Transcripts
Hello, welcome to the Close the Loop podcast.
Speaker:I'm Kevin Dieny your host.
Speaker:And today we're going to be talking about the advantages of the paid search channel.
Speaker:Specifically the advantages of using a branded campaign in paid search.
Speaker:Which is a little bit different.
Speaker:So really to set the episode up, I wanted to highlight, the basics.
Speaker:So everyone is on the same page here.
Speaker:When we're talking about paid search, we're really talking about a channel
Speaker:where your visitors, or people, who you're targeting, your audience.
Speaker:You're being able to position marketing to them, a message to them because
Speaker:they've queried or they've typed in, or they've searched for something
Speaker:with, you know, with keywords.
Speaker:That are aligned with your brand, your product, your services,
Speaker:some something to do with you.
Speaker:So if, for instance, let's say someone types in 'plumbers near me,' right?
Speaker:So, plumbers being the service they're, looking for, 'near me' being like the
Speaker:locale, location, proximity, right?
Speaker:So if you're targeting that keyword, you could be targeting for plumbers,
Speaker:you're targeting for near me.
Speaker:Hopefully you're targeting for the plumbers.
Speaker:So people who are typing in these things, people use Google all the time.
Speaker:People use Bing, people use all kinds of different search providers
Speaker:online to help them find things.
Speaker:And when they, whatever they type in each word is a Keyword.
Speaker:And you are able to target each of the keywords that they type in, or the
Speaker:whole keyword, the entire phrase, they type in the exact wording they type in.
Speaker:Things like that, with a paid search campaign.
Speaker:So that is really different than say, I want to target everyone who
Speaker:lives five miles from this point or who lives in this zip code?
Speaker:Or I want to target everyone who likes basketball.
Speaker:The different advertisement channels, right?
Speaker:They all work a little differently in how they target.
Speaker:For instance, television is whoever's watching this, whoever happens to be
Speaker:watching this channel or this stream or this program at this moment in
Speaker:time, that's, who's going to see it.
Speaker:And that's your audience, right?
Speaker:So the size of the audience is one thing, but how qualified they
Speaker:are, how aligned they are, how relevant they are to your business
Speaker:at this time is much more important.
Speaker:It is is not less important than, than quantity, because you
Speaker:still want people to, to reach.
Speaker:So it advertisement is always balancing the quality of who
Speaker:you're after with the quantity, how many people are you going after?
Speaker:And usually they are a little exclusive.
Speaker:So, and by that, I mean, you sometimes have to give up a little bit of
Speaker:quality to get a lot more quantity.
Speaker:Or give up some quantity for quality.
Speaker:So when we're talking about Branded Paid Search Campaigns,
Speaker:that's also a little different.
Speaker:So we're in the paid search realm.
Speaker:Now we're targeting people who typed in some combination
Speaker:of keywords on Google, right?
Speaker:That's the simplest example, but the words they typed in, now we're
Speaker:targeting branded terms, branded words.
Speaker:And by that we're, we're talking about, words that contain your
Speaker:brand name, words that contain your, your product or your service.
Speaker:Words that contained trademarked is another way to think about it.
Speaker:Like any term you have trademarked is probably a branded term.
Speaker:You could be thinking about your brand, you're like, well, my brand
Speaker:is called Bill's plumbing, okay.
Speaker:So let's use that example.
Speaker:So plumbing isn't really a branded term, but "Bill's Plumbing" together.
Speaker:That might be a little more branded.
Speaker:There might be a lots of brands of Bill's plumbing's out there, but in your
Speaker:area, there may only be you, or there may be you and another Bill's Plumbing.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:But essentially branded terms are ones that are telling you that
Speaker:the person typing this in knows exactly what they're after and they
Speaker:kind of know who they are after.
Speaker:We think of things like Kleenex, right.
Speaker:As being a branded term, because that's the name of the brand.
Speaker:But some people use Kleenex to describe the tissue when it's actually like a soft
Speaker:tissue paper is what, it's, what it is.
Speaker:That's what the product is.
Speaker:But the brand is now become synonymous with the product.
Speaker:So that that's where it gets a little blurry.
Speaker:But for the most part, if someone's typing in Bill's Plumbing and they
Speaker:happened to be in your locale, they're probably looking for you.
Speaker:So when we're talking about creating branded campaigns, we're really
Speaker:specifically focusing on those campaigns where we're targeting
Speaker:people who are basically looking for you or looking for the product or
Speaker:service that is very specific, but that you you carry or that you have.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I'm uh uh being a little vague because branded terms are vast
Speaker:and it's kind of difficult to separate all the branded terms the
Speaker:business has from their non-branded.
Speaker:And non-branded terms like plumbing, you know, pipes, those
Speaker:things are found everywhere.
Speaker:Pipes can be in a lot of things.
Speaker:Pipes are in data, pipes are in plumbing.
Speaker:Pipes are in electrical pipes.
Speaker:You know, lots of different industries.
Speaker:So when someone just types in pipe, what are they really looking for?
Speaker:Plastic, metal, you know?
Speaker:So the more specific they get, that is where it gets into branded terms.
Speaker:If they're just like a TV is another example, just looking for a TV.
Speaker:That's one thing, you're looking for a Samsung TV.
Speaker:See now Samsung is a branded term.
Speaker:Vizio branded term, right?
Speaker:Sony branded terms.
Speaker:So when we're talking about creating a branded paid search campaign, the
Speaker:advantages of that are that these people really know your brand or they really
Speaker:know a specific product or service or something like that, that they're looking
Speaker:for, that you happen to have, that you carry, that you're trying to sell.
Speaker:And that's, that's what we're after here in this episode is to talk about that.
Speaker:So some of the advantages, right?
Speaker:Obviously, maybe they come to mind just talking about this.
Speaker:If someone looking for, for you that's, like an easy way to someone
Speaker:looking for who you are for who you are and what you sell is a much easier
Speaker:sale than someone who's not looking for you and has no idea what you do.
Speaker:And they have no need for what you do.
