Learn the best practices for setting up Google Search Ads campaigns for your branded keywords, also known as Google Brand Campaigns. This expert guide will cover all of the best ways you should bid on your own brand as a keyword and setup a successful campaign that is profitable, and cuts out wasted spend.

Quick Summary:

1. Use Phrase and Exact Match (broad match will match to NOT your brand)

2. Use Manual CPC (auto bidding could lack data and stop showing as often because lack of conversions/clicks, even when you want to always show for your own brand and Target Impression Share will spend more than it should)

3. Don’t Show in Search and Display at the same time – they are very different campaign options

4. Review your Search terms – even branded campaigns can have irrelevant searches

Our Google Ads Training Course covers much more advanced strategies to help grow ROI from Search campaigns.

Learn more in the video training here:

Video Transcript:

all right in this video uh we want to expand on how to set up a Google search branded campaign so there’s some major things they missed we want to make sure to go through uh because otherwise if you set it up and miss some of the critical settings it’s going to waste a lot of money and it’s not actually going to show for your branded term it’s going to show for the wrong keywords we want to make sure to to add on to that make sure you know all the critical settings you need to put in there for successful Google search branded campaign and uh give you a lot more details uh this is this is from our master class and the online advertisingacademy.com we teach Google search Google display things like that so just uh Google training is our niche so we’ll go ahead and get started and here I give you a very detailed walk through just expand on how to set up a branded campaign so you just go and create your campaign go to new campaign

so this is the first stage uh Google has all kinds of suggestions most of them are pretty stupid and they’re just trying to get them get you to spend more money so you could just do create a goal without uh guidance and then there’s a lot of different campaigns I mean performance Max is really popular right now it just kind of shows everywhere that Google owns doesn’t make any sense I mean they have separate search campaigns display campaigns YouTube campaigns uh or it you can just shove them all into one campaign and it’ll show on display search Youtube Gmail uh it it it’s kind of a mess not a huge fan of performance Max it’s still pretty new it’s buggy some people have success most people uh waste a lot of money so this one is going to be a search campaign uh you there’s other training and it’s pretty basic on how to set up what you’re tracking so if someone fills out a a form or calls you it’s just going to pop up here this is your your basic traffic tracking so we won’t go over that hit continue again just

what’s your goal this doesn’t really matter you don’t have to check it and then you could just do search branded or whatever you want to call it this is an internal name so if you have a newer account uh you may have noticed it defaults to its auto bidding auto bidding can work if it has enough data and there’s lots of conversions coming through but even Google’s own documentation tells you it needs a lot of conversions for the automation to have enough data to work so if you have a newer campaign you you or account you probably notice it defaults to conversions that’s usually not the best one for Branded because you’re only bidding on a handful of keywords for your own name so as it says here you can switch that after the campaign is set up uh I mean manual can still work or automated automated just has to have the right data enough conversions and enough options to rotate through their AI which isn’t necessarily bad but Google pushes it as the only option and manual doesn’t work manual can work you really need to know how to do both if you want to succeed that’s not quite like Facebook or a lot of YouTube with search you can still do manual if if your good leads are coming from a certain place

Google doesn’t know the difference between a garbage lead and a good lead your CRM or maybe hiros or something like that can connect it Google’s automation is just gonna put more money into whatever converts even if it’s bad leads so automation still needs some manual control from from a human or the automation can waste a lot of money on keywords that convert in their system but they don’t actually convert as a new customer or they’re bad leads or something like that so just word of warning with automation it’s not always perfect so we’ll just leave it as a default and I’ll show you how to change it to manual if you want to so click next so one huge thing uh pretty much everybody advises against is to only do the search Network don’t double up because Display Network when you bid on keywords it shows on websites that contain that keyword or keywords related to that keyword or keywords that are similar so with search it has match types you can do phrase match or exact match so I want this exact word uh or something slightly different maybe some words in front or words behind so if you’re doing branded or most search campaigns you’ll want to use phrase and exec whereas display their keywords almost match like broad match or even broader than actual broad match so

