Branded Search in B2B Advertising: Strategy or Waste?

Transcript

Maelien

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I’m Maelien Halton.

Louis

And I’m Louis Halton Davies

Maelien

If you asked 10 performance marketers for their views on brand search, you’d get about
twelve different opinions.
It’s quite a tricky one to talk about, so for today’s episode we thought we’d tackle it head on.
Should you run branded keywords in a paid search campaign? If so, how much budget
should you apply and – how much credit should it get for driving enquiries?
And the reality, as usual, is… it depends. But we wanted to arm you with plenty of useful
information so you can make an informed decision.

Louis

So, let’s start by defining brand keywords – it’s basically a search that included your
business’s name.
So if you were an accountancy business and your name was numerico accounting.
Accountants would be unbranded
And numerico accountants would be branded
And then competitor search would be a competitors business name followed by accountants.

Maelien

A high number of branded searches is usually a really good sign that paid ads are going to
work well. This is because it’s a proxy for brand awareness and affinity in the market.
The reality is that other marketing channels other than search are what drive brand search
volume.
So things like word of mouth, youtube, tv, social and other types of advertising is where
people first hear about your brand. Then afterwards people go to google and search for you
by name.

This in mind – growth in branded search over time is actually a really good sign that ongoing
brand and demand-gen marketing strategies are working.

Louis

It’s a really important point to remember. Brand search is typically the result of something
else happening. Like Maelie said, people can hear about a brand somewhere and then type
their name into Google – and that compounds over time as a brand grows.
But also, if a piece of content goes viral, or you’re running an influencer marketing campaign
that takes off, you’re also going to see a big and sudden surge in branded searches.
And actually the brand awareness and affinity is very different contextually in both scenarios.
One is longer term and one is a sudden spike.
The first likely has more awareness and affinity and the other has likely only very recently
heard about the brand.
And because of this, in the second scenario you definitely want to be running a branded paid
search campaign – and to lean in hard until it dies back down.

Maelien

But, thinking about it more generally – let’s talk about if you should run branded keywords in
your paid search campaigns.
We always get asked “If people are already searching for our Brand, then isn’t a branded
campaign pointless? Since they were going to come to us anyway”.
And in an ideal world I would say yes. But unfortunately, it’s not an ideal world and
competitors exist!
And it’s become more and more common for businesses to target competitors in their paid
search.
And if competitor campaigns are getting more common, then it’s more likely that your brand
is one of those competitors being targeted.
So, by running brand search campaigns, you’re blocking off a slot that they could have on
your brand name. And reducing the risk that a competitor will steal a potential customer from
you.

Louis

So we’d always advocate for using brand search – as a defensive measure. And we’d also
advocate for using it intentionally too.
By intentionally, I mean a couple of things specifically.
that you have to manually exclude brand keywords from Performance Max and other search
campaigns – otherwise they will go to town on your brand search terms. And you’ll basically
accidentally end up with a brand search campaign masquerading as a performance max
campaign.
On that note, we actually worked with a SaaS company where they had a search campaign
that on the surface looked like it was performing brilliantly, the lowest cost per demo of any
campaign.
But the reality was, 95%+ of the search terms were actually their brand name.
So, we ended up calling it a brand campaign in disguise. And quickly adding brand negatives
to that campaign so it gave a true reflection of how that campaign was performing.
The other really interesting thing from a defensive standpoint is what you can get from the
Auction Insight report.
Because if you’re looking at a brand search campaign specifically – you know that every
competitors listed in the report is bidding on your brand name, – whether on purpose or by
accident. And you can see how aggressively they’re doing it too.and how aggresively they
are doing it.

Maelien

So we’re going to talk about how much budget you should apply to a brand search campaign
very shortly. First-off, I think it’s really important to cover how branded search fits into the
performance picture.
So as a marketer – can you claim enquiries from brand searches as ones that you’ve
generated?
The honest answer is not really.
A good portion of those brand searches will have been activated by marketing originally. But
did they come from the brand search campaign on its own? Probably not.
So you can’t conscientiously claim brand search enquiries as being net new.
But you should be running brand search campaigns.
So how do you handle this in reports?

The main thing is clarity. It’s really important to specify how many enquiries came from brand
search vs other types of search strategy – along with how it affects the overall CPA.
It’s also really important to make sure that your conversion attribution settings aren’t set to
last click – This way the brand doesn’t take all the credit for enquiries that were assisted by
other campaigns.