Speaker:You want to sell to people who have a need for what it is you're selling.
Speaker:You don't want to sell it to people who don't want what you're selling.
Speaker:It's a waste of time for them and for you.
Speaker:So how do you find those gems, right?
Speaker:Those people who are looking for you, looking for what you sell.
Speaker:And that's what we're after.
Speaker:The advantages of course, being these people are much higher quality.
Speaker:They're intent, meaning they they're looking to buy either soon or in
Speaker:the near future is much higher.
Speaker:They are probably a better fit because they know about you.
Speaker:Some either by word of mouth or they've searched before, they visited before.
Speaker:So they're a little bit more educated that are a little bit more familiar with you.
Speaker:They are probably, at that point where they don't need to be
Speaker:persuaded a ton to do business with.
Speaker:And marketing looks at that like they're probably at the
Speaker:end of a lot of touches, right?
Speaker:So every touch, a customer, prospective customer, or future customer has with your
Speaker:business, we call, we call it a touch.
Speaker:So every time a visitor sees your website, touch.
Speaker:Every time they hear your brand or see an ad or anything to do with your brand
Speaker:or products or services, that's touches.
Speaker:So on average, I think this is, um, a stat.
Speaker:I think it's like between 7 and 14 touches between a brand and its
Speaker:prospective customers is how many times, how many touches it really
Speaker:takes for them to convert or sell or become into your database so that
Speaker:you can market to them even further.
Speaker:But generally speaking 7 to 14 is kind of a lot, like if each touch
Speaker:costs you $10, right then seven touches is $70 just to convert them.
Speaker:In some industries might be a lot higher than the $10.
Speaker:But when we're talking about branded terms, we're talking about
Speaker:branded audiences who our audiences who are using branded terms.
Speaker:In advertising and coming to you with these queries that
Speaker:are branded, my goodness.
Speaker:That means that they are farther along those touch points.
Speaker:That means that they've probably had interactions with you in the past
Speaker:and they are much closer to buying.
Speaker:In the marketing funnel, we would say these are in the bottom of the funnel.
Speaker:So, if you could just market to the people in the bottom of the
Speaker:funnel and survive, your business could thrive then, fantastic.
Speaker:You're basically only talking to people who want to buy from you,
Speaker:ready to buy it from you, who are well-educated, who are knowledgeable.
Speaker:They are aware of the problem that they have.
Speaker:They're aware of the solutions you provide, and they're
Speaker:interested in what you have.
Speaker:They trust you.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So if you can check all those boxes off, that's the ideal customer.
Speaker:Now there's a couple of problems with branded campaigns,
Speaker:especially in paid search.
Speaker:And one of them, one of the arguments is, if they're using my brand name
Speaker:to search for me, they're probably going to get to my website, anyway.
Speaker:They're probably going to get to me anyway, if the intent is that
Speaker:high, why do I need an ad for that?
Speaker:Another argument is, these branded searches, they're coming to my website.
Speaker:They're going to convert, anyway.
Speaker:They're going to call because there's, they're using my brand name,
Speaker:they're using my trademark service.
Speaker:They're using the exact phrase that I'm targeting, you know, with my website.
Speaker:And so they're going to convert anyway.
Speaker:And the last one that I've heard is, well, branded traffic is
Speaker:mostly my current customers, right?
Speaker:My current patients, they're the ones who already know who we are.
Speaker:That's why they're using the branded terms to find me.
Speaker:So why, again, after all that, it's like, why advertise?
Speaker:Why create?
Speaker:Why spend money on people that know who you are, know what you do?
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:In the bottom of the funnel, why do we want to spend money there to get people
Speaker:to buy when they're probably going too.
Speaker:Well, that probably those assumptions you're making about whether they,
Speaker:they are going to convert they are going to buy from me anyway.
Speaker:Those are costly mistakes.
Speaker:Just to answer that flatly, as simply as I can, because it...
Speaker:took so much effort to get them to the bottom of the funnel, right.
Speaker:It took lots of education.
Speaker:It took them being aware of their problem.
Speaker:It took them knowing that you have their solution.
Speaker:It took a lot to get them to that point.
Speaker:They're near the finish line.
Speaker:Are you just going to hope and trust and that all that group of people who's there
Speaker:is just going to go to the finish line?
Speaker:In some regard, that's where you should be spending money, right?
Speaker:Get those people who are pretty close and try to make it more guaranteed.
Speaker:Try to get more.
Speaker:At the top of the funnel you're talking tens of thousands, hundreds
Speaker:of thousands, billions of people who have no idea they have a problem.
Speaker:Who are barely finding out about this stuff.
Speaker:Who are interested, but maybe not that interested and you're moving them down.
Speaker:It goes from, you know, millions down to just thousands in the middle of
Speaker:the funnel, maybe hundreds or less.
Speaker:And then we're, it could be single digits or double digits in the, in the
Speaker:bottom of the funnel on any given day.
Speaker:You spent six, seven touches up to that point.
Speaker:And now you're just going to hope that they cross the finish line.
Speaker:It doesn't work.
Speaker:And spending all your money at the top, hoping that they convert at
Speaker:the bottom, is sort of the backwards way you should be thinking about it.
Speaker:Sometimes the best place to put a campaign, especially a new campaign.
Speaker:If you're a business that doesn't spend a whole lot of money on marketing.
Speaker:Is to start with some branded campaigns first and some mix it in with some
Speaker:highly targeted, maybe bottom of funnel, middle of funnel, uh, campaigns to mix
Speaker:it up kind of like hybrid strategy.
Speaker:So that's where the misnomers are.
Speaker:That's my initial take on those arguments.
Speaker:Also, if you think that you're good, if it's like, you're like confident
Speaker:and a hundred percent confident that it's a hundred percent of my current
Speaker:customers who are using my branded terms and branded keywords and
Speaker:stuff, then you could test that out.
Speaker:You could check it, you could see if that is the case.
Speaker:If you're tracking your marketing really well, you could see, okay, everyone
Speaker:who's coming in from my branded campaign.