Display Network does not match keywords anywhere close to where the search network does if you’re running both they should be two different campaigns mashing them all into one campaign just doesn’t make any sense and of course Google pops up all its warnings that it doesn’t want you to optimize too much they want a certain amount of wasted spin so they make more money so uh just just a rule if Google pops up as a suggestion it’s usually stupid and don’t do it their goal is to make as much money as possible your goal is to spend the least amount of money and get the most amount of results as possible so Google always has a margin of air built in saying hey you should spend more money you should show them more websites you should get more clicks most of these are really stupid just don’t do the Display Network at the same time in the same campaign you can do it in a separate campaign and optimize them differently just don’t combine them that that doesn’t work it’s a mess four locations uh you’d pick wherever you’re targeting but again most of optimizing

Google is changing the defaults the defaults spend as much money as possible that’s why Google’s a billion dollar company you have to outsmart the machine and you have to turn off a lot of the defaults Google suggestions are usually bad you have to know how to do it a different way just like the training with Facebook and Facebook reps say one thing and uh Sam’s training says something else or if you look at any other experts they pretty much say the opposite of what the platform sells because the platform is in their best interest they want to make the most money so getting back to the locations the kind of a sneaky trick they have in here if you expand this you see it defaults to presence or interest so you select the United States it’ll show to people in regularly in or who’ve shown interest in your targeted location of course it says recommended uh this one doesn’t make any sense if you want people located that physically live there you’d want to switch the default so people in or at least regularly in your Target location if you do interested in that that literally means if they read a news article about the United States or the UK or Australia or Africa or or whatever if it’s slightly related to your location you’ll show to people that are physically located in that location so nearly every time you want to switch this default you want to show to people that are actually in the country you picked so you don’t waste a bunch of money languages it’s usually fine to just do English or your default language if your Target demographic is bilingual or trilingual you can put in a couple of different ones

because if people switch back and forth between two languages or their their uh browser setting is different than what they’re currently typing I mean a lot of countries pretty much accepted the United States people speak more than one language um so you can put in more than one language if people flip back and forth it will match the keyword in the if the keyword is in English it’ll match to that just maybe someone flips back and forth between English and French or English and Spanish so it can expand a little bit to show in more languages or uh people that that search in different languages so you don’t necessarily need to leave it as one audience segments this is for if you’re stacking up a search remarketing or different interests and things like that for Branded you don’t have to do that that that’s more they’re called rlsa or remarketing list for search ads that’s that’s search for marketing is is usually why you’d use that that’s a little more complicated uh add rotation uh again this is a default if you’re going to manually optimize them you can you can do do not optimize so just rotate and definitely telling Google I don’t want you to optimize with with your algorithm I’m going to optimize them myself where did my sales come from where are my good leads coming from where’s the profit coming from not what ad is getting the most clicks so that’s why you

would actually switch that that one’s uh a little bit trickier so uh it just with the way it’s worded but that’s just saying you’re going to optimize it yourself not auto rotate and then jumping into more settings uh the start date that’s if you want to start on a specific time it’s good to just leave it running for Branded 24 7 is fine uh it especially if you’re International or they could really search your brand name anytime and learn more even if it’s 2 A.M that’s not necessarily bad campaign URL options this is a third party tracking stuff so it if you’re using you know hiros or something else they’ll tell you how to put in all this random code at the end of it and it throws it on there for third-party tracking and software and all this other stuff that’s it just throws it onto the end of the URL to send info somewhere else but if you don’t have that then just don’t worry about it the the third party track tracking will explain what to do here Dynamic search ads uh that’s almost e-commerce or like a used car place if

you’re constantly rotating different inventory that changes a lot it can dynamically scrape it and and rotate that so that doesn’t make any sense for Branded but just that’s what that is so you know so next one keywords this is critical most people get this wrong and it wastes a ton of money so when you go through you’d want to do phrase match uh which we have training on it or there’s a lot of training on it different match types of broad phrase and exact it’s pretty much in quotes so uh we’ll put in ours here

so for Branded especially actually most of Google search you’ll do phrase match which is the word in quotes or exact match which is the word in bracket now this is critical for explain match or uh excuse me uh branded that you do phrase match and exact match because you want to bid for your exact name when people Google your exact name if you don’t do this and you just put in

