Ferrari”, “Apple”. – it’s the string of letters that counts, it doesn’t matter if there’s a hook behind it that says “Just do it”, a red car or a bitten apple. What is important, however, is the popularity of the brand among advertisers – two different stores almost never have the same name. They can, however, sell a product from the same manufacturer.

Own brand vs. manufacturer brand

When creating a branding advertisement, we need to consider whether we want to promote a brand of our own or a well-known manufacturer whose products we sell. For example: a person in charge of marketing a shoe store called “XYZ” might use the keyword “XYZ” or, for example, “Adidas” if that store happens to sell shoes with three stripes. 

Nothing prevents more branding campaigns. Google does not investigate or restrict the use of trademarks as keywords. The case is different when it comes to using them in headlines and ad text – if we use a brand there that is proprietary, Google will not allow our ad into the search network (or will disable the display of a particular text box).

It is also worth mentioning that the more well-known the brand, the higher the cost per click of the ad will be. It’s also possible that we won’t be able to display the ad at the top of the page if we set the maximum CPC too low. 

What is a Search Brand campaign?

First of all, you need to know what a search network campaign is. Well, it is a campaign that allows you to display a text ad in search results when someone uses Google’s search engine. The ads display based on the keywords that the user types in when searching for the desired keyword. If you entered “winter boots” as a keyword in your campaign, a user searching for winter boots will see your ad. Of course, there are a whole bunch of settings and optimizations, adjustments and conditions attached to this, but you can learn more about them in the article on creating a search campaign

A search brand campaign is mainly distinguished by the fact that we use the brand name as the keyword. However, to keep it simple, we can divide it into two versions: pure brand and brand. It will be easiest to show this with an example.

Pure brand campaign

The keywords in a pure brand campaign (pure brand, brand only) include only the name of the brand being promoted and any variations of it. We will use words here, such as: “Adidas”, “Adidas”, “Up&More”, “UpMore” or “Up More”. 

Campaign brand

In the case of a classic brand campaign, the brand is mainly used to narrow down the audience. In addition to it, we will enter, for example, the brand’s product or service in the keywords. Here we will use slogans such as: “Adidas winter boots”, “Adidas indoor sneakers” or “Up&More Marketing Agency“.

A branding campaign is just the beginning!

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Why is it worth promoting your own brand?

Customers who search online for your brand will find it anyway. SEO efforts and the overall content of your site will make it visible in organic results. However, just because a link to your site shows up on the first page of a search (or even in the first place) doesn’t mean that a customer will definitely click on it. Why is this the case? Why create a branding campaign? There are several reasons.

Visibility and competition

If you don’t use a branding campaign, there are likely to be competitors’ ads above the link to your website. Sometimes companies create ads using keywords related to a competitor’s branding. If you see ads for companies you are competing with when you type your brand into Google, this is definitely the case. This will be the first thing a potential customer sees in the search results. If the content of the ads interests him, it’s possible that he’ll check out your competitor’s offerings, and if this one suits him, he’ll abandon the idea of visiting your site. Displaying your own ads at the top of the first search page minimizes this risk. 

A well-crafted search ad takes up at least a few lines. If you add the right extensions to it, the size of the displayed ad can take up as much as half of the browser window! The larger the ad, the greater the likelihood of attracting a customer. In addition, we take space away from competing companies. However, this does not mean that their ads will not appear on the search page at all.

Low cost

If you are advertising your brand and you are the only (or one of the few) distributor of your own brand’s products, you are competing with only a few companies. The smaller the number of accounts willing to display ads for a given phrase (keywords), the less you will pay per click. This causes the average conversion cost for branded ads to be typically much lower than for other search ads.

Ad content

For organic search results, we are limited in our ability to create headlines and description content – these are usually automatically generated based on the content of the page to which the headline links us. When creating a branded campaign, we can set the headline and description content ourselves – we are only limited by the number of characters. 

Supporting other sources of conversions

Brand is one of the features of a company that a customer remembers when seeing an ad online. If we operate in other channels (e.g. social media or offline channels) or using graphic ads, we often include the logo or store name in the content. If the conversion doesn’t happen right away, chances are the customer will search for our brand some time later. Thanks to the campaign, the brand will easily find our site.

Simplicity

When you know what you want to achieve and why you should promote your own branding, setting up a campaign will be extremely simple. The entire process should not take more than a dozen minutes even for a person who knows little about Google Ads. Similarly, the subsequent editing of the ad content, if, for example, we would like to test different variations, is easy and does not require much time. 