Speaker:A hundred percent of that traffic that converts over,
Speaker:I would say give it 90 days.
Speaker:If you're to see how much of your branded conversions and sales come
Speaker:from current customers and stuff like that, using a branded campaign.
Speaker:And you can do that.
Speaker:If you track your marketing really well, you can even see, you know,
Speaker:down to the keywords that are branded, or down to a branded campaign.
Speaker:Whether that's generating calls or form fields or anything, whatever your
Speaker:conversion is sales, from those campaigns.
Speaker:You can, you can do that.
Speaker:You can set that all up and then you can be confident and
Speaker:have the data to back it up.
Speaker:Because a lot of times it's sort of an assumption, a hunch, right?
Speaker:And marketing can be a lot of times going off hunches when you don't
Speaker:have all the data, but from someone who's done this before, who has a
Speaker:lot of experience in this, I can tell you that a lot of the branded
Speaker:campaigns aren't, current customers.
Speaker:They might be returning visitors.
Speaker:You know, that's kind of the point of the bottom of the funnel, especially
Speaker:people who know your branded terms, but at the same time, it's so helpful
Speaker:to be able to control your messaging at the bottom to those people.
Speaker:Because you might hit the bottom you want to have a little
Speaker:more of a push toward buying.
Speaker:You may not be like, Hey, let's educate you on pipes and leaks and stuff.
Speaker:And at the bottom you may be more like, Hey, look, here's the deal.
Speaker:Here's the offer.
Speaker:Book our plumbing services today, and that could be a really strong offer for that
Speaker:audience that works really well with them.
Speaker:That obviously wouldn't work at all in the middle and the top of the funnel.
Speaker:Cause those people don't even know, you know that they're not there yet.
Speaker:They're not ready to go.
Speaker:They're not ready to jump on it.
Speaker:Some local services when people are looking for them, they have the problem.
Speaker:And they're really aware, like my bathroom is filling up with water.
Speaker:I need a plumber over here as soon as possible.
Speaker:They may just call whoever is the first one to show up in the search result, fine.
Speaker:But if you put an ad for branded terms and if you don't know this ads show
Speaker:up above the first organic results.
Speaker:So if you're going to put a branded campaign together and paid search
Speaker:and you force your ads to the top, whenever people use your branded terms.
Speaker:Then whenever someone quickly jumps in there and types in, you
Speaker:know, a plumbing emergency local plumber near me or whatever.
Speaker:And any other words, if any of those branded words show up and your ad
Speaker:shows, it will be the number one spot.
Speaker:So they, they might end up calling you right off the bat right off there.
Speaker:The other big thing I hear about reason businesses are suggested by marketers
Speaker:of using branded paid search campaigns.
Speaker:Is because your competitors will use your branded terms against you.
Speaker:So here's an example, a CRM, if you're ever looking for a CRM, right?
Speaker:The phrase, CRM stands for customer relationship management software.
Speaker:Now a lot of times people aren't typing in customer relationship
Speaker:management software, they're typing in the abbreviated CRM, right?
Speaker:But let's say someone types in "Salesforce CRM."
Speaker:I guarantee you, you're not just going to see Salesforce ads.
Speaker:You're going to see their competitors and the messaging they can put on there.
Speaker:And the page they can send you to, if you click on it.
Speaker:It can be all about Salesforce, but can be comparing possibly
Speaker:them against Salesforce.
Speaker:It could be showing off why they're better than Salesforce.
Speaker:It's very, it can be very specific, but it still be about Salesforce.
Speaker:And brands, a lot of the time will bid on a competitor's branded keywords to
Speaker:get an advantage, to get that jump, because it could be that Salesforce
Speaker:has spent a lot of money getting people to get those touches, right.
Speaker:To get people ready to go, to buy a CRM.
Speaker:And then right when they're at that point near the bottom of the funnel
Speaker:to buy that's what another brand wants to scoop them up and be like,
Speaker:Hey, are you looking at Salesforce?
Speaker:Why don't you come over here and look at this CRM!
Speaker:So it works really well as a marketer.
Speaker:It's like that, that works.
Speaker:It's obviously harder to get a higher quality score a higher
Speaker:relevance score and things like that.
Speaker:And your landing page experience may not be as great, but it, it can, you
Speaker:can scoop off some of those people who are potentially at the bottom,
Speaker:but not a hundred percent dedicated on buying Salesforce quite yet.
Speaker:If you were a CRM, you know, running these types of campaigns.
Speaker:So think about that for your business.
Speaker:You could put your competitors.
Speaker:Brand terms into campaigns.
Speaker:You can do things like that.
Speaker:That go usually called competitive ads.
Speaker:There you can also group campaigns up, you know, to target each of your
Speaker:competitors, especially if a competitor is big, but isn't running any ads,
Speaker:then you kind of have the open field to go after their branded terms.
Speaker:But another thing that we really need to focus on too, is that a
Speaker:branded campaign doesn't always work.
Speaker:Sometimes the branded terms are very costly.
Speaker:"Salesforce," that keyword is probably pretty costly.
Speaker:Uh, so it makes it really expensive if you're not Salesforce
Speaker:to bid on those keywords.
Speaker:And so in that case, going after Salesforce in skimming off
Speaker:some of it's bottom of funnel traffic, it could be costly.
Speaker:Now it could be more costly to convert your top of funnel to middle, to
Speaker:bottom, and then convert them, right.
Speaker:So you have to kind of weigh all that.
Speaker:But sometimes a branded campaign isn't a fit, if the branded terms are too costly.
Speaker:If you call yourself Salesforce Plumbing, right.
Speaker:So just randomly making that up here.
Speaker:Then it could be that if that going after the term, Salesforce plumbing
Speaker:in your case may just be too expensive because your brand name happens to
Speaker:be shared with a very large company.
Speaker:In those cases, branded campaigns just may not be the best fit for you.
Speaker:It's rare, but it's possible.
Speaker:There also could be a branded term that is a product term.