Broad match like that Google will match to uh things related to that in a similar category so online advertising Academy was phrase match would be some words in front of it or some words uh behind it so like website or course or official website or whatever and exact match is pretty much going to be that it does slight variations now because Google has uh close variant updates so it it’ll do plural it’ll do misspellings it’ll do slightly different than these but pretty much it’s going to go for those with uh broad match that’s going to go to those are slightly related to it so online advertising Academy could be Academy of advertising which is somebody else it could be Google skill shop it could be Google uh Google training it could be how to learn online ads what are online ads how much are online ads uh advertising online how to advertise online and so on it’s going to match for a bunch of random stuff those aren’t necessarily bad but if it’s a branded campaign it needs to stay a branded campaign and show up for your exact name and nothing else that’s why you do phrase match that’s why you do exact match you can put a couple other variations in here so something like that online advertising Academy course or website or something like that phrase match should catch all the variations you can just

watch in your search terms report but you can put a few more variations and you know here’s Google’s stupid pop-up again upgrade your keywords to Broad match it’s not an upgrade it’s a severe downgrade and it says do smart bidding and you’ll get a better Roi they’re just making things up I don’t even know why they put things in here when when you when you do broad match it’s gonna match for so many random slightly related words or not related at all so it’s not an upgrade most of the time it’s a terrible idea or if you do do it with automated bidding you have to watch it extremely closely and constantly add negative keywords so you want to uh Focus your keywords extremely specific for a branded campaign if you want to do other ones uh things that are related to it like uh online advertising training or how to learn Google ads something like that you’d still probably probably do phrase and exact because you you

want to keep it close to what you’re actually bidding on especially branded stick to exact and phrase as far as the ad a quick side note add strength it’s kind of like quality score I mean some people say that it can affect it for the most part it doesn’t it’s just saying add more headlines include keywords make headlines unique make descriptions unique and your ad strength goes up if your ad strength goes up that means your ad strength goes up it doesn’t really affect uh I mean different clicks or conversions or profit it’s it’s just Google just kind of makes up metrics that like optimization score or add strength that gets you to spend more money and do exactly what they tell you to do they’re not really real metrics you need to always focus on Roi how many leads how many leads are turning into sales how much money are you making these other stupid metrics uh you can kind of ignore them so we’ll just fill this in real quick this would be your url since it’s branded you can go to your home page or

maybe you have a product page on the website itself that talks about your course or scheduling a call you can go back to the original landing page like if you have it through click funnels or something you could really test either one I mean since they are Googling your name they’ve probably already heard about you and seen your landing page maybe even they’ve been to your click funnels landing page and didn’t convert so you can send them to your home page or about us page or testimonials page because they’re clearly Googling you to research your company and then uh let’s scroll down here as far as the headlines um I mean this is debated a lot the new ad format you put in a bunch of different headlines and it rotates through them automatically uh if you want more control over what your ad shows you can just do the three minimum and use this pin feature so pin to position one meaning this will always show in position one which in this case I want the brand online advertising Academy to

always be the first thing that shows I don’t want that rotated and then these two maybe I can rotate or do one or two other options to see what works or you can pin the entire thing if you want um just go position one two and three so it’ll always show like that because it does cut off headline three sometimes if it doesn’t have room you can see it over here in the mobile view it does have that but if you want to control exactly what it looks like you can do that if it has enough traffic it’ll rotate through a bunch of headlines and pick the winner but it doesn’t really give you data on what headline worked and what headline do didn’t so a lot of people prefer to just do one two and three pin them all so it’s more like the old ad formats before they got rid of it uh this this past summer in in 2022 so you can do the same thing with descriptions if you don’t want them to rotate because again the second one doesn’t always show you can just