Louis

Which leads us nicely into how much should we be spending on brand search campaigns?
In my mind – as little as possible. From an agency perspective, I always want the bulk of my
enquiries to be coming in from non-brand search – so that there is a net benefit of working
with us e.g. most of the enquiries that are coming in are ones that wouldn’t have come in
anyway.
But there are a number of schools of thought here.
You might want to keep tabs on your auction insights report just to make sure that your
impression share is always higher than your competitors. E.g. they’re not securing more ad
impressions on your brand name than you are.
It also depends on the strategy that you’re running – so if you were running a full defensive
strategy like target impression share to try and block out competitors as much as possible,
you’d probably set your brand search budget much higher.

Maelien

In short, we very much see paid brand search campaigns as a necessary evil. We don’t
really want to run them, but we also don’t want to lose business to competitors.
If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a follow and leave a review. It really helps us out
.
If you’ve got a focus for 2026 you’d like us to cover, head to webmarketeruk.com/topic and
put it forward for a future episode.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

If you asked ten different performance marketers for their honest opinion on brand search, you would likely get twelve different answers.

It is one of the most debated topics in the industry. It is also a source of constant anxiety for B2B business owners.

The central question is simple. Should you pay for clicks when a user is already searching for your name?

On the surface, it feels counterintuitive.

If someone types your business name into Google, they are clearly looking for you.

Logic dictates they will click your organic listing if you just leave them alone. Paying for that click feels like setting money on fire.

It feels like paying for something you already own.

But the reality of Google Ads is rarely that simple.

The platform is not designed to be fair. It is designed to be profitable for Google and competitive for you.

In this episode of the podcast, Maelien and I decided to tackle this head-on. We unpack the real reasons behind using branded search in B2B advertising, how to stop competitors from stealing your leads, and why your reporting might be lying to you.

What is branded search in B2B advertising?

Before we dive into the strategy, we need to be crystal clear on what we are discussing.

Branded search refers to any search query that includes your unique business name or variations of it.

If you run an accountancy firm called “Numerico”, the search landscape looks like this:

• Non-branded search: A user types in “accountants for small business” or “tax advisors”. They are looking for a service. They do not care who provides it yet. They are in the market, but they are brand agnostic.
• Branded search: A user types in “Numerico accountants” or “Numerico login”. They know exactly who you are. They have navigational intent. They want to find you specifically.
• Competitor search: A user types in the name of your rival followed by a service keyword.

Understanding this distinction is vital.

When you see a high volume of branded search traffic, it is usually a very positive signal. It means your market awareness is high. People know who you are.

However, we need to be honest about where that traffic comes from.

Branded search in B2B advertising is rarely a source of new demand. It is a signal. It is a lagging indicator.

The demand was created elsewhere.

Perhaps a prospect saw your content on LinkedIn. Maybe they heard you on a podcast or saw a YouTube video. Perhaps they met your sales team at a conference.

The search itself is just the mechanism they use to find you again.

It is the digital equivalent of looking up a phone number in a directory after seeing a billboard.

This is why we say growth in branded search is excellent proof that your broader marketing system is working. But the search ad itself did not create the desire.

It merely captured it.

When to use branded search (and when not to)

If the demand already exists, why pay Google to capture it?

In an ideal world, I would tell you not to. I would tell you to rely entirely on your organic SEO listing and save that budget for cold traffic.

Unfortunately, we do not operate in an ideal world.

We operate in a competitive marketplace where your competitors are hungry for your market share.

The defensive play

The primary reason to run branded search in B2B advertising is defence.

Competitors can and will bid on your brand name.

It is a common tactic.

If I am your competitor, I know that people searching for your name are high-intent leads. They are ready to buy. They have done their research.

They are at the bottom of the funnel.

If I can place an ad right at the top of the search results that says “Alternative to [Your Brand]: Cheaper & Faster”, I might just steal that click.

This happens constantly. It is aggressive, but it is allowed.

As Maelien mentioned in the episode, this practice is becoming increasingly common.

If you do not run a branded campaign, you leave that top slot wide open. You are effectively rolling out the red carpet for your rivals to intercept your prospects at the final hurdle.

By bidding on your own name, you block that slot.

You ensure that when someone looks for you, they find you.

There is also a mathematical advantage here. Google uses a metric called Quality Score to determine how much you pay per click.

Because you are the brand owner, your relevance for your own name is 10/10.

