Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 19 - Brand campaigns

Picture this. 

You're on your computer, you go to Google, and you search for Disney+.

You see an ad for Disney+, followed by an organic result for Disney+, and to the right, the knowledge panel box about Disney+. 

Why would they do that, place an ad on their own name? Do you need to do that too? Should you run a brand campaign in Google Ads? 

I can't wait to talk about it. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for other brands at Google, and now I work for you. This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 19, Brand Campaigns. 

And be sure to stay tuned until the end of the episode, where I'll share this week's Insider Challenge for you to solve. 

Our first question comes from April Rainbolt on Threads, and they ask about running a Brand campaign so that competitors don't. What's your advice on that? Do we really need a Brand campaign? 

Well, April, you don't need a Brand campaign, but it's a good idea. 

Let's back up a step. 

What do we mean when we say a Brand campaign in Google Ads? A Brand campaign is when you advertise on your own brand name, or when people are searching for your brand. 

So in the example from the beginning of the episode, which is a real example I did just before hitting record, I searched for Disney+, and then I saw an ad for Disney+, above the organic result for Disney+. So that means that Disney is advertising on the Branded Search “disney+.” 

This is different from a Competitor campaign. That would be like if I had searched for Netflix but then saw an ad for Disney+. That would be Disney advertising on their competitor's brand name. 

So should you advertise on your brand name? 

Well, it may be a good idea if your competitors are advertising on your brand name because it's a way to try to drive them out. Of course, your Quality Score on your own brand will be much higher than your competitor's Quality Score on your brand, because they're not allowed to put your brand name in their ad text, whereas, of course, you are.

But there are some things you need to be careful about. 

For example, when was this? Gosh, more than a decade ago, when Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobby Kristina Brown, unfortunately died, everyone was Googling Bobby Brown, and what showed up? An ad for the makeup company Bobbi Brown. 

So there are a few instances like that where you may need to be careful about advertising on your brand name, but for most businesses, that shouldn't be an issue. 

Now, what if your competitors are not advertising on your brand name, and you don't have any reputational issues to worry about. Should you still run a Brand campaign? 

In my opinion, yes, because to advertise on your own brand is really cheap. 

Again, you're exactly what people are searching for. They're likely going to click on it. Some people will say it's not necessary to do so because your organic result will show up first. And again, in this Disney+ example, if there was no Disney ad, I still would have seen the Disney organic result right away, plus that knowledge panel on the side as well. Both of those things would be free to Disney if I clicked, whereas they have to pay if I click on their ad. 

But in my opinion, that marginal cost is worth it to make sure people can find what they need as quickly and easily as possible. 

Again, you can't control your organic results. They can change at any time, especially with all the AI craziness going on in some Google search results right now. So I believe it's more important than ever to advertise on your brand name, whether or not there are competitors present in that auction. 

Now remember, just because you don't have a specific Brand campaign, meaning a search campaign with your brand keywords in it, it doesn't mean you're not advertising on your brand.

If you're running Performance Max and you haven't explicitly excluded it, you are definitely advertising on your brand. 

And if you're running Dynamic Search ads and you haven't explicitly excluded your brand, again, you are definitely advertising.

Even if you're running a Non-brand Search campaign, even with Phrase or Exact match keywords, you still could end up advertising on searches for your brand, especially because, of course, those will drive up the ROAS (or drive down the CPA) of the campaign, depending which bid strategy you chose. 

So long story short, if you don't want to advertise on your brand, be sure you're checking your Search Terms Report in Search campaigns and your Search Themes Report in Performance Max to see if brand is sneaking in there. 

Before we get to our next question, I have one request for you. Today is my birthday. Yes, happy birthday to me! And the only birthday present I would love is if you could take 10 seconds to leave a review. 

Even if it's just tapping five stars or a thumbs up in whatever program you're using to listen to this or watch this, I really appreciate you taking a few moments to leave a review for Inside Google Ads. 

Our next question comes from himank_bisht on Instagram, and they ask, Should we use Exact Match keywords in a Brand campaign? 

My answer to this has recently changed. And if you listen to my Match Types episode, you'll know that. 

I used to say that Phrase Match was sufficient for your brand because we'll capture all variations of people searching for your brand. But now, I do advise using Exact Match keywords in a Brand campaign. 

Even if you do so, you're going to want to check that Search Terms Report carefully, especially for the first month or so that the Brand campaign is live, to ensure that other things aren't sneaking in there. 

Remember, an Exact Match keyword means the user’s search must match the meaning or intent of your keyword. It no longer means that the user’s search must exactly match your keyword. 

Another option is to use Broad Match with Brand Restrictions. This is a relatively new feature in Google Ads. It came out about a year ago, I'll say. And the idea is that you can use Broad Match keywords in a Brand campaign, but in the campaign-level settings, you add something called a Brand Restriction.