pin it pin it position one pin to position two uh and it you can just control exactly how it shows you don’t have to do four descriptions or eight different headlines you can just do the basics so you have a lot more control over it and again Google doesn’t know the quality of a lead so doing a lot of things manually still makes sense because it might pick an ad that gets a lot of leads but they’re the worst leads and they don’t turn into more money so this is a way to have manual control or you can just not pin it and it’ll rotate through kind of whatever whatever is profitable for you there’s not always a rule you have to do if it makes more sense to pin it or not pin it uh whatever’s working for you so again it’s giving me a poor ad strength because it says add more headlines make them more unique uh whatever that means include popular

keywords I did that again Google’s suggestions are kind of stupid you’ll see that as it pops up in Auto uh optimization score it’s keyword suggestions it does tell you to raise budgets almost almost every time you log in and says it’ll increase your optimization score by 12 percent if you increase your budget they’re just constantly upselling you and most of the suggestions are pretty stupid so learn pretty much anywhere except Google for the best results so site links these are just the links that show up under the ads and then call outs there’s a little bit more info that doesn’t fit inside the ad so I’ll just switch over here to Google so here’s online advertising Academy our brand uh search it it says online advertising Academy get started now so people that want to jump in it’s accelerated learning detail walkthroughs tutorials Roi focus online advertising Academy is in the description which will make it bold if it matches what you searched and then just some more info these are site link extensions so it just

pops up more information under there and goes to a different page so this one goes to the home page we have our search Master Class which will go the search master class and then the workshop which will go to the workshop and we have some other training so these are what site links look like they just take up more real estate definitely do four and do the call outs and do everything else it doesn’t always show them you can see our call outs aren’t showing on here it’s just showing the descriptions it rotates it through it’s best to put all of it in there so when it does hit you take over more of the page so this way you have your out of the top for your brand and then you should show up for organic for your own name there’s our home page there’s the Ys there’s our YouTube and then it starts showing some other things you want to try to rank on here that’s that’s our press release that Falcon digital marketing our parent company um launched this uh and then we’re also that didn’t pop up we had a different news article on there but mainly your own website you want to keep

working on your SEO make sure you pop up here in addition to because you might as well take up as many spots as you can when somebody searches your name or do a company profile it takes a really long time but you end up over here on the right or if you have your address attached to it that’s that’s beneficial as well so that would be site links and call outs uh you can put the phone number on there too if you have somebody picking up uh live calls that it’ll just pop up and people can click on it so the the site site links call outs they call them Assets Now they they used to be called ad extensions it’s the same thing they just change the name for no reason so you just click done and then go to go to next and then your budget you’d want to set this um let me just skip that you’d want to set this pretty high depending on what your budget is I mean thirty dollars a day fifty dollars a day 100 a day something really high to when someone searches your brand you have plenty of budget to show for it if

if you’re starting out kind of small I mean just show up most the time people search for it 10 or 20 dollars again Google says spend more money because you should spend more money I don’t really know where they get this data but just show up for for a high dollar amount so it doesn’t run out of budget when people are searching your actual brand name which is typically some of the highest converting um keywords and things that you can find so just click next on there and then it’ll go through and review everything uh just telling you to spend more money and upgrade to Broad match the worst idea ever and some other things just double check your setup here and once it’s good you can hit publish campaign then the campaign will show up live here this is our test account where we do all our training so we have a bunch in here but it’ll it’ll pop up in your account it won’t be disabled it’ll have it in there and then it’ll show you the ad group so you can double check your keywords everything like that or go to keywords this is where you can add negative keywords if you start popping up for weird terms that aren’t quite your your um your terms there or

go into Search terms report and see what people are actually typing and if there’s something off you can go back into negative keywords and then start adding them in here so it it uh blocks that and we mentioned going into the settings it the newer accounts you may not have this you might it defaults to the bidding is maximized conversions depending on your account setup you could have switched it right at the beginning or you have to come into settings after it’s live or after it’s set up you can keep it paused if you’re just setting it up in the background as a draft but you’ll go into that change your bid setting and uh you’ll go again it recommends uh whatever makes Google the most money so down here there’s or select bid strategy not recommended it it laughable how many things they put in the account get you to spend more money so uh maximize conversions you’ll switch that to manual CPC and then you’ll turn off