Speaker:For instance, a company could be called Best Plumbing,
Speaker:right, or five-star plumbing.
Speaker:Now people may type in things like five star plumbers near me.
Speaker:And that to Google may seem like not a branded search, but there is
Speaker:branded terms that exist for it.
Speaker:So it's going to make the guess, whether this visitor intends to see
Speaker:the branded one or the non-branded one.
Speaker:And in probably a lot of cases, they consider it to be the non-branded one.
Speaker:So it may not be, it may not work for you.
Speaker:And also if you're, if your brand is called something, if your branded
Speaker:terms are associated with a product, with a different industry altogether,
Speaker:you might have a problem like if you are called Elevator Plumbing,
Speaker:someone typing in elevators and probably not looking for plumbing.
Speaker:So things like that, uh, are when it gets a little fuzzy.
Speaker:But if the terms are bringing the type of visitors that you want to convert.
Speaker:If the type of people that you want, right.
Speaker:That are the type of people you want to do business with, that you want
Speaker:to sell your products or services to that you want to provide service to.
Speaker:Are coming in on these terms or keywords.
Speaker:Then it has to be a consideration, you know, is it might be costly.
Speaker:It might be difficult to do, but if it's better than my other campaigns, then maybe
Speaker:this branded campaign has some legs to it.
Speaker:And usually we're taught, we're talking about comparing campaigns.
Speaker:We're talking about comparing marketing against each other.
Speaker:You have to kind of compare the last funnel, the last journey, uh,
Speaker:points to compare the campaigns.
Speaker:For instance, if a campaign is bringing in 10,000 visitors and another one
Speaker:is only 50 visitors, you may think, wow, 10,000 way bigger than 50,
Speaker:the 10,000 one must be way better.
Speaker:But if it doesn't ever convert, right.
Speaker:And the 50 one does, then the 50 one is actually better.
Speaker:So the farther you can take your stats down closer to the sale, the better
Speaker:you'll be able to compare campaigns.
Speaker:You don't really want to compare campaigns on impressions and
Speaker:clicks and click through rates.
Speaker:Maybe not even on lead gen.
Speaker:It probably is better to compare on sales.
Speaker:Or retention or customer lifetime value, lifetime values.
Speaker:Those might be a lot better for comparing campaigns, or channel this
Speaker:channel to that channel, or this source Facebook versus Google ads.
Speaker:You kind of want to compare like the last metrics against each other.
Speaker:There might be a campaigns where they generate a lot of leads, right.
Speaker:But then hardly any of those leads are going to buy.
Speaker:So then, is that the campaign's fault?
Speaker:Is it bringing it in the wrong audience or is that the sales
Speaker:person who's handling those?
Speaker:There's a lot of diagnostic things you'd want to do.
Speaker:But starting with the branded paid search campaign is a pretty nice
Speaker:thing to do because you're usually dealing with people who are closer
Speaker:to the sale, closer to buying.
Speaker:You have a pretty.
Speaker:A much easier chance of creating a campaign and knowing whether it's
Speaker:working or not pretty quickly, because you're not trying to make topple funnel
Speaker:audiences and then move them through the middle, and then to the bottom.
Speaker:That's a lot harder to track, especially over a larger span of time.
Speaker:Just so everyone knows anything beyond like 14 days these days,
Speaker:if it takes longer than 14 days.
Speaker:Your attribution window, the ability to know, like almost definitively
Speaker:that this person has had seven touches or five touches, it starts to
Speaker:diminish because cookies, because of privacy, because of a lot of factors.
Speaker:So the longer your buying process and buying cycle is the harder it will be
Speaker:to prove, you know, that you brought someone in at the top, you did all these
Speaker:touches, and now they're at the bottom.
Speaker:So that's why a lot of times marketers, I'm just kind of spilling the secret.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:A lot of times they start at the bottom, they go to where the audience is the most
Speaker:ready to buy to start their campaigns, because it's the most easy to prove.
Speaker:Prove that you've, you're having some lift.
Speaker:So I think we've covered how to understand the benefits of the paid search and
Speaker:the branded paid search campaigns.
Speaker:You kind of know what a branded campaign is.
Speaker:It might be a little fuzzy for your industry or for your business,
Speaker:but I'm sure you can work it out.
Speaker:And then we've talked a little bit about how you would experiment with it, right.
Speaker:Just to touch because when you create a branded campaign with your keywords
Speaker:and your, and you have your ad group and everything ready to go and you launch
Speaker:it, then it's okay, is this working.
Speaker:And within the first probably couple of weeks.
Speaker:That's when you're going to want to make sure you have the right negative keywords.
Speaker:Remember when you, when you're doing paid search, negative keywords are
Speaker:almost, or if not more important than the keywords you're targeting.
Speaker:So negative keywords of course, are the exclusion words.
Speaker:If someone types in Bill's Plumbing, great.
Speaker:But if they type in Bill's Plumbing in Antarctica, that's, that's not good.
Speaker:You put in all these words that you, that if people happen to
Speaker:put in there, you actually don't want to show your ad to them.
Speaker:And those are what negative keywords are.
Speaker:And so with branded terms, I think the negative keyword list can be a
Speaker:lot more manageable, maybe not in all cases, but it makes it easier, right?
Speaker:Someone who may not have a ton of campaigns or a lot of experience
Speaker:here, a branded campaign is often the easiest place, best place to start.
Speaker:So you've got your campaign going, the first couple of weeks, you're making
Speaker:sure your negative keywords are right.
Speaker:You're checking your auction insights to see if there's
Speaker:competitors showing up in there.
Speaker:In case you're like, ooh, you know, my, some of my branded terms are
Speaker:being shared with my competitors.
Speaker:So I wonder what they're doing.
Speaker:And so you're, you're making tweaks to either your messaging, your
Speaker:keywords, your negative keywords.
Speaker:You may change your, the way the keywords match, right.
Speaker:So a broad keyword is any synonym, any plural, any variation that Google thinks
Speaker:matches with this word it can substitute.
