There have been multiple studies about the incremental lift in search traffic that Pay Per Click Advertising provides in recent years.  I’ve been quoting to clients the Google Study that said that search ads provide 89% incremental traffic.  The studies essentially say that when ads are shut off that the natural search results will only pick up for 11% of the lost traffic.
The study results, are almost in every case met with doubt and skepticism by the clients because the clients don’t trust that the information is valid because Google did the study. The issue is particularly doubted with regard to advertising on the companies name or brand names that they already rank number one for in natural search.

OUR TEST

We recently started a test for a retailer that had not previously utilized PPC advertising on its brand names before and monitored both the impact on natural search when those ads were turned on and the impact on PPC with the addition of the clicks on those specific brand keywords.
The results pretty much backed the premise of the Google study.  The study said:
…even when advertisers show up in the number one organic search result position, 50% of clicks they get on ads are not replaced by clicks on organic search results when the ads don’t appear.
Naturally, people think of their brand keywords when they think of their number one rankings.  Our client’s search traffic (both paid and natural search combined) on their company nameincreased 88%.  Paid search on that word obviously was the major contributor to that increase, but natural search clicks on that same word increased 26% also.  The appearance of both paid and natural listings at the top of the search results increases click through rates for both mediums.
Merely adding brand keywords into the PPC mix had a huge impact on overall search traffic. It increased 27%.  Paid search traffic increased 118% with little to no changes in budget spend.
Those are just traffic numbers and they are great.  But, I’m more interested in what the traffic does in terms of conversions.  We track multiple conversion actions for this client and the volume of that conversion increase was an incredible 370%.  Store locator search conversion were up over 360%.  Inventory Searches were up over 430%, Coupon Views went up over 450% and Site Registrations went up over 320%.
graph Heres Why You Should PPC Advertise on Your Brand Keywords
The costs to advertise on the brand keywords are incredibly low.  The Exact Match version of the company name is costing only $0.08 per click.  All of the combined brand keywords are costing on average less than $0.20 per click.
You literally pay a few pennies per click on brand keywords. They convert more effectively than any other keyword type and those conversions turn into sales.  What are you waiting for?
Heres Why You Should PPC Advertise on Your Brand Keywords