You let Google know what your brand is. If Google doesn't already have your brand as part of its knowledge graph, you can request it to be added there. And that'll let you serve on all different kinds of searches for your brand, kind of taking advantage of Broad Match while restricting it to people looking for your brand. 

I will say that I have not personally used this feature yet. I haven't had the opportunity to do so yet, but I've spoken to some industry colleagues who say it does drive promising results. Surprising, but good. 

One more thing I'll say is that nowadays, your bid strategy and your budget can be more important than your match type to determine your targeting because of how match types have loosened. 

So in your Brand campaign, some people prefer to use Manual CPC and set it to like a Max CPC of $1 to ensure they keep CPCs down. That may work for you. I generally prefer to start with Max Conversions or Max Conversion Value because I do want to take that “propensity to convert” into account with my bid strategy. 

And if I'm on one of those strategies and I find that the CPCs just seem too high, it's usually because there's another issue going on, like matching to irrelevant search terms. But one of the ways to fix that could potentially be changing to a Target bid strategy or going back down to Manual. 

No right or wrong way to do that, so I recommend you test to see what works best for you. But all that to say, if you're just getting started with a Brand campaign, then Exact Match keywords may be a great place to start. 

If you need a refresher on how match types work or the difference between your Google Ads campaign types, you should head on over to the episode description and check out my course, Google Ads for Beginners. Stop guessing, start advertising with 40 short, digestible lessons with me to get you ready to launch your first Google Ads campaign. 

Our third question comes from an anonymous user on TikTok. And they ask, but will it increase the cost per conversion? This is in response to a clip I posted from Episode 12. That was about, you know, should you exclude brand keywords from a Dynamic ad group? That was one of the 10 questions I answered in special Episode 12. 

And so, my response was, yes, you should probably exclude your brand from Dynamic ad groups. And so they said, but will that increase my cost per conversion? 

Well, yes, non-brand clicks are going to cost more than brand clicks, and non-brand clicks are going to convert at a lower rate than your brand clicks. So put together, yes, it will have a higher CPA. But if you only ever advertise on your brand, you're not going to grow. 

In fact, in the last episode, Episode 18, we talked about how a lower CPA isn't always better and a higher ROAS isn't always better. There's a trade-off between reach and efficiency. 

Your CPA may go down, down, down, down, down, but you know what? That means you're not reaching new people. You're not growing your business. And over time, you're going to run out of people to reach because you're going to run out of people who are already searching for your business. 

So yes, if you exclude brand keywords from a Dynamic ad group, your CPA will probably go up, but so will your overall revenue. And it's up to you to take a look at your profitability to see if that trade-off is worth it for your business. 

So do you need to run a Brand campaign in Google Ads? No, but it's probably a good idea.

If you have no competition, your clicks will be so cheap that you might as well spend the pennies to get the dollars. And if you do have competition, all the more reason to invest and protect your brand. 

Now, I know there are folks in the industry who think it's a scam that you need to pay to ensure your own brand shows up on Google when people are searching for you. 

I'm not going to dive into the ethics or implications of that because honestly, it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I mean, of course, your feelings matter. I don't want to invalidate you. But in terms of campaign success and business success, this is the way it works. You can get with the program or get left behind. 

Tough love, but you have to hear it somewhere. 

As we near the end of Episode 19, it's Insider Challenge time. 

Today's challenge is simple. Your client is a small business who's getting started with Google Ads. Do you run a Brand campaign or not? Why or why not? What do you consider?

You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode's challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem-solving. 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.  

The last episode's challenge was about what you would do if your CPCs were in the $3 to $5 range and your friend who runs a business in the same industry told you their CPCs are under $1. Do you fire your Google Ads freelancer? 

Since we've spent this episode talking about Branded Search, that's a great place for me to start my answer. 

If your friend's CPCs are under a dollar, whether that's a Search campaign or Performance Max campaign or even a Video campaign, they are either advertising on their brand name, advertising to remarketing audiences, or both. 

While not impossible, it is highly, highly, highly unlikely that they are bringing in new customers at a cost per click of less than a dollar. Not in 2024. 

The second thing I'll say ties into what we discussed in Episode 18, Metrics that Matter. Your CPCs are not a metric that matters. Your business results matter, your efficiency and your reach. 

For efficiency, you are likely optimizing for a specific CPA or a specific ROAS. If you're hitting your goal, your CPC does not matter.

For reach, you are likely optimizing for a conversions or revenue or profit goal, not a website traffic goal - which is what clicks are, the visits to your website. 

So again, CPC does not matter if you're getting sufficient reach at sufficient efficiency. 

Now, if you're working with a good freelancer, which I hope you are, feel free to bring this concern to them. They should take the time to show you what you're investing in and why your CPCs cost what they do. 

If you are not getting the results you desire, the CPC itself is not the problem, but an indicator of what the core problem may be. 

For example, poor ad creative, incorrect targeting, or a plethora of other things that can drive up CPCs. But the CPC itself is not the thing to optimize for. 

What do you think? Did I miss something important? 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.  

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

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