After a long and successful Google ads campaign, you wake up one morning and look at your website traffic analyzes.
You discover with dismay “a little less traffic than usual”. You Google your brand name and surprise!
Another website is at the top of the paid search results for your brand. This competitor cannot bid on your brand… If? Yes.
In fact, here are the words of Google: “Google will not investigate or limit the selection of brands as keywords, even if we receive a trademark infringement complaint.” ” This basically means that you can’t claim keywords as your own.
If a competitor wants to outbid your own brand, it is more than welcome at Google. Of course, you can do the same if you want. But that doesn’t make your morning any more enjoyable.
We’ll see what you can do, but let’s start by distinguishing the 3 possible cases:
- If a brand’s name is used in the competing ad, the advertiser can file a complaint with Google, via an online form.
- the content of the advertisement is detrimental to the brand in question or if the advertisement causes confusion as to the nature of the advertiser, recourse is possible for trademark infringement, customer acquisition or parasitism.
- If it’s a simple keyword purchase that contains your name, without mentioning that word in the ad, it’s perfectly legal.
Whatever situation you find yourself in, there are measures you can take to limit this kind of disappointment as much as possible.
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Tell your competitor
Before you act, you should contact the competitor who bought your brand’s keyword, to ask them to remove these ads.
In your mind, this can be a waste of time because your competitor is unlikely to comply with this request. You are probably right, but it is okay to start diplomatically so that when things start to escalate between you with “competing” announcements, you will have your conscience to yourself saying to yourself that you tried to intelligently resolve the situation.
You can adopt a friendly tone: Even if the trade war is raging, maintaining good relationships with your competitors is possible and often preferable.
“Hey, [name]!
My name is [name] and I am from [company]. We’re big fans of what you do on [their website], but I recently noticed that you are targeting our brand’s keywords with an AdWords campaign.
You even do a good job!
[Show a screenshot of their number one position]
We have nothing against friendly competition … but I was wondering if you would be willing to target keywords other than our brand?
You are not legally required to do so, but we would appreciate it! Otherwise, we’ll put some money on your own keywords too ???? “
In some cases, your competitor doesn’t even know they are placed on your brand, especially if that job is given to an agency that hasn’t revealed they are using this tactic to improve search engine rankings.
If he knows, he’ll just say “oops! Grilled ”and will choose to remove them anyway. Now let’s see what you can do if he continues.
Bid on your brand
It doesn’t always seem like a good idea to bid on your brand , but it’s a good way to protect yourself and regain the clicks you lost when a competitor’s ads appear on your brand.
Your competitor probably saw that no one (not even you) was bidding on your brand, so they took the opportunity to divert valuable leads from your business.
When someone else buys your brand, they are not there to post ads that will benefit your business, google ads. This is why it is worthwhile to outbid your brand, so as to control the message by repositioning your business at the top of the list.
That’s a good thing done! But, that still doesn’t stop him. What to do next ?
Bid on your competitor’s name
You warned him! It is time to go to war. If the above actions fail, you can bid on the competing brand. Your CPC is higher when you bid on another brand, but there are some benefits that could outweigh those costs.
Before bidding, do some research on the volume of traffic generated by this competitor based on the terms they use. A tool like SEMrush is ideal for this type of research, it allows you to type in your competitor’s brand name and access a list of keywords so you can see which keywords they are bidding on.
By targeting the competitor who bought your brand, you could force their CPCs to increase, capture some of their leads, and possibly force them to stop bidding on your brand name.
Tell Google
Okay, I know I said you won’t be able to get Google to help you get rid of the competition. But this is not always true. It really depends on what the competition is doing.
If he’s just bidding on your brand with no infringement, then there’s nothing you can do. That said, if they use your brand name (or tagline) in their ad copy,
then that is a violation and you have a legitimate reason to report it to Google ads , and even Bing .
Conclusion
When a competitor buys on your brand, you need to take steps to stop your leads leaking: if you can’t convince them to stop, start by bidding on your brand and, as a last resort, bidding on their words.
keys. If the battle crosses the red line and your competitor’s campaigns use your brand in their texts, report it to Google. Your SEA strategy does not take off despite your investment?
Professional Google Ads consultants are on brel.digital to help you. Post your project for free to receive quotes from numerous agencies and freelancers.
Remember that website maintenance Is also very important factor here