This means you pay pennies for these clicks. Your competitors, however, have low relevance. Their Quality Score will be low. This means they have to pay a massive premium to show up on your name.

By running a brand campaign, you force them to pay that premium. You make it expensive for them to attack you.

Capitalising on viral spikes

There is another scenario where branded search becomes essential. This is during moments of high visibility.

If you launch a viral marketing campaign, get featured in major press, or run a heavy influencer push, your branded search volume will spike.

The people searching during these spikes are often different from your usual traffic. They might have only heard your name five minutes ago.

Their intent is fresh, but their loyalty is low.

They are curious, but they are easily distracted.

In these moments, you want to control the narrative completely. You want to ensure they land on a specific page that matches the message they just heard.

If you rely on organic search, they might land on your homepage.

That might be fine.

But what if they land on a generic blog post? Or worse, what if a competitor spots the spike in volume and starts bidding on your name immediately?

In these specific instances, we recommend leaning hard into branded spend until the hype dies down. You need to capture that lightning in a bottle before it escapes.

Branded search attribution in performance marketing

This is where things get messy. Attribution is the silent killer of honest reporting.

Because branded traffic is so high-intent, it converts at a very high rate. The Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) on branded campaigns is usually incredibly low.

This creates a temptation for marketers and agencies.

If I lump your branded results in with your non-branded results, my overall performance looks fantastic. I can show you a blended CPA that looks very efficient.

But this is misleading. It is vanity metrics at their worst.

The “net new” fallacy

You cannot conscientiously claim a branded search enquiry as “net new” business generated by the search channel.

As we discussed, that user was likely activated by something else.

If you use a “last-click” attribution model, the branded search ad takes 100% of the credit for the sale. The LinkedIn post that actually convinced them to buy gets zero credit.

This skews your decision-making.

You might look at the data and see that LinkedIn has a high CPA and Search has a low CPA. The logical decision seems to be cutting the LinkedIn budget and moving it to Search.

This creates a death spiral.

You turn off the demand source (LinkedIn). Suddenly, fewer people know who you are. Fewer people search for your brand.

Your “efficient” search channel dries up.

You have cut off the supply of demand to feed the efficiency engine.

Honest reporting

You must report on branded search in B2B advertising separately.

Your monthly report should have a clear line for “Brand” and a clear line for “Non-Brand” or “Generic”.

This allows you to see the truth.

• Brand campaign: Tells you how well your reputation is holding up. It tells you if your other marketing channels are creating demand.
• Non-brand campaign: Tells you how effective your advertising is at generating new business from cold audiences.

If you blend them, you are flying blind. You are hiding your inefficiencies behind your brand reputation.

We often see agencies report a “Blended ROAS” (Return on Ad Spend).

Be very wary of this.

If the majority of that return comes from people who were already going to buy, the agency is not adding value. They are just taxing your existing customers.

Setting budgets for branded search campaigns

So, how much money should you actually give Google for your own name?

My philosophy is simple. Spend as little as possible.

This might sound contradictory after I just told you it is a necessary defence. But remember, the goal is defence. The goal is not expansion.

I want the bulk of my client’s budget going towards non-brand search. I want to generate leads that would not have come in otherwise. That is where the net benefit lies.

You should not have an “unlimited” budget for brand just because the ROAS looks good. You should have a capped budget that is sufficient to cover the available impressions.

The “Target Impression Share” Strategy

We often use a specific bidding strategy for brand campaigns called “Target Impression Share”.

Most search campaigns use “Maximize Conversions” or “Target CPA”. These strategies tell Google to find the most likely buyers.

For brand search, we do not need Google to find buyers. We know everyone searching our name is a potential buyer.

Instead, we use Target Impression Share. We tell Google: “Ensure our ad appears at the very top of the page 100% of the time.”

This keeps the budget efficient. We only spend what is necessary to maintain that top position.

If competitors back off, our costs go down. If competitors get aggressive, the system bids up just enough to keep them at bay. It is an automated defence system.

Watch out for Performance Max

This is the biggest pitfall we see in accounts right now.

Performance Max (PMax) is Google’s automated campaign type. It uses AI to find conversions across all of Google’s inventory. This includes YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover, and Search.

PMax loves branded search.

Why? Because it wants to get you conversions at the lowest cost. The easiest way for the AI to do that is to go after people who are already searching for you.

We often audit accounts where the business thinks their PMax campaign is a genius lead generator. They see 50 leads a month at a remarkably low cost.