Speaker:And so it will show your ad for a lot of funky stuff.
Speaker:So you may want to start a lot of times, I start with phrase and then
Speaker:I work either to broad or it's a more exact over time, but you set up your
Speaker:branded campaign and you're going, you're making your tweaks over time.
Speaker:After about 90 days, it's usually enough.
Speaker:You know, unless obviously sooner you could tell this is working or this
Speaker:is obviously it's just falling flat.
Speaker:There's just no traffic or no impressions.
Speaker:At that point, you could decide whether this brand campaign is for you or not.
Speaker:And oftentimes that doesn't require a ton of money, but the rule of thumb
Speaker:usually, is whatever result you're after you want about 50 of it every week.
Speaker:So if you're after.
Speaker:If I want, I want to see if this will hit 50 impressions in a week.
Speaker:That's that could be pretty done pretty quickly, usually.
Speaker:50 clicks, again, depending on the brand and the impressions and the keywords and
Speaker:stuff that can also be done fairly, you know, within a week, pretty quick now,
Speaker:50 conversions or 50 landing page visits.
Speaker:Sometimes that's a little more difficult in a week and your budget
Speaker:may have to go up to reflect that, but you can kind of play with it.
Speaker:And every business is a little different, you know what your budget parameters are.
Speaker:So you got this going, you'd experimented with it.
Speaker:And you decide whether, you know, this is making conversions, whether this is
Speaker:making sales, whether you like it or not.
Speaker:So one of the huge stats, I would say that tell you that a branded campaign
Speaker:is working is that you'll see things like the landing page visits are higher.
Speaker:The duration on the landing page is much higher.
Speaker:The other pages they visit well, when they land is higher, the
Speaker:bounce rates will be lower.
Speaker:And oftentimes the click-through rates for branded campaigns can be very high.
Speaker:So let's say you have an ad campaign running and it's
Speaker:just a non-branded campaign.
Speaker:And it's like a 3% or 4% click through rate.
Speaker:You, you could potentially see branded campaigns that, that go as
Speaker:high as like 20% click through rates.
Speaker:Maybe even higher.
Speaker:I don't know, but it depends on the brand, but if you're getting, you know,
Speaker:four or five, 10 X, possibly more clicks from the same traffic, branded campaigns
Speaker:can, can be extraordinary for businesses.
Speaker:Or the other benefit is your cost per click may go down substantially.
Speaker:And I say that because if you're branded terms are actually
Speaker:branded terms to Google as well.
Speaker:Then they will reward you because you have an amazing high quality,
Speaker:like anyone looking for a specific like Salesforce, right?
Speaker:The Salesforce company's website is all about that.
Speaker:They are that brand, right.
Speaker:So Google is going to say, well, Salesforce is the keyword, but
Speaker:this is a brand and they have a whole website and they're big.
Speaker:So if Salesforce bids on its own Salesforce keyword, it's probably
Speaker:very cheap compared to what everyone else has to bid on it.
Speaker:And that's because it's their branded term, right?
Speaker:Like they kind of have more authority on it.
Speaker:And so if you have any keywords like that, Google will see that,
Speaker:see your authority with it.
Speaker:They may even give you a huge cut in the cost per click cost for
Speaker:you relative to your competitors.
Speaker:So if you come in and start bidding on your own keywords,
Speaker:Uh, that are branded especially.
Speaker:Then you could see tiny cost per clicks.
Speaker:It could be from a cent, it could be, you know, whatever it could be,
Speaker:you know, 50 bucks depending on the keyword, but that could be way, way
Speaker:less than your non-branded keywords.
Speaker:And so campaigns that fall into the branded category often have the high
Speaker:click rate, the high experience on the landing page through engagement.
Speaker:They also tend to have low costs per click.
Speaker:So you put that together, right?
Speaker:Wow these are cheaper, higher performing.
Speaker:Hmm, so the branded paid search campaigns have a huge advantage in those metrics.
Speaker:Now these are all kind of like the entry level metrics, right?
Speaker:Cause you know, impressions, clicks conversions on the page.
Speaker:Not necessarily all lead to sales, but most often, branded terms are associated
Speaker:with your brand in such a way that those audiences are in your bottom of funnel.
Speaker:That they are in your ideal fit category.
Speaker:And so they happen to be the right people that you want to talk to.
Speaker:So they tend to convert higher, cheaper, faster, right?
Speaker:This is like the dream audience.
Speaker:The only limit they have is the size, the bottom of funnel, if
Speaker:you think of the funnel, right?
Speaker:It's that upside down inverted pyramid, the bottom of.
Speaker:The time is the tiniest.
Speaker:It's like a sponge once you've squeezed out everyone in
Speaker:that audience, it's theirs.
Speaker:It kind of doesn't refill so fast.
Speaker:Unless you have a big engine pumping it down from the middle.
Speaker:And a big engine from the top or some other brand is right.
Speaker:If you enter a very well defined space, They may have a lot -they're
Speaker:educating, informing, becoming solution aware, helping everyone move from
Speaker:the top, into the top and then into the middle and then to the bottom.
Speaker:And so there might be just a lot of people there, but in a lot of
Speaker:cases, you're the one who's going to have to, you know, refill that.
Speaker:Especially with branded terms, people may be familiar with like the famous plumber
Speaker:or the famous roofer, the famous, I don't know any dealership, health care provider
Speaker:around the corner, but not yours yet.
Speaker:So they may be using the other brands, uh, branded terms and not yours.
Speaker:Cause they're just not familiar with you yet.
Speaker:The branded terms, the branded campaigns have these huge advantages.
Speaker:Now here's some of the requirements let's say, you're like, I'm swayed,
Speaker:I'm sold, I'll run a branded campaign.
Speaker:What do I need to do this?
Speaker:So I've kind of highlighted, you need to know your brand.
Speaker:You need to know the brand keywords.
Speaker:You can come up with a bunch of them.
Speaker:You create a campaign.
