The Elite Brands Google Ads Brand vs Non-Brand Budget Framework

20 May

How much of your Google Ads budget should go to brand search versus non-brand?

It’s the question I see founders and marketing leads wrestle with constantly. Pour too much into brand and you protect your turf but starve your growth. Spend too much on non-brand and your CPA can spiral out of control, killing your profitability.

There is no single “right” percentage. The correct split for a new brand is wrong for an established one. The right split in Q2 is wrong for Black Friday.

When I was scaling my own stores, I learned this the hard way. We wasted money chasing expensive top-of-funnel terms before we had the brand equity to support it. Later, we were too defensive, overspending on brand terms when we should have been acquiring new customers.

At Elite Brands, we don’t guess. We developed a three-phase framework to find the optimal balance for each business we work with. It turns your budget allocation from a gut-feel decision into a data-driven system for predictable growth. It’s part of our process for building scalable eCommerce machines.

Phase 1: Comprehensive audit for Google Ads brand vs non-brand performance

Before you can decide where to go, you need to know exactly where you are. We start every engagement with a deep audit of the existing Google Ads account. We aren’t just looking for a few quick wins. We are establishing a baseline for every important metric.

We pull apart the entire account structure, checking conversion tracking, historical data, and campaign settings. We’ve audited accounts spending $500,000 a month and found their conversion tracking was broken for six months. You can’t make good decisions with bad data.

The audit splits into two clear streams: brand and non-brand.

Understanding your current brand campaign Google Ads landscape

For brand campaigns, we analyse performance on a few key metrics. What is your impression share on your core brand terms? It should be above 95%. If it’s not, we find out why. Are competitors bidding on your name? Is your bidding strategy throttling your visibility?

We review ad copy and bidding strategies. Often, brand campaigns are set to Maximise Conversions with no Target CPA, driving up the cost for clicks you would have won anyway. We look for this kind of inefficiency. It’s often the first place we find budget to reallocate to growth.

Evaluating non-brand search budget effectiveness

This is where we usually find the biggest opportunities. We analyse the non-brand keyword strategy. Is it just a list of broad-match terms burning through cash? We dig into search query reports to see what people are actually typing.

We benchmark your non-brand CPA and ROAS against what we know is possible in your industry. We look at the conversion paths. Are these non-brand clicks assisting conversions driven by other channels? Or are they driving first-touch sales? This tells us their true value.

A proper audit gives us a clear, honest starting point. If you want an expert eye on your current setup, you can get a free Google audit from our team.

Phase 2: Strategic budget allocation for brand and non-brand campaigns

With a clear baseline from the audit, we move to strategy. This is where we decide how to split the budget. We don’t use a generic 80/20 or 70/30 rule. We use a model that adapts to your specific business.

The right allocation depends on several factors. A mature brand with high organic search traffic might only need to spend 10-15% of its budget on brand defence. A challenger brand in a competitive space might need 30% or more to build awareness and fend off rivals.

Other key factors include: * Business goals: Are you focused on maximising profit this quarter or aggressive growth and market share? * Seasonality: Your split will look different in a peak sales period like BFCM compared to a quieter month. * ROAS targets: What is your blended target ROAS? This dictates how much you can afford to spend on less efficient, top-of-funnel non-brand keywords. * New product launches: A launch requires a heavier investment in non-brand to generate initial awareness and demand.

Incrementality is a key piece of this puzzle. We often run tests to see what happens if we turn off brand campaigns entirely for a short period. How much revenue do we lose? This tells us the true incremental value of those ads, helping us justify every dollar spent.

Elite Brands’ proprietary allocation model explained

Our model takes these factors and combines them with your historical performance data. It helps us find the sweet spot between defending your brand and acquiring new customers profitably.

We look beyond simple last-click ROAS. We factor in customer lifetime value (CLV). A non-brand keyword might have a lower initial ROAS, but if it acquires a customer who repurchases three times in a year, its true value is much higher. Our model accounts for this.