When we look under the hood, we see that it is simply cannibalising their branded traffic. It is capturing people who were typing in the business name.

It is a brand campaign in disguise.

To prevent this, you must manually exclude your brand terms from your Performance Max campaigns.

You have to force the system to go out and find new people. You have to tell the AI that “easy wins” are not allowed. It forces the algorithm to work harder for your money.

If you do not do this, your PMax campaign will look successful while your actual business growth stagnates.

Real-world lessons from SaaS and B2B accounts

We saw a perfect example of this recently with a B2B SaaS company we work with.

When we audited their account, one search campaign stood out. It had an incredibly low cost per demo. It looked like the star performer. The marketing manager was thrilled with it.

We dug into the search terms report.

Over 95% of the traffic in that “performance” campaign was actually branded search.

People were searching for the software by name. They were typing in things like “[Software Name] pricing” or “[Software Name] login”.

The campaign was not generating new interest. It was simply taxing existing interest.

By stripping those brand terms out and moving them to a dedicated brand campaign, the picture changed instantly. The “star” campaign’s performance dropped significantly because it was forced to rely on generic keywords.

This looked bad on paper. The cost per lead went up. The volume went down.

But it was the truth.

Once we knew the truth, we could actually fix the generic campaign to make it work. As long as the brand traffic was hiding the failure, we would never have improved the account.

We were able to reallocate budget to keywords that actually brought in new people. Six months later, the business was growing faster because they were acquiring net new customers, not just recycling old ones.

Using Auction Insights

Another tool we rely on is the Auction Insights report.

This is a diagnostic tool inside Google Ads that tells you who else is bidding in the same auctions as you.

On your brand campaign, this report is a goldmine.

It shows you exactly which competitors are bidding on your name. It tells you their “Impression Share”. This metric reveals how often they show up compared to you.

If you see a competitor creeping up the list with a high impression share, you know they are aggressively targeting your brand.

That is your signal.

It is a signal to review your ad copy. If a competitor is bidding on you, make sure your ad copy reinforces why you are the better choice. Use your ad extensions to show social proof. Highlight your ratings and reviews.

Make sure that even if they are present, you are dominant.

The psychology of the click

There is one final aspect to consider. It is the psychology of the user.

Why do users click ads instead of organic listings?

Sometimes, it is simply convenience. The ad is the first thing they see. On mobile devices, the ad can take up the entire screen. The organic listing might be below the fold.

If you do not have an ad there, the user has to scroll to find you. In that split second of scrolling, they might see a competitor’s ad.

You are removing friction.

By paying for the brand click, you are ensuring the smoothest possible path for the user. You are also able to control the landing page.

Organic listings usually link to the homepage. With a paid ad, you can direct users to a specific offer, a demo page, or a new product launch. You have control over the destination.

This control is worth paying for, provided the price is right.

Summary: A necessary evil

To wrap this up, think of branded search in B2B advertising as insurance.

You do not want to pay for it. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to. But the risk of not having it is too high.

Competitors will take your traffic if you let them. They will siphon off your hard-earned demand.

The secret is to treat it with intent.

1. Separate it: Put brand keywords in their own campaign. Never mix them with generic terms.
2. Exclude it: Make sure brand terms are blocked from PMax and generic campaigns. Use negative keyword lists liberally.
3. Minimise it: Spend only what is needed to defend the top spot. Use Target Impression Share to automate this.
4. Report it: Never blend brand data with cold traffic data. Be honest about where your leads come from.

If you follow these rules, you will protect your brand. You will defend your territory. And most importantly, you will stop fooling yourself about your marketing performance.

Marketing is a system. Brand search is just one part of that system. Treat it as the safety net, not the engine, and you will be fine.

FAQs

Q: What is branded search in B2B advertising?
A: Branded search refers to paid ads triggered when users search for your company’s name or brand-specific terms in Google.

Q: Should B2B brands bid on their own keywords?
A: Yes, especially as a defensive strategy to prevent competitors from hijacking your traffic or brand demand.

Q: What’s the difference between branded and non-branded search?
A: Branded search targets your company’s name, while non-branded focuses on generic or category-level terms.

Q: How much should you spend on branded search campaigns?
A: Ideally, as little as possible, just enough to defend your brand name from competitor bids and keep reporting clean.

Q: How should branded search be reported in performance marketing?
A: Separate branded from non-branded in reports and avoid last-click attribution, which can overstate branded campaign impact.