Speaker:I may jump into Google ads to do this Bing Ads, to do this Microsoft
Speaker:ads, whatever it is to do this.
Speaker:Any kind of paid search platform.
Speaker:You jump in there, you make a campaign.
Speaker:Now you're going to take all your branded keywords you have, and you're
Speaker:going to want, you're going to want to do what's called like a spoke.
Speaker:So you put all your keywords in like a list, and then you look at them.
Speaker:This is kind of manual.
Speaker:And you're going to pull out keywords that are very much the same.
Speaker:So how can we make it a good example out of this?
Speaker:So we'll go to the plumbing example again.
Speaker:So you may say, okay, these ones have to do with time, like 24 hour immediate
Speaker:emergency, something like that.
Speaker:Okay, I put them in this group, these keywords have to do with, with the
Speaker:owner, the name, the, something like that, like Bill Plumbing, Williams
Speaker:Plumbing, things like that, Bill, William.
Speaker:You know, anything like that?
Speaker:This is another category.
Speaker:Another one may be the city locale location.
Speaker:Like Bill's Plumbing in los Angeles.
Speaker:Bill's Plumber in Los Angeles.
Speaker:So you may group by location.
Speaker:So you're going to come up with all these groupings until all your
Speaker:keywords are in these groupings.
Speaker:A very homogenous, similar-ness to them.
Speaker:So when you're looking at these keyword groups, you're thinking,
Speaker:wow, these all are the same.
Speaker:They all have, they have a lot in common.
Speaker:It could be that you just have one.
Speaker:You're just like, well, all these keywords, you know, they're just
Speaker:the branded it's just there's, just a handful of branded names here.
Speaker:So it's just one.
Speaker:But if you have groupings, you're going to want to separate those groupings.
Speaker:So you got your keywords and now you're going to want to make a landing page.
Speaker:The landing page has to be all about those, those for those audiences that
Speaker:are typing in those specific keywords.
Speaker:So anyone who's typing in Bill's Plumbing, Los Angeles, you're going to
Speaker:make that landing page all about the people who would be searching for that.
Speaker:And I can't tell you exactly what they want, but they're, if they're
Speaker:in the bottom of the funnel, right.
Speaker:They're probably looking to buy.
Speaker:They're probably looking for a plumber.
Speaker:They're probably looking for a way to contact you.
Speaker:They're looking for an offer.
Speaker:They're probably, um, just if they're typing in your brand name, they're
Speaker:probably really familiar with you.
Speaker:They may jump quicker, if it's something like, this weekend special offer or a
Speaker:special fall or spring or summer rates.
Speaker:Something, they may jump at stuff like that.
Speaker:You'd have to test all that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And then whatever you've decided you're going to run with in your messaging
Speaker:for that people who are typing that in.
Speaker:That's what you've got to make your landing page all about.
Speaker:Then once that's done, then you look at that landing page
Speaker:when you make your ad copy.
Speaker:And ad copy is what people are going to see in the search result.
Speaker:Usually there's no images.
Speaker:There can be some images there, but generally just think about what's
Speaker:your, what's your headlines going to be and your descriptions going to be.
Speaker:So the headline, it's gotta be something that's going to catch their attention.
Speaker:Define, make sure that they know for sure this is Bill's Plumbing.
Speaker:And for the Los Angeles example, you may want to put something about Los
Speaker:Angeles or whatever in the headline.
Speaker:And then you repeat that in the description, make sure it's
Speaker:very on point, very relevant.
Speaker:Anyone who clicks that ad, most likely is not clicking it by accident.
Speaker:Hopefully, happens.
Speaker:But you want to make that ad.
Speaker:So crystal clear.
Speaker:And then when they hit that ad and go to that landing page, you want it to
Speaker:be so confident that they're at the right place, that they don't bounce.
Speaker:So you want all everything to be in alignment.
Speaker:It's kind of like put the stars, the planets in alignment, and this campaign
Speaker:will sing a lot better for you.
Speaker:So you won't have any problems there.
Speaker:So yeah, you're going to need your brand, the keywords that come off that brand.
Speaker:The landing pages for each individual ad group that you have from your
Speaker:spoke'ing categories, ad copy that matches each unique group, very, very
Speaker:relevant ultra specific messaging.
Speaker:So, and then you're going to need to, you know, a budget for all this.
Speaker:So you may, you may start your budget small, turn it on, see what you
Speaker:learn and then increase it over time.
Speaker:That's what I do.
Speaker:So start it at some amount where you're still going to get enough
Speaker:traffic to see if things are working.
Speaker:You're going to learn from negative keywords, stuff like that.
Speaker:And then, you know, you're ready to roll.
Speaker:Branded campaigns are fantastic.
Speaker:They do, they, you are going to have to monitor brand search campaigns.
Speaker:I would, you know, especially at first check it every day that it's running.
Speaker:And see if you learn anything right off the bat, right.
Speaker:See if there's obvious keywords that are not a fit, you're going to add to
Speaker:your negative list, check your audience insights, to see what other competitors
Speaker:are running up against, who are searching for the same types of things.
Speaker:And that's kinda how it goes.
Speaker:This is what other people recommend that you have branded and non-branded
Speaker:campaigns running simultaneously.
Speaker:I think you can get away with just running a brand new campaign on its own.
Speaker:But that would be really, really slim pickings.
Speaker:That's just running a bottom of funnel campaign, right?
Speaker:It might be a place you start, but it's not a place you want to be ideally.
Speaker:You want to have they call it the hybrid setup of a non-branded campaign
Speaker:and then another branded campaign.
Speaker:And you don't want them to bid on the same exact keywords because you kind
Speaker:of a little bit against yourself.
Speaker:So dedicated campaign branded.
Speaker:And give it all those branded terms and then dedicate your rest of your
Speaker:campaigns to the non-branded one or non-branded keywords so that
Speaker:you're not, you know, double, triple bidding on yourself, in that example.
Speaker:Campaigns will bid against themselves within the campaign.
