The complexities of pay per click advertising can be daunting, especially if you have competitors able and willing to outbid you in a bidding war. However, there is a way to use your competitors to pay a lower cost per click, reach out to highly targeted traffic, and compete against fewer bidders for keyword bids – just bid on their brand names!
Now the first thing that comes to mind is if this is legal, because frankly it intuitively feels sort of black hat, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s more of a grey hat strategy – something legal (Google won court battles that allowed ad campaigns to bid on competitor names and brands) yet somewhat lingers in the fringes of best practice.
But it’s effective.
Consider a pay per click advertising campaign around the keyword “silver jewelry.” This screenshot shows that the website SilverJewelry.com is the top organic result, but it is nowhere in the rightmost AdWords section of the results.
Now while this is just a touch of oxymoronic bad luck in the case of the said website using a very generic URL, this next example isn’t.
In this screenshot, the website itself is the keyword: “silverjewelry.com,” but notice that yet again, the website itself is not in the AdWords placements. Three other sponsored ads are above the top organic result – which is for the correct website. The other three businesses bid on the competitor name and essentially outranked it.
Clever, isn’t it?
Now, let’s point out a few technicalities. The procedure is legal as long as you don’t:
– mention the trademarked keyword on your site
– mention the keyword in your ad
– try to tarnish the reputation of the competitor
– have trademark infringement comparisons
The only exceptions to these rules are:
– If you are a reseller of the trademarked keyword, so long as you do not compete directly and you complement their business, or
– You specifically request an exception for a valid reason for which the ad program provider will have to accept
Note that you may experience lower quality scores by bidding on competitor names because you are simply offering an alternative and won’t have the competitors’ names on your landing pages.
However, for small businesses looking to compete with more established players, this could be your most effective pay per click strategy yet.
