Is it worth paying so much for branded phrases in Google Ads? 3 ways to verify!

Presence in search results for brand-related queries is a topic as old as the PPC world. Whether you’re a proponent of branded campaigns or not, in this article I address some issues related to the cost side. We are long past the period where we used to pay a few pennies each for branded words, sometimes even a penny or two generating tens of thousands of traffic for big brands. Today, this is impossible. We also know that Google manipulates CPC costs to achieve revenue goals. Google VP&General Manager Jerry Dischler spoke about this in an ongoing trial in the US What is already certain is the overpricing of auctions by up to 5% and even 10% for certain inquiries. Some advertisers point to these numbers as unreliable, seeing cases of cost increases of up to 100%. How to deal with this in brand campaigns?

Strategy for setting rates in brand campaigns

This is the first and most important lead. Google Ads recommendations often suggest target display share as the best strategy for brand-related campaigns, but in our experience, this is a foolproof way, but to use as much budget as possible (not in every case, though!). For brand-related search network campaigns, it’s better to use the „Maximize clicks” strategy with a cap or possibly „Maximize conversions” in certain cases. The option of manual CPC also remains.

Choosing the optimal strategy can and should start with verifying whether or not I can meet the entire branded daily budget. And if not the budget, whether or not I can and want to cover the total branded interest in the campaigns.

It’s a good idea to make sure that I am able and willing to cover the total branded interest in the campaigns.

Alternatives to testing the cost of branded campaigns are manual rate settings, where you have more options. And if you still remember the improved CPC, in 2017. Google dropped the tie to increase rates only by max. 30%, without specifying by how much it will increase rates 🙂 in auctions where it sees a higher chance of conversion. Only, if you cover the branding interest in full, should you care? Not likely.

If you are a proponent of manual rate management, you can relatively quickly obtain data on the minimum rates needed:

1, Change your rate setting strategy from automatic to CPC/eCPC

2, Set the rate as low as possible, even as low as $0.01

3. Google, after processing the data, will tell you what should be the necessary rate to display ads.

4. You will set your rates to the estimated rate. Done!

You’ll likely see a large decrease in average CPC without an undue impact on display share in search results.

A rate-setting strategy I am particularly fond of is click maximization. It gives the advantage over manual CPC that it does not require very frequent analysis and observation. We simply set a max rate and Google generally does not exceed it in the long term. What’s more, in many cases, we can raise this safety buffer higher i.e. set the limit quite high, and Google will still complete the campaign as far as possible while minimizing CPC. Tested, it works well.

The last strategy, i.e. conversion maximization, can work well when you don’t cover all the interest in branding and want to pay more for people more likely to convert here and now. Otherwise, this branding strategy makes no sense.

Matches, quality score, negatives

We know of cases where broad matches have been able to mess up in branded campaigns, although this is not common. Google Ads does a very good job of identifying brands, which should come as no surprise. Simple CTR data from Search Console says it all, and it’s easy to separate branding from other queries.

However, it is worth visiting the Google Ads search terms report to verify this 100%. This is especially true for brand names that are not unique or are relatively new to the market. 

The amount you pay per click is a combination of rates and quality. The latter is also worth verifying. We often audit accounts where the brand name (uhm) is not included in the text of the branded ad, making the opt-score limp (and after all, we live to increase it for Google’s glory, right?). In a couple of cases we analyzed, the landing pages were so weak that even the branded campaigns showed problems. As a rule of thumb, the quality score for each brand-related keyword should be between 9 and 10. Pay special attention to advertising relevance (this is usually where the lowest score is) and the quality of the landing page (speed, mobility, user experience).

If you want to reduce spending on brand campaigns, it’s sometimes worth thinking about excluding certain groups of phrases like those potentially unrelated to the lead-selling opportunity, e.g. brand+regulatory. Such news phrases can be well optimized for organic results saving budget.

A good tip to save money in brand campaigns is also to exclude a certain audience from these campaigns. This can include a group of people who regularly visit the site or store. If they do it every day, or every other day, is it justifiable in marketing to pay for those clicks? Perhaps in the form of a relevant message, or an occasion a year, but certainly not in the normal course.

Competition-phrase advertising

I know, the competition is always bad, dumping prices, their products are the worst quality, and they give themselves reviews. And yet you have to fight them on actions in Google Ads Well, exactly, should we be concerned about competitors displaying ads for our branding? 

