Bidding on brand names is one of the integral aspects of any PPC campaign. Bidding on your own brand name solidifies your status as a company and adds to the value of your products. While bidding on your competitor’s brand name is a method of siphoning some their traffic to yours. Brand name marketing will definitely show significant results when implemented properly. This article will explain the basics in running your own competitor brand name campaign.

Why would you want to bid on your competitor’s brand name? Well, first off, because you can. Because it’s easy and cheap. Brand names have lower costs in PPC engines when compared to the standard keywords and keywords phrases because there are only few people who bid on brand names. Your competitor might not even bid on their own brand name, which is good news for you. This means it should be really cheap to set up your campaign. On the other hand, when they do bid on their own brand name, the cost for you to bid on theirs should still be relatively cheap compared to your keyword PPC campaign.

And when you’ve set up your campaign, this is a chance to show off your brand to their supposed or potential customers. Especially if your competitor’s product is more established, you can take advantage of their customer base to increase awareness of your products. Presenting your advertisement beside their product will get people to think that your product is already in the same league as your competitor’s if not superior. If you are the more established company, an advertisement on your competitor’s brand will be a show of your authority.

Either way, running a brand name campaign on your competitor’s brand will benefit your brand and product awareness. Users who search for brand names and products are already further off in the purchasing process. And showing your advertisement to these users will most definitely lead to a conversion for your own site.

When running this type of campaign, you have to keep these in mind:

1. Prevent legal issues. Do not use trademarked competitor brand names within your ad text as this will alert Google which may then get your ad disapproved. Stay away from dynamic keyword insertions when running a campaign for your competitor’s brand name. The last thing you want is to be on Google’s bad side.
2. There are also high quality keywords in this type of campaign. You shouldn’t go all out in outbidding your competitors for all their product or brand names. There should be phrases containing your competitor’s brand which would be analogous to long-tailed keywords in the standard keyword campaign.
3. Do not expect high quality scores as you are still bidding outside of your own brand. Don’t let these affect your judgment, and give a greater importance to your cost per sale. Even if you end up having low click-through rate, these clicks would still have a higher chance to convert. And because this type of campaign is cheap, you are more likely to get more for your money.
4. Expect competition. Most likely you are not the only one doing this type of campaign. When your competitors notice you (if they have good ppc consultants), they will surely take measures against you. They will bid higher on their own terms and they might even commit to a competitor brand name campaign of their own. Protect your own brand name by bidding on them too.

Any successful PPC campaign should commit to an effective brand name campaign because even though in the worst-case it may garner fewer results it won’t take much to get it implemented.