Episode 2 - Should Your Financial Institution Bid on Branded Keywords

Podcast Episode 2: Our take on spending PPC budget on branded keywords and when and if you should pay for them.

Transcription:

Have you ever been talking about something that's really useful and thought, "That's a great idea, let's hit record so we can share this with everyone?” If you're looking for best practices for your bank or credit union, join us while we talk all things sales, marketing, and strategy for financial institutions. Let's make it happen with FI GROW Solutions.

Meredith Olmstead:

Hi everybody, I'm Meredith Olmstead, founder at FI GROW Solutions. We work with banks and credit unions on digital marketing and sales consulting. And I was just having a great conversation with our digital ads manager, Ida Burr, who's with me today, and we were talking about when you should and should not bid for certain types of keywords in pay per click. So what we wanted talk about first was we were talking about when you should not target branded keywords, and this is really important because a lot of places and a lot of people are doing this. So Ida, what is a branded keyword?

Ida Burr:

So a branded keyword is pretty much any keyword that includes your bank or credit union's name in it. So if somebody searched, open an account at XYZ CU, that would be considered a branded keyword.

Meredith Olmstead:

Gotcha. Okay. And so you're saying when you run pay per click campaigns for our clients, that you do not pay for those kind of branded keywords. So we were just talking about some of the main reasons why. Why would you not pay to have your name at the top of the keyword? I mean, I think that seems like something logical that you would want to pay for.

Ida Burr:

Yeah. Well, the number one thing I like to bring to clients' attention, is the fact that we suggest spending a lot of time on your website and on your SEO, and really optimizing your website to pull to the very top of results, so you're getting those organic views instead of needing to pay for people that are actively looking for you. Also, chances are, if people are actively searching your name, they already have a relationship with you or they know of you, they're not just Googling random names to see what comes up, they're actually looking for you.

Meredith Olmstead:

Gotcha. So if they're already looking for you, you're saying that they would've looked for you regardless and you should be showing up in organic search and so you shouldn't pay for those kinds of search results, right?

Ida Burr:

Yes, exactly.

Meredith Olmstead:

And what about those search results? One of the things that you said to me that I thought was really interesting was you talked about the fact that it skews the results of other campaigns. So tell us a little bit more about why branded keywords can skew or can mess up the results of other campaigns.

Ida Burr:

Yep. So really, what we're trying to accomplish with Google ads is reaching new potential customers. So when you're spending all your budget on these branded keywords, you're likely missing out on a lot of those searches that are more broad and just around current rates or people who are trying to discover what product they need or what financial institution they want to go with. And obviously, those types of keywords and clicks cost a little bit more, because the competition is going to be much higher if it's an apply for a credit card online today or something like that, versus if they're searching my credit union credit card application. So it really comes down to reaching new people versus reaching people who are already looking for you, possibly already have a relationship with you.

Ida Burr:

And then also, the cost different is a big deal too, because we have some new clients that come to us and they show us their previous results from their other vendor, and they're like, we were converting pay per click ads at an average cost of $5. And then we're looking through the keywords in the strategy, and 90% of their money is being spent on people actively looking for their credit union already. So how much of that can you really put towards pay per click if they were literally just trying to find your website, because they already knew they wanted to open up a credit card with you or they already knew they wanted to have a bank account with you. So we like to target new potential members, get in front of new people, not spend a ton of money on people that already are looking for you.

Meredith Olmstead:

Gotcha. Is there ever a time when you should pay for branded keywords in pay per click?

Ida Burr:

So if you do notice that your branded keyword are being targeted by other financial institutions in the area, then you can create ads around that, but I would make a completely separate campaign, that way you can control the amount of money you're spending there. But we don't really see that happening that often, and like I said, with optimizing your website, you should be showing up at the very top, right under the ads anyways. And chances are, if somebody's looking for you, they're not going to accidentally click an ad that goes somewhere else.

Meredith Olmstead:

Yeah. Gotcha. All right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, this has been really useful. Great tip for pay per click and for making sure that we're using budget, or that people are using their budget in the right way. For more information, you can always visit our website at figrow.com. We've got some great courses there on FI GROWTH Academy, that people might be interested in learning more about pay per click. So, but thanks a lot, Ida, appreciate your time.

Ida Burr:

Yeah. Thank you.

Meredith Olmstead:

All right. Let's make it happen.