It’s about balancing short-term efficiency with long-term brand building. This strategic approach is how we deliver consistent our results for clients.

Implementing your new non-brand search budget strategy

Once the new budget split is agreed upon, we execute. This isn’t just about sliding a budget toggle. It involves restructuring campaigns for more granular control.

We often segment non-brand campaigns by intent. For example, high-intent keywords like “buy red running shoes” are separated from lower-intent research keywords like “best running shoes for flat feet”. Each segment gets its own budget and bidding strategy.

This new structure allows us to align the ad spend directly with your business goals and ensures every dollar is working as hard as possible.

Phase 3: Continuous optimisation and scaling of your non-brand search budget

The strategy is set. The campaigns are restructured. The work is just beginning. Phase 3 is a continuous cycle of monitoring, testing, and scaling. Google Ads is not a ‘set and forget’ channel.

We monitor performance daily. We watch the core metrics from our audit, tracking progress against our new targets. If a campaign is over-performing, we look for ways to give it more budget. If it’s under-performing, we diagnose the problem.

This process involves constant, iterative testing. We test new ad copy, new landing pages, different audience targeting, and new keywords. A 5% lift in click-through rate from a better headline can have a huge impact on your final CPA.

This is also where we integrate learnings from other campaign types. Insights from our PMax Optimisation Framework can inform our non-brand search strategy, and vice-versa.

Optimising brand campaign Google Ads for efficiency

Even though brand campaigns are simpler, they still need optimisation. Our goal is to maintain maximum impression share at the lowest possible CPC.

We ensure your ads are tightly relevant to your brand terms to maintain a high Quality Score. We use negative keywords to stop your brand ads from showing up for irrelevant searches. We refine ad extensions to take up more screen real estate and push competitors down the page.

It’s about maximum protection for minimum cost.

Scaling your non-brand search budget for growth

This is where the real growth happens. As we find winning non-brand keywords and audience segments, we strategically increase their budget.

Scaling isn’t just about spending more. It’s about spending smarter. We use search query reports to discover new long-tail keywords we can target. We identify new audience segments to test. We aggressively manage our negative keyword lists to cut wasted spend.

When a category proves profitable, we look for ways to expand. Can we target new geographic locations? Can we find adjacent product categories to move into? We reinvest the profits from efficient campaigns back into testing these new growth avenues.

Key metrics and transparent reporting for Google Ads results

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. We are obsessed with tracking the right metrics and reporting them transparently.

For brand campaigns, the core metrics are: * Impression Share: Are you showing up nearly every time someone searches for you? * Brand ROAS/CPA: Is your cost to capture this demand efficient? * Brand Search Lift: Are your other marketing activities increasing the number of people searching for your brand?

For non-brand campaigns, we focus on: * Overall ROAS/CPA: Is the campaign profitable on a last-click basis? * New Customer Acquisition Cost (NCAC): How much does it cost to acquire a brand-new customer? * Conversion Rate: Are we turning clicks into customers effectively?

We rely on accurate data to make these calls. That’s why a solid Enhanced Conversions Setup is non-negotiable. It ensures our data is as clean as possible.

We also look closely at attribution. We typically use Google’s data-driven attribution model to understand the role each touchpoint plays in the customer journey. This prevents us from cutting a non-brand campaign that is generating lots of valuable assists.

All of this is presented in clear, simple dashboards. Our clients see exactly what we see. We have regular calls to walk through the numbers, explain what they mean, and outline what we’re doing next. No jargon, no excuses.

Partnering with Elite Brands for Google Ads brand vs non-brand growth

This three-phase framework, Audit, Allocate, and Optimise, provides a repeatable system for growth. It moves your Google Ads management from reactive to proactive.

It stops the guesswork around brand vs non-brand budgets. It ensures your ad spend is always aligned with your business goals, whether that’s aggressive scaling or maximising profitability. The result is consistent, measurable ROI from one of your most important marketing channels.

This is the exact process we use to manage millions of dollars in ad spend for our eCommerce clients. It’s a system built from years of experience in the operator’s chair.