How to Optimize Branded Keywords with Call Tracking

Branded keywords are an essential part of the digital marketing strategy for many large businesses. Trading on the recognition and equity of a brand’s name, some of the country’s biggest enterprises are spending millions, on bidding for branded keywords to generate leads and drive sales. But how effective are branded keywords and how can you measure their success in the offline world?

To the uninitiated, brand keywords, as the name suggests, incorporates the company or brand’s name when being searched for online. Using telcos as an example, consumers are more likely to search using the terms ‘Verizon mobile’ or ‘AT&T mobile’ or ‘Verizon internet’ and ‘AT&T internet’ than a generic term such as mobile phone or internet plans, as both companies are well established and highly recognised brands that consumers have an understanding of.

Some businesses bid for thousands of branded keywords through search engines such as Google so they can dominate search results and provide increased credibility when their paid listings appear against organic search traffic. Buying branded keywords is often also cheaper than bidding on non-branded keywords, so for marketers there are many advantages of using them.
While measuring the effectiveness of branded keywords online is straightforward and trackable, it is not the case when the consumer switches to the offline world to complete any purchase. With some organisations holding thousands of branded keyword terms and many consumers opting to engage with a brand via the telephone following a search, gauging how effective and worthwhile these branded keyword campaigns are and the quality of the leads they generate is lost.

Through call tracking technology, brands can assess the relevance and effectiveness of keyword campaigns by tracking the calls received from each keywords or campaign.
When results are analysed it’s often the case that it’s not worth bidding on some branded keywords because they are less efficient and under perform. Marketers can use data to make decisions on smart bidding and smart spending to get more out of the same spend and divert that wasteful spending into terms that deliver leads.
Further, by integrating campaigns and linking them to their CRM, sales data can be pushed back into their bid optimization platform to bid on the branded keywords and campaigns that are actually generating sales.

This can be taken a step further by bidding on the branded keywords and campaigns that are delivering high value sales, ensuring the business is not only getting sales calls but ones that may potentially deliver more revenue. And by splitting up campaigns into different audience segments, marketers can measure the keywords and campaigns delivering calls for specific audiences and then optimize accordingly.

Using branded keywords is a proven way for a business to generate leads and convert those leads into sales. But for under pressure marketers charged with accounting for the effectiveness of their digital campaigns, particularly when consumers switch to the offline world, call tracking can effectively provide evidence of which of the potentially thousands of keywords are delivering revenue or not.