Speaker:The ad groups may not, but you definitely want to drive, try to keep
Speaker:everything as separate as possible.
Speaker:That's why you're creating different ad groups so that they don't
Speaker:interfere so that there's no overlap.
Speaker:And so that they're hitting a very suscint, very specific relevant message.
Speaker:That's if I could say that over and over again, I would.
Speaker:But I think you get the point and that's kind of how you structure your campaigns
Speaker:inside Google Ads or Bing or whatever.
Speaker:That's the ideal way to do it.
Speaker:So how much money do you need?
Speaker:That's the last requirement?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Like I said, the 50 a week example is what's recommended by most platforms
Speaker:because that's, when you're going to get into the extra benefit of more data.
Speaker:So there's more analysis that can happen, more optimization,
Speaker:more tuning that can occur.
Speaker:So that's usually what I shoot for.
Speaker:And there's one other thing.
Speaker:When you do this in Google, I think Bing has it too, where you tell it, your
Speaker:bidding type, like, what is your goal?
Speaker:What is your, what are you trying to do here?
Speaker:Brand awareness is not the goal, right?
Speaker:Just to be very clear branded campaigns, the goal is not brand awareness.
Speaker:Brand awareness is for people at the very tip top or in the middle to know
Speaker:who you are, right to who are unaware.
Speaker:That's who they're for.
Speaker:Whereas the bottom of funnel is people who are definitely are aware.
Speaker:They thereafter hunting for a solution right now.
Speaker:So this is not that goal.
Speaker:The goal is probably either going to be impression share so that you can
Speaker:get a lot of the searches for it.
Speaker:You get a lot more of that share of impressions.
Speaker:Or it's going to be number one position you can bid for that,
Speaker:or it's going to be clicks.
Speaker:It it's possible that you may go for conversions, but sometimes when you're
Speaker:starting out, you may not want to start with the go after conversions
Speaker:bidding type, because the campaign is going to optimize for conversions.
Speaker:And you're going to spend the first couple of weeks or months
Speaker:just tuning the campaign.
Speaker:So it may not be optimal quite yet.
Speaker:And you can switch the bidding type, but usually impression share, rank top
Speaker:one position, or maximize clicks is usually where I go with in the bidding.
Speaker:Uh, this is my, where I'm going.
Speaker:Now, let's say you're, you're a couple of weeks in and you're
Speaker:like, okay, I want to audit this.
Speaker:Make sure it's running well.
Speaker:Look for low impressions, look for keywords again that are not the right fit.
Speaker:If you're running at a budget, that's telling you that you have
Speaker:some keywords, especially if you have a keyword, that's soaking up all
Speaker:the impressions or all the clicks.
Speaker:You may want to break that keyword up.
Speaker:So let's say you have one keyword and you have, let's say there's 50,
Speaker:but you have one keyword that has all the like 99% of the impressions and
Speaker:clicks consider that if it's like a two tail, meaning there's two words
Speaker:in that keyword, Bill's Plumbing.
Speaker:Consider, well, let's add a keyword or two or three or four to it.
Speaker:Maybe look at your search terms, report.
Speaker:Look in there to see what other keywords could you add to the Bill's Plumbing,
Speaker:you know, to get it to be a better match.
Speaker:And it could be Bill's Plumbing, Los Angeles.
Speaker:It could be Bill's Plumbing, 24-hour.
Speaker:Bill's Plumbing, drains.
Speaker:Bill's Plumbing repair.
Speaker:You know, if you're add another word to it, it can
Speaker:lower the impressions, but it can make it much more specific
Speaker:what people are looking for.
Speaker:So that's a little strategic and a little, not a hundred
Speaker:percent of the time it will work.
Speaker:But if you have all the impressions being soaked up by one
Speaker:keyword, it's usually not ideal.
Speaker:And it kind of tells you, you need to break it up.
Speaker:If you have too low of impressions.
Speaker:You just your branded keywords just aren't carrying the weight.
Speaker:There's just not enough people searching for it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That tells you that your brand is just not, it's not popular.
Speaker:It's not people aren't searching for it.
Speaker:So are there keywords that people are searching for now?
Speaker:If you, if you're like, yes.
Speaker:And they're branded, add them in, right.
Speaker:Or create a new ad group for them.
Speaker:If the answer's no.
Speaker:They're not branded, then that's a non-branded campaign.
Speaker:And non-branded campaigns typically have that wonderful virtue of having tons of
Speaker:more impressions that you can go after, so that you don't have that problem in there.
Speaker:Now, obviously those people could be in the top of the middle of the funnel.
Speaker:So you lose that quality part, but you get the quantity, right?
Speaker:Like I mentioned in the beginning.
Speaker:Now there's other things too, like if your budget's running out, look at the time of
Speaker:day that your ads are running and spending money, you may want to tighten the times
Speaker:that the ads are running so that they're only running when you're in business.
Speaker:Midnight may not be when people are answering the phones anyway,
Speaker:uh, it could be that your ads are running, not even close to where
Speaker:your business is or does business.
Speaker:If you're a business that does, you know, only local and your ads
Speaker:running in a state, four states away, soaking up budget, probably a waste.
Speaker:Tighten things like that, your time of day, your locations.
Speaker:If your keywords are broad, maybe, and they're getting too many, your
Speaker:budgets running out, consider changing them to phrase or exact, because
Speaker:that will lower your impressions, but increase the quality generally.
Speaker:So let's see, what other things that people that come up?
Speaker:Oh yeah, so quality score.
Speaker:After your campaigns run for a while.
Speaker:Google's going to say, okay, you thought these are branded terms, didn't you?
Speaker:This is what happens.
Speaker:And it could be that some of the terms you're using happen
Speaker:to be non-branded to Google.
Speaker:In which case you may see.
Speaker:The landing page experience, when people get there is low.
Speaker:Meaning when people get there, they don't do anything, they leave, they bounce.
Speaker:So that's going to destroy your landing page experience, which is one element
Speaker:of the quality score that Google has.
Speaker:Another thing that might be happening is the click through
Speaker:rates just aren't as good.