enhanced CPC pretty much turn off everything that makes you bid higher and makes you spend more money and makes you show for keywords that aren’t relevant you most of Google is turning off their default settings and ignoring their warnings because their warnings are just trying to get you to spend more money so there’s manual CPC click save which typically this will work better for a branded campaign anyway because you only have a few keywords so when you go into over here uh there’s your options your keywords it’s going to default to a penny uh you can go into the ad group level and change that since you want to bid more than a pin it you took it off automation so it just switches to a penny so you can bid you know a dollar or five dollars or something like that it’s a bit of high amount if someone searches your brand name or something very close to it you want to make sure you always show typically first or second result so you could manually bid you’re still going to show the problem with the automation is you may not get enough conversions and it’ll stop showing you you’ll get less Impressions I mean you only have a few keywords the automation isn’t going to do what it’s designed to do it’s usually if you test broad match or if you have a lot of different keywords in here and you’re testing more generic stuff uh like learn how to learn Google ads or what are the best Google ads course or Google ads training and you’re rotating through you know you have 30 keywords in here the automation can keep

switching bid try this one try that one whatever’s getting conversions put out the top bid more that doesn’t really apply to a branded campaign because you have two maybe five keywords in there total and they’re phrase an exact match so the algorithm can’t rotate through with branded you’re just saying I’m going to bid a really high amount put it at a high budget and anytime someone searches my brand I want to be at the top there’s not really that much to optimize just keep your negative keywords in there keep your um you could do one or two variations of the ad put your brand name in there get started now get a discount learn more about us just something that appeals to someone that searched your exact brand name which is probably they’re kind of concerned they want to learn more about you before they buy so branded campaign is pretty straightforward you just have to put all the settings in there correctly and don’t miss all the advanced settings I otherwise with broad match it’ll waste a lot of money you don’t I’ll go back to that you don’t want to do broad match keywords and it shows to words that are not your brand which

defeats the purpose of doing a branded campaign you want to make sure your settings if you’re already running one that will go to the campaign settings here not the ad group settings if you’re already running one double check your settings for location and make sure it’s set to present so it’s people actually in there not interested in there and then also your networks don’t show on the Display Network at the same time uh that’s you just don’t want to do that set up a separate display campaign the other thing if search Partners start wasting a lot of money you can uncheck that stop showing on Partner sites just only google.com and then switch over to manual CPC most of the time that makes more sense for Branded because there’s only a couple of keywords and you want to always always show for when someone searches your brand and also with the manual control uh you can adjust your device whereas if you’re

Autumn automated bidding you can’t do nearly as much if if mobile campaigns aren’t doing as much you can decrease by 50 percent maybe it’s a lot of accidental clicks or something like that you can only do that with manual CPC with automated bidding you can block it a hundred percent and just not show on there at all if for some reason your your brand gets a lot of mobile clicks maybe it’s fraudulent or something like that or block tablets or you see that it just never converts ever you can block an entire device adjusting bids you know 50 percent lower or uh 30 percent higher or something like that maybe a big boost on computers if it’s if it’s doing a lot better you want to boost the bid all these manual things that you can do based on the quality of lead and based on where sales are coming from that’s in manual CPC that’s why it’s still worth doing automation does work well when it works otherwise you have to take over and manually control and adjust your bids based on your backend data where the good leads who who’s turning into more clients who’s turning into sales what type of Roi you’re getting this it’s a lot more advanced to do manual when automation does not work so we hope this helps expand on Google search for people that aren’t that familiar they want to expand on this to just

give you a a really detailed expert walk through uh just from the online advertising Academy hope this was helpful uh just contact us or send us a message if you have any other questions we have a lot more training on on not just branded how to do actual search campaigns and build out for keywords or display campaigns uh different things like that so just send us a message if you have any questions and we hope this helped you alright everyone thanks so much for watching our PPC ads training video uh if you want more videos go ahead and hit the Subscribe button like this video if you found it useful and any questions post them in the comments down below we also have additional training in the description so thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you in the next video