If you answered yes, then I have a something for you to ponder:

Most businesses invest in building their brand, right? After all, you want your brand to be top of mind when people are ready to buy something you’ve got.

Whether that’s a product or a service, if the potential new customer has grown to associate your brand with the thing they want, it’s time to celebrate. Yes?

Maybe not. Well, not yet.

Here’s some facts:

When a potential customer thinks about buying something, they want find out where and how to buy that thing.

They may not always know.

They may look online to find the closest store.

Or they might want to look up your brand website.

According to Google data, 46% of product buying journeys START online, so this is a very common port-of-call for the average consumer. It NOT true that all those people suddenly just turn up in your shop to buy.

“Let’s just look up where that store is”, or “let’s just check the price of that thing” is what they’re thinking.

The average consumer is also a little time poor, so actually it’s unlikely they type in your brand’s exact web address in the browser – even less likely if your brand is a long name (think “apple”, who doesn’t know it and know how to spell it?). More likely what they do is start typing your Brand Name… “A..B..C..corp..” in the Google search window and hit Search.

This exact action described above is a Search. It’s NOT a direct hit into your website. The user finds a search result, and with any luck, your Brand is the #1 result.

BUT…

On the same Google search page about 95% or more of the links presented by Google do NOT go to your website. There is a solid chance that the user gets distracted and doesn’t end up on your site at all. Google works hard to make sure that Ads are clicked as much as possible, so if you are betting that the user clicks your organic result, well think who you’re betting against!

AND…

The top result on the search page might even be an Ad for your competitor. Google wins.

AND, there could be up to 3 Ads above your organic result. Google wins more.

Now think of it this way:

You may have invested $500,000 or more in brand awareness over time. It’s not uncommon for corporations to spend much more than that every year.

You may have invested that money in Radio. Or TV. Or it could have been across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, how about YouTube? Or have about Display ads?

ALL of that investment is about building your brand.

And maybe 46% of the users you reached, may type their search into Google to find and connect with you.

And some of those users WILL click on the 95% of other links (including Ads) in the search page.

Remember: Google wins. They engineered their entire experience to keep winning. Make no mistake. This is how they are funded and earn over US$380M per day, by intercepting and preventing as many organic clicks as possible.

So now you have a challenge.

You need to prevent as many users as possible from clicking on links in search that are not for your brand’s website.

Here’s the most effective immediate fix:

Run your own Ads on your own Brand and muscle in so that you maintain the #1 Ad position.

Yes, Google wins. Told you so. But here’s the good news:

First Bonus: When you run Ads on your own Brand, it’s waaay cheaper for you to do that than it is for your competitor to do so. This is because Google gives you a concession for matching Ads exactly to your Brand. Your competitor is not allowed to mention your brand in the Ads, nor can they use a website with your brand name. Clicks could cost them 10x more than what they cost you.

Your Brand clicks are the cheapest and your investment to protect those clicks is not likely to be very expensive.

Second Bonus: The people that search for your brand, and then click on your brand ad, are also MOST LIKELY to buy. Therefore, your return-on-investment rate (known as Return On Ad Spend – ROAS) is highest.

Third Bonus, and this one is a biggie: By running Brand Ads, you have protected your Brand and all the investment you made previously. It should be considered as part of your insurance plan.

Imagine if you didn’t do this and 46% of the time when your target market searched for you in Google their potential click was stolen away from you at the last second! All that effort wasted. All that time hoping to convert a user into a customer lost to a competitor!

But let’s be clear, you shouldn’t just be running Ads on Brand and nothing else. That’s not going to work out well at all.

Brand Ads will drive amazing ROAS. I’ve known a lot of clients who wanted to cease other marketing in favour of Brand Ads because of the ROAS, yet you need to realise that Brand Searches are limited by Brand Awareness. It’s not magic. You cannot Grow Brand Awareness with Brand Ads – you can only Protect your clicks. Remember, it’s all that other marketing investment that grew your Brand Awareness.

So, to sum it up, here’s what I think you ought to be doing:

All that marketing investment (time as well as money) that you put into Brand Awareness is precious. Protect it!

Brand Awareness marketing is: Sales Reps, Door to Door, Telesales, Radio, Out Of Home (billboards etc), TV, Website, Display Ads, Videos, Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Newspapers, Fliers, Business Cards and so on and so on. This investment should be protected.

Brand Ads in Google protects your clicks as much as possible, while playing the game that Google wants (Google wins – but so can you).

Saturate into Brand Ads to at least 80%, but 100% is best and often totally doable. i.e. EVERY time someone searches your brand, show them an Ad to protect against click loss. ROAS will be amazing.

Saturate into Products and Services Ads as much as you can afford, so long as it delivers results. 80% saturation is usually about the maximum before costs outweigh benefits. Accept that ROAS isn’t as amazing as Brand Ads.

Saturate into OTHER PEOPLE’S BRANDS at your discretion. These are the most expensive for you to win clicks on – remember, I said the same about your competitor bidding on your brand – same the other way around. You just can’t mention them in your Ads or on your site – that’s illegal. You CAN use their brand name as a keyword for your Ads to trigger. That’s fair game.

Ads that make a loss: Sometimes your ROAS might be negative. i.e. the cost for the Ads outweighs the sales profit from the goods or services. This is NOT necessarily a sign to stop investing in Ads. Think about the Lifetime Value (LTV) of the customer you win and target your Ads to NEW customers as much as you can in that case. You need to have a plan on how to keep that customer and turn them into loyal supporters of your cause and then the value to your business will far outweigh the cost of the Ads.

Well, congrats, you got all the way to the end of my article!

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