Keyword research is a crucial part of your paid search strategy. Separating keywords into brand and non-brand keywords is one way to categorize them and make the process more manageable.
Aside from that, knowing which is which helps in showing areas for improvement. For example, perhaps your brand keywords are bringing in a certain demographic of learners. You can dig deeper into that and see if there’s a potential market that you can incorporate into the rest of your campaigns.
That way you can fine-tune each keyword for their most optimized form, eliminating waste and cost. Some of the items you should look out for in each keyword include:
- Rankings
- Impressions
- Traffic
- Conversions
Non-brand Keywords
One of the biggest problem with marketing in this age—digital marketing and advertising, to be precise—is how everything is now just a click away. Moreover, audiences have evolved to have shorter attention spans.
This means people will click on the number one thing they see when searching for something. In fact, around 25% of people click on the first link they see on the Google search results page.
Non-brand keywords are for when people are still unsure of what they’re looking for. Examples for this can be as general as “cooking classes” or “French cuisine culinary class near me.”
You need to be precise in positioning your ads for maximum effect. Remember that you want to get the first bite not just for higher conversions but also since it sets the baseline for learners when they research other brands. You tend to stick to their minds when you’re the first one that they see.
Branded keywords
On the other side of it are branded keywords. These queries make up only 10% of all searches. However, that doesn’t mean that you should focus on non-brand keywords. Why?
One thing: protection. The searcher already knows and might be invested in what your company can offer. That’s half of the journey right there. They might even be at the very edge of conversion the moment they look up your company on Google. You don’t want potential learners clicking away to a competitor’s page when they’re searching for yours
Bidding on branded keywords matter, whether or not your company is big. See the example below in how one of the biggest MOOC, edX, has an ad for the name of their company in Google search.
Combining the two
However, with all things in marketing, one’s budget is limited. You need to balance out how much you’re diverting resources for branded ads and on organic ones.
There are lots of ways on how to go about this. For one, improve your ads’ quality score for higher chances of shooting at the top. Another thing is making sure that your landing page is functional and engaging. These methods not only help you attain more leads, but they also lower the overall cost of your campaigns.
Long story short, from the very first query up to the conversion page, your ad strategies should be in harmony. Make the customer journey as seamless as possible in order to lose as few leads as possible along the way.
