Anybody who has worked with Google Adwords to promote a product or service has probably seen all the policies that are going around about the ability to bid on other brands. For instance, marketers are not allowed to use trademarked terms in their copy unless they have permission from the merchants. A lot of people I know ban affiliates and PPC marketers from bidding on their branded terms as they would like to get the cheap clicks for themselves. Now here is the thing. Let’s say you are a big company such as IBM. Should you bid on your own brand and leak money to Google?

There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on this issue in the Internet marketing world. A lot of gurus talk about how you want to be out there in front of people, and if it means you lose a little bit of money on Adwords, so be it. I personally believe you need to look at the situation more closely before making a decision on this. If your branded terms bring you the most conversions with the lowest CPA, then you would be crazy to get rid of them. In fact, no smart marketer would do that as taking these words out would seriously hurt your PPC numbers, making you look bad in front of the top management. Having said that, if you are paying $5000 a week on branded terms, and your CPA on your brand campaign is $5000, then there is a problem.

I understand that to a lot of big companies that kind of money is nothing, but to a small business, that is huge money, and I’d suggest you divert your money to a campaign that is better forming. At the end of the day, your brand will be there on the SERPs (hopefully!), and there are better things to do with that money. So if you have the money to burn, why not! But if you are a startup or small-business, do yourself a favor and put the money where it counts.