On the legal issue, I will not settle here except to mention the Court of Justice of the European Union, among others, in its judgment of September 22, 2011 in Case C-323/09. According to the Court, as a general rule, the use in Google Ads campaigns of a keyword that is a competitor’s trademark is allowed in such cases where no one is misleading anyone about which advertiser is involved. In other words, as long as you don’t impersonate free will!

It is worth taking a look at the case where the brand does not have a registered trademark. Here you can fall under an antitrust violation. On the occasion of this issue, I will mention a case from the District Court in Rzeszow (ref. VI GC 297/18), where the Court ruled that using the name of a competing store results in the acquisition of customers and constitutes an act of unfair competition (even when it was Google that automatically suggested the phrases in question!). The court pointed out that the obligation in such a situation is to add appropriate exclusionary words to not parasitize on someone else’s name If you’re curious, I’ll add that the case didn’t end in some big financial penalty. In short, of course, it was necessary to abandon these acts of unfair competition, publish the relevant statements, reimburse litigation costs and transfer PLN 5,000 to one of the foundations.

Beyond the legal quandaries, because, as you know, the courts operate in a different space-time, a good way to sort out the issue of displaying competitors’ ads on our brand is simply to contact them with a kind request to stop it. Currently, this works very well and 9/10 of the time such ads stop displaying once exclusions are added.

Do you need a Google Ads consultation?

Describe your problem to us and we will analyze the data and suggest solutions.

Let’s talk!

What else can cause changes in the cost of brand campaigns?

• New competition (is someone coming to my brand again?)
• Seasonality
• High number of recruitments (we had cases that brand inquiries were then able to grow by more than 30%)
• Changes in match definitions in Google Ads
• Google Ads makes changes to auctions
• The world also knows of cases where traffic was generated by bots – you can try to report this through a special form in Google Ads

In summary, branded campaigns can prove to be a complete over-run of your marketing budget, failing to deliver additional value. You need to pay close attention to your bidding strategy, competitors and matching. Experiment with rates, because in each case the best option depends on your budget, the size of your brand and your goals.

Tytuł: Is it worth paying so much for branded phrases in Google Ads? 3 ways to verify!

Zawartość:

Presence in search results for brand-related queries is a topic as old as the PPC world. Whether you’re a proponent of branded campaigns or not, in this article I address some issues related to the cost side. We are long past the period where we used to pay a few pennies each for branded words, sometimes even a penny or two generating tens of thousands of traffic for big brands. Today, this is impossible. We also know that Google manipulates CPC costs to achieve revenue goals. Google VP&General Manager Jerry Dischler spoke about this in an ongoing trial in the US What is already certain is the overpricing of auctions by up to 5% and even 10% for certain inquiries. Some advertisers point to these numbers as unreliable, seeing cases of cost increases of up to 100%. How to deal with this in brand campaigns?

Strategy for setting rates in brand campaigns

This is the first and most important lead. Google Ads recommendations often suggest targeted display share as the best strategy for brand-related campaigns, but in our experience, this is a foolproof way but to use as much budget as possible (not in every case, though!). For brand-related search network campaigns, it’s better to use the „Maximize clicks” strategy with a cap or possibly „Maximize conversions” in certain cases. The option of manual CPC also remains.

Choosing the optimal strategy can and should start with verifying whether or not I can meet the entire branded daily budget. And if not the budget, whether or not I can and want to cover the total branded interest in the campaigns.

It’s a good idea to make sure that I am able and willing to cover the total branded interest in the campaigns.

Alternatives to testing the cost of branded campaigns are manual rate settings, where you have more options. And if you still remember the improved CPC, in 2017. Google dropped the tie to increase rates only by max. 30%, without specifying by how much it will increase rates 🙂 in auctions where it sees a higher chance of conversion. Only, if you cover the branding interest in full, should you care? Not likely.

If you are a proponent of manual rate management, you can relatively quickly obtain data on the minimum rates needed:

1, Change your rate setting strategy from automatic to CPC/eCPC

2, Set the rate as low as possible, even as low as $0.01

3. Google, after processing the data, will tell you what should be the necessary rate to display ads.

4. You will set your rates to the estimated rate. Done!

You’ll likely see a large decrease in average CPC without an undue impact on display share in search results.

