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When to bid on brand and competitor terms

Deciding when to bid on brand and competitor terms in your paid search strategy depends on your specific business goals, competition landscape, and overall marketing strategy. Here are some considerations: 

When competitors are also bidding on your brand

• If a competitor starts bidding on your brand terms and you do not have an advertising presence, your organic listing is not always enough. In this scenario, you may start losing brand traffic to competitors. 
• By launching your own brand ads, you can protect your brand position and traffic. Your competitors will have low ad relevance, so you can take back the top position by launching your own ad.

When you have been running branding activity in other channels

• If you have been driving budget into brand awareness activity, you want to ensure that you capitalize on the increased brand searches this should be driving. 

When you want to target specific audience sets

• Using branded and competitor terms in conjunction with remarketing audiences can help you customize your ad message and landing pages. This can increase the likelihood of clicks and conversions.

If you have a generic brand name

• If your brand name has multiple meanings or you share the name with other brands in different industries (e.g., Monday, Domino’s), you may struggle to rank organically. Bidding on your brand terms can help you combat this and show up more prominently and frequently. 
• It won’t combat all of the issues of shared brand names if the other brands are also bidding, but it will give you a better opportunity to appear.

Dig deeper: Solving an age-old SEO-PPC issue: How to bid on your brand name based on incrementality

When you may not need or want to bid on brand and competitor terms

There are scenarios where bidding on brand and competitor terms may not be necessary or desirable. Here are some situations when you might choose to avoid bidding on these terms:

When there is no competition bidding for your brand

• If there is no competitor bidding and you hold the top organic position, your budget may be better placed elsewhere. 
• You can check competitor bidding activity using the Auction Insights and Ad Preview and Diagnosis tools.

If you have a mutual agreement with your competitors

• Where relations are friendly there are sometimes agreements in place to not bid on each other’s brand names.

If your offer is not unique, competitive or compelling

• In this instance, you may not have the pull to draw clicks away from the competition if users are already searching for them.

If you have a poor conversion rate

• Suppose your conversion rate is poor for your existing brand, organic or direct traffic. In that case, you will be better placed investing in improving this before attempting to bid on competitor terms.

What to keep in mind if you do decide to bid

If you decide to bid on brand and competitor terms in your paid search campaigns, it’s important to keep several key considerations in mind:

• Ensure you don’t overpay for the traffic. Test different bidding strategies. I have found Maximize Clicks to be the most effective, but it does vary per brand.
• Add negative keywords. You don’t want to be paying for traffic looking for where to send complaints or jobs, for example.
• Be clever with which competitor keywords you target. For example, people searching for competitors’ reviews or alternatives.
• Use audience observations. Observe your site traffic and customers if you are bidding on competitors. 
• Consider and adjust your regular settings, like ad schedules.

The pros and cons of bidding on branded and competitor keywords

Brand and competitor keywords can be important to your paid search strategy. You should review your competitors’ activity, business objectives and position to decide whether bidding is right for your brand.