How to create a search brand campaign?

The process looks the same as for a standard search network campaign. After logging into your account, you go to the “Campaigns” tab, then use the round button with the plus sign to create a new campaign. 

When the campaign goal selection box appears, the easiest way is to indicate “Create campaign without using goal prompts,” and then select the “Search Network” type. Below that, select the conversion goals that you are interested in – it could be a site transition, add to cart or purchase. 

After typing the name of the campaign in the box below and selecting “Next” we will be taken to the campaign wizard. Here we need to complete four segments: “define rates,” “campaign settings,” “keywords and ads,” and “budget.” 

Setting rates and budget

Determining the rates, we choose the data we want to focus on when running this campaign. Most often, for a branded campaign, we’ll choose “Clicks” or “Display share.” After indicating the first option, we can set the maximum CPC rate (cost per click). When selecting “Display share”, Google will ask us about the target display share (I recommend setting a minimum of 80%) and the limit of the maximum CPC rate. It is also important to indicate the place where the ads are displayed – we have a choice of:

• Any place on the search results page.
• At the top of the results page.
• First place on the results page.

The first option is the cheapest, but it also goes with the lowest effectiveness. “Top of the results page” is higher in effectiveness, but it is likely that other ads will display above ours. The last one, on the other hand, is the most clicked option, making CPC rates the highest here.

Turning to the last segment for a moment, set the average daily budget we want to spend on ads in the campaign. The more popular our brand is, the higher the budget should be, so as not to limit the potential of the campaign.

The more popular our brand is, the higher the budget should be.

Campaign settings

The most extensive of the campaign configuration segments, but also the easiest to complete. Here we set, among other things, the locations to which we will target ads, the language spoken by the recipients or the schedule for displaying ads. Most of the options here are clear, but a few may be a mystery to people who are just beginning their adventure with Google Ads. 

At the very top of the menu, we can indicate the networks where we want to display ads. Here we leave the checkbox checked only at “Search Network,” which is the place where sites and applications that most closely match the user’s search phrase are displayed. “Ad network” is used when we want to display our ads in applications and services owned by Google (e.g. YouTube or Gmail) – in the case of search brand advertising, this is unnecessary.

The “Audience Segments” container allows us to indicate the groups of people we want to add to our campaign. Here we select the user segments that are our potential target group. It is important to select “Observation” at the bottom, which will not narrow the reach of the campaign, and segments will only be used to read statistical data and possibly adjust rates. The “Targeting” option will make the ad display only to the indicated segments – this will work well for, for example, remarketing campaigns (after indicating the appropriate target group), but not for search brand campaigns.

Keywords and ads

The first thing we’ll see when we go to this menu is the keywords container. Here we can enter the URL of the page or indicate the products we want to advertise – for a branded campaign, however, we will not use this. We will only enter the brand we want to advertise in the keyword field. We will use approximate matching and phrase matching. Those who are more advanced will definitely divide the campaign into groups of ads that correspond to specific keyword matches, so that controlling the results is easier. Once this is done, the ads should be prepared.

To create the ads, we need to prepare a set of texts (and optional extensions). We will need:

• The final URL to which the user will be redirected after clicking on the ad.
• Up to fifteen headlines (max. 30 characters each). They will be displayed at the top of the ad in a random order. If you want any of them to be displayed only in the first place, you can “pin” them by clicking on the pin icon in the headline text box.
• Four ad texts (up to 90 characters) that display below the header – also in random order, but we can also “pin” them.
• Optional extensions that we indicate under the text fields.

When we have completed the ad, we select “Done” and proceed to the final step.

Campaign Check

In a moment, the campaign will be published – but you need to check that all the settings match. The last view of the wizard, “Check”, will help you with this. At the top, all campaign problems will be listed, such as ad irregularities or keyword errors. If there are red messages in the summary, it means that you still need to work on the campaign. If everything agrees with what you typed in, and no errors appear, then you can publish the campaign. 

Summary

A search network campaign for branded search terms is a staple in Google Ads. I apply it to every account I run and recommend doing it to everyone. Its simple scheme, performance-to-cost ratio and high potential for generating conversions are features that don’t let you overlook it when designing your Google Ads campaign structure. Whether your brand has just been established and is expected to win the hearts of customers in the future, or is already a well-known company with a solid position in the market – advertise on brand.