A rate-setting strategy I am particularly fond of is click maximization. It gives the advantage over manual CPC that it does not require very frequent analysis and observation. We simply set a max rate and Google generally does not exceed it in the long term. What’s more, in many cases, we can raise this safety buffer higher i.e. set the limit quite high, and Google will still complete the campaign as far as possible while minimizing CPC. Tested, it works well.

The last strategy, i.e. conversion maximization, can work well when you don’t cover all the interest in branding and want to pay more for people more likely to convert here and now. Otherwise, this branding strategy makes no sense.

Matches, quality score, negatives

We know of cases where broad matches have been able to mess up in branded campaigns, although this is not common. Google Ads does a very good job of identifying brands, which should come as no surprise. Simple CTR data from Search Console says it all, and it’s easy to separate branding from other queries.

However, it is worth visiting the Google Ads search terms report to verify this 100%. This is especially true for brand names that are not unique or are relatively new to the market. 

The amount you pay per click is a combination of rates and quality. The latter is also worth verifying. We often audit accounts where the brand name (uhm) is not included in the text of the branded ad, making the opt-score limp (and after all, we live to increase it for Google’s glory, right?). In a couple of cases we analyzed, the landing pages were so weak that even the branded campaigns showed problems. As a rule of thumb, the quality score for each brand-related keyword should be between 9 and 10. Pay special attention to advertising relevance (this is usually where the lowest score is) and the quality of the landing page (speed, mobility, user experience).

If you want to reduce spending on brand campaigns, it’s sometimes worth thinking about excluding certain groups of phrases like those potentially unrelated to the lead-selling opportunity, e.g. brand+regulatory. Such news phrases can be well optimized for organic results saving budget.

A good tip to save money in brand campaigns is also to exclude a certain audience from these campaigns. This can include a group of people who regularly visit the site or store. If they do it every day, or every other day, is it justifiable in marketing to pay for those clicks? Perhaps in the form of a relevant message, or an occasion a year, but certainly not in the normal course.

Competition-phrase advertising

I know, the competition is always bad, dumping prices, their products are the worst quality, and they give themselves reviews. And yet you have to fight them on actions in Google Ads Well, exactly, should we be concerned about competitors displaying ads for our branding? 

On the legal issue, I will not settle here except to mention the Court of Justice of the European Union, among others, in its judgment of September 22, 2011 in Case C-323/09. According to the Court, as a general rule, the use in Google Ads campaigns of a keyword that is a competitor’s trademark is allowed in such cases where no one is misleading anyone about which advertiser is involved. In other words, as long as you don’t impersonate free will!

It is worth taking a look at the case where the brand does not have a registered trademark. Here you can fall under an antitrust violation. On the occasion of this issue, I will mention a case from the District Court in Rzeszow (ref. VI GC 297/18), where the Court held that using the name of a competing store causes a takeover of customers and constitutes an act of unfair competition (even when it was Google that automatically suggested the phrases in question!). The court pointed out that the obligation in such a situation is to add appropriate exclusionary words to not parasitize on someone else’s name If you’re curious, I’ll add that the case didn’t end in some big financial penalty. In short, of course, it was necessary to abandon these acts of unfair competition, publish the relevant statements, reimburse litigation costs and transfer PLN 5,000 to one of the foundations.

Beyond the legal quandaries, because, as you know, the courts operate in a different space-time, a good way to sort out the subject of displaying competitors’ ads on our brand is simply to contact them with a kind request to stop it. Currently, this works very well and 9/10 of the time such ads stop displaying once exclusions are added.

Do you need a Google Ads consultation?

Describe your problem to us and we will analyze the data and suggest solutions.

Let’s talk!

What else can cause changes in the cost of brand campaigns?

• New competition (is someone coming to my brand again?)
• Seasonality
• High number of recruitments (we had cases that brand inquiries were then able to grow by more than 30%)
• Changes in match definitions in Google Ads
• Google Ads makes changes to auctions
• The world also knows of cases where traffic was generated by bots – you can try to report this through a special form in Google Ads

In summary, branded campaigns can prove to be a complete overkill of your marketing budget, failing to deliver additional value. You need to pay close attention to your bidding strategy, competitors and matching. Experiment with rates, because in each case the best option depends on your budget, the size of your brand and your goals.