Paid Search Marketing For Branded Terms, A Slippery Slope SEO and PPC are a match made in heaven, right? Not so fast, my friend...	Visited: 2212 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Adam Henige January 21, 2009

I got involved in a discussion board thread today where someone was lauding the success of their branded PPC campaign. The clickthrough rate was through the roof! Turns out, they had a 22 percent CTR since starting up the campaign. That sounds great, doesn't it? But what if you're already ranked number one organically? Is it really worth it to be paying for clicks as well? It seems in some instances, the answer to that question is yes. But that study was done with Honda in the ridiculously competitive car industry. We're not all swimming in those waters, and it's important to remember that. I think this is a great copout for agencies and internal marketing groups who are knowingly or unknowingly trying to grab as many marketing dollars as possible with logic such as, "Look how well our branded terms converted last month!" The correct response here is skepticism. "So?" This is when you need to start asking them some tough questions.

• So for our branded terms, aren't we already ranked number one organically?
• How many companies are competing with us for our own branded terms?
• Since we've started running the PPC campaign, are we getting more traffic from branded terms?
• Do the PPC ads convert better than the organic traffic?

If the answers to these questions are

• Yes
• None or not many
• No
• No

then it's time to hit the brakes. Shut down the branded terms immediately and compare your results without pay per click. If your conversions stay the same, I'm sorry to tell you that your PPC campaign has been ruining the ROI of every one of your conversions. Give a good hard look at your PPC campaigns folks, it can be easy to inflate a campaign but to what end? Trying to get a positive ROI on a campaign just for the sake of having a PPC campaign is bad marketing. If SEO has your branded terms handled, step back, and start re-thinking how paid search can fit into your marketing plan (or if it has to at all).