Brand Search is advertising on your name and close misspellings. It is usually the cheapest CPC in a Nepal account and the fastest way to see if someone else is buying your brand. Arjan KC runs it as the brand layer of SEM, next to organic and ORM.

→ SEM as one plan · Google Ads · ORM / reviews

What the objects imply (not a “brand ROAS”)

Search rebuilds on this site include brand and non-brand. They do not isolate a brand-only lift — so do not invent one.

CPC ranges: benchmarks.

Search planning for Nepal brands

Image: Arjan KC media library.

What belongs in the brand campaign

Include Exclude
Exact / phrase on legal name, trading name, common spellings Generic “best X Kathmandu” (that is the non-brand campaign)
Romanized variants people actually type Competitor names unless you have a legal/brief reason
Own landing — homepage is OK here if the homepage is the brand Sending brand traffic into a random blog post
Sitename, call, WhatsApp extensions Job-seeker queries (vacancy, salary) as positives

The unpaid SERP is ORM + SEO. Paid brand is how you keep the first ad slot honest when directories and “near me” packs crowd the page.

Paid search aligned to landings

Image: Arjan KC media library.

Competitor bids and job ads

If impression share on the brand term is not ~yours, look at the auction. Common Nepal squatters: aggregators, job boards, and a rival bidding the agency name. Impression-share lost to rank is a bid or Quality Score problem; lost to budget means the brand campaign is throttled — fix that before you pour money into PMax.

Always exclude brand from PMax (or keep a Search campaign Google cannot starve). Setup detail: PMax guide.

Account hygiene

Brand campaigns are useless if the client cannot see search terms — account ownership. Shared KPI with organic: branded queries, Maps calls, direct/WhatsApp after the name search — not “traffic.”

Next: SEM · negative keywords · hire.