Common Mistakes in Brand Protection Campaigns in Google Ads

In the competitive landscape of digital marketing, running a well-structured brand protection campaign in Google Ads is critical to safeguarding your brand's visibility and ensuring that competitors do not poach your traffic. The primary goal of a brand protection campaign is to ensure that your brand or website appears as prominently as possible when users search for it—ideally in the top position—thereby attracting traffic to your site and minimizing the potential success of competitors who might be bidding on your brand terms.

However, one of the most common mistakes I encounter when auditing accounts is the use of the wrong bidding strategies for such campaigns. Many advertisers choose bidding methods like "Maximize Conversions" or "Target ROAS" for brand protection campaigns. While these strategies can be effective in many scenarios, they are often detrimental to the goals of brand protection.

1. Why "Maximize Conversions" and "Target ROAS" Are Not Ideal for Brand Protection

When you're competing for brand-related search queries, using bidding strategies like "Maximize Conversions" or "Target ROAS" can lead to suboptimal performance. These strategies focus heavily on bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) users who are most likely to convert, as identified by the algorithm. As a result, you risk losing impressions to competitors because the algorithm may not bid aggressively enough to maintain a dominant share of voice for your brand searches.

Some may argue that Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to recognize a brand query and bid accordingly. While this is true to some extent, it doesn't guarantee full coverage of all brand searches, especially in highly competitive markets where multiple advertisers might be bidding on your brand terms.

In my experience, a more reliable bidding method for brand protection campaigns is to use Search Impression Share with a minimum threshold of 90%. This approach ensures that your brand appears in the vast majority of searches, even when competitors are bidding on the same keywords. Additionally, it's crucial to allocate a sufficient budget to outbid competitors when necessary.

2. Budget Allocation: The Overlooked Factor

Another issue I often come across is the allocation of a disproportionately small budget for brand protection campaigns. Many advertisers assume that, since the cost-per-click (CPC) is typically lower for branded terms, a minimal budget—sometimes less than 10% of the overall account budget—will suffice. However, this approach can backfire.

When the algorithm analyzes your budget relative to your competitors’, it determines how aggressively to bid in auctions. Even if your CPC is lower for branded terms, the algorithm needs to know that you have the financial capacity to outbid competitors consistently. Underfunding this campaign can result in lost impressions and traffic, ultimately weakening your brand’s dominance in search results.

Therefore, it’s essential to allocate a sufficient budget to your brand protection campaign to ensure that you win auctions against competitors every time.

3. Misleading ROAS Metrics: A Word of Caution

I often see PPC experts showcasing high ROAS figures, proudly displaying screenshots of their accounts as proof of their success. But upon closer inspection, a significant portion of these sales often comes from branded search terms, especially for businesses with established brand recognition and a high volume of brand searches.

If you remove the sales generated from branded searches, the actual profitability of their campaigns may be far less impressive. This creates a misleading narrative for clients, who might believe the campaigns are performing well when, in reality, the non-branded campaigns could be underperforming.

It’s important to be transparent with clients about the performance of both branded and non-branded campaigns and not to rely solely on branded search performance as a measure of overall success.

These are just some of the key issues I have observed in the past decade regarding brand protection campaigns. I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic—what challenges have you faced in running such campaigns, and what strategies have worked for you?

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