Speaker:And you're like, well, why is that?
Speaker:That could be your copy.
Speaker:I could be your terms.
Speaker:It could be a lot of things.
Speaker:You have this, maybe they're non-branded terms.
Speaker:But sometimes I look at the copy for that, um, first to see if
Speaker:like my ad is conveying the right message for this type of person
Speaker:who's searching for this keywords.
Speaker:And then it could be fixed right there and then the relevance.
Speaker:So all of that right.
Speaker:Comes into play right as the landing page relevant is the ad copy relevant to
Speaker:the keywords, it all has to be aligned.
Speaker:In which case it could lower your quality score.
Speaker:If you're looking at your keywords, it'll tell you quality score at a rank 1 to 10.
Speaker:Now, anything below six is probably, if it doesn't have a lot of
Speaker:impressions, it probably just needs more time or generally, or if it is
Speaker:getting impressions, it's probably anchoring your campaign down.
Speaker:That means that the campaign is not performing as well, because
Speaker:Google doesn't think you're a good fit for those keywords.
Speaker:It doesn't think you're relevant.
Speaker:It doesn't think you have anything to do with those keywords, that you can't
Speaker:have anyone who has, who types that in, you're not a good fit for helping them.
Speaker:So either you have to make a new ad group for them dedicated
Speaker:specifically for those keywords.
Speaker:You should prove to Google, yes, I can.
Speaker:And here I'm going to take an extra push to do it.
Speaker:Or you just have to remove them, pause them, remove them from your campaign.
Speaker:Cause they're just weighing you down.
Speaker:Think of it like the six month goal, is to have a campaign with ad groups
Speaker:that have keywords that have high quality scores that have high click
Speaker:rates, low cost per clicks, high landing page experience, and that you're
Speaker:converting and that you're selling.
Speaker:That's the goal.
Speaker:Yeah, there's a lot of parts there, a lot of pieces there to,
Speaker:to focus on, um, to get it right.
Speaker:And the last thing I'll talk about is the extensions with branded paid search.
Speaker:Yeah, jam extensions in there, but they, every extension you may want
Speaker:to consider adding extensions that fit the branding campaign element.
Speaker:Even extensions need to be relevant.
Speaker:Right, or Google's just not going to show them.
Speaker:So make sure that anything you're putting in there are relevant.
Speaker:If you're going to put a call number, extension.
Speaker:I'm speaking from experience, and we're a call tracking company.
Speaker:Sometimes the people who see a phone number right on the screen,
Speaker:will just call it right away.
Speaker:And if you, if your keywords are bringing in people who are not
Speaker:quality, you're sometimes going to just get a ton of phone calls that
Speaker:have nothing to do with your business.
Speaker:And it's a ton of waste of time.
Speaker:Phone calls are great, but they are costly, right?
Speaker:You want to make sure that these callers are not wasting your time.
Speaker:Right, if you, if you have to weed through 10 calls, just to get to a
Speaker:good one, that's a huge waste of time.
Speaker:So it's not always the case to put extensions in.
Speaker:So think thoughtfully, right.
Speaker:But put extensions in, generally, as long as you've thought it through and it makes
Speaker:sense for this campaign, put them in and then over time, if you realize they're
Speaker:not working, you can always remove them.
Speaker:And it's no skin off your back.
Speaker:So let's just recap everything.
Speaker:The advantages of a branded paid search campaign are vast.
Speaker:They can often be higher performing, lower cost, more efficient, generate your goals
Speaker:that you're after conversions or sales at a much better efficiency than any other
Speaker:campaign that I know of because they're targeting the bottom of funnel audience.
Speaker:That audience that typically has a much better fit, much higher
Speaker:purchase intent, is ready to go.
Speaker:So it's the marketing dream, right?
Speaker:It's the sales dream of being able to talk to just the people who are
Speaker:lined up in line, ready to buy.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So there's a lot of benefits there.
Speaker:There's the opportunities for your business there?
Speaker:I think you should take a look at this.
Speaker:See if a branded campaign isn't already running.
Speaker:If it isn't consider running it right.
Speaker:If it is running, look at it again, evaluate it, see if it can be improved.
Speaker:Experiment with it and make sure you're tracking your conversions.
Speaker:Make sure you're tracking everything in marketing.
Speaker:Otherwise it's pointless to run it because you don't know whether it's doing well.
Speaker:If I should put more budget in it or if I should take budget
Speaker:and put it somewhere else.
Speaker:You want a very vast margin of profit from this and it's gotta make sense.
Speaker:No one wants to spend money, that's just wasted here.
Speaker:Where it's gotta make sense.
Speaker:Branded campaigns often do make sense, but you still want to know.
Speaker:The end of the day, what's working, what's not.
Speaker:And then let them make sure your campaigns are running for a good
Speaker:length of time so that the results are large enough that you can be confident
Speaker:enough in whether it's working or not.
Speaker:If it's something you've tried in the past and you're like, it never worked.
Speaker:I had an agency do it.
Speaker:I had people do it.
Speaker:It's just never worked something about it didn't work.
Speaker:That that doesn't necessarily mean that it will never work.
Speaker:It's just worth considering again, whether it's going to
Speaker:be for you and your business.
Speaker:I think I've tackled and covered a lot of this.
Speaker:If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
Speaker:I'm on LinkedIn.
Speaker:You can find us on the web, on our webpage.
Speaker:You can ask me about branded campaigns.
Speaker:If you need any help with it, I also do a consulting for this, so I've
Speaker:run into a lot of accounts that have quite a lot of branded campaigns.
Speaker:I can sniff them out.
Speaker:I can help them work better than they are.
Speaker:So anything like that?
Speaker:Let me know again, thank you for listening.
Speaker:I really appreciate it.
Speaker:I'm excited to talk about this stuff.
Speaker:This is an episode I'm doing solo because it's just a passionate topic.
Speaker:I love the paid search channel.
Speaker:So again, thank you.
Speaker:And I'll see you again.
