Use PPC To Protect Your Brand
With the revolution in technology, internet marketing is proving to be an effective way of letting consumers aware of a product or service that you are providing. With the use of the Pay per click model of internet marketing, brands have been able to grow and gain profits that other marketing strategies would not achieve. However, there has been a trend of growing expenses and reduced profitability for a brand that happens because of brand bidding and URL hijacking by your competitors.
Brand Bidding and URL Hijacking on the Rise
There may be a possibility that when potential consumers search for your business name on search engines, they see adverts from your competitors. This, therefore, reduces the click-through rate for your brand and in the end, there will be reduced profitability. Brand bidding has been on the rise, and it implies the use of your brand keyword by your fellow competitors. On the other hand, URL hijacking is the practice by your competitors to use your URL to display their adverts and direct search traffic to links that you do not approve.
Such practices from your competitors do dent your business since you will lose a lot in terms of business. Clicks on your adverts will significantly reduce, your brand cost-per-click increases and your sales might also reduce. In order to remain relevant amid competition, there is a need for you to use the Pay Per Click model efficiently so that you remain profitable in your business.
How to efficiently use PPC Model to Protect your Brand
Using the PPC internet marketing model will require you to manage the rate of brand bidding and URL hijacking so that you may protect your brand. You may protect their brand keywords by practicing competitive brand bidding, taking legal action on any violators and requesting for removal of the ads if it violates the rules set by the search engines.
Despite the fact that competitive brand bidding and URL hijacking are used to gain a competitive advantage, it is an expensive way to protect your brand since it leads to increased campaign sales costs. You may consider using other means as described below to protect your brand and grow your business through the PPC.
Protect your Brand and Grow your Business through PPC
You may consider negotiating with your competitors so that you settle on a brand term truce. This is an agreement that dictates that neither you nor your competitors can buy the brand keywords for the other and use them to promote clicks. Settling for such an agreement will ensure that anytime consumers search for the name of your business, your brand name pops up without ads from competitors popping up to redirect them.
Trademark complaints can also be sent to the search engines as a means of ensuring that competitors are restricted from using your brand terms in their advert texts. Ideally, this will increase your competitors’ campaign cost and significantly reduce their click-through rate and in the process nurturing your brand through clicks. However, you should note that competitors may still buy your keywords, but this will increase their campaign costs. This is because search engines may allow it despite it being unlawful.
You may use ad extensions to push your competitors’ further down when your brand name gets searched by a potential consumer. This will give you ad priority in the eyes of the potential consumer and increase the click-through rate for your brand, thus realising a reduction in the cost per clicks. The extensions work by ensuring that your ad gets better prominence and visibility over your competitors’, therefore, increasing your overall number of clicks.
In situations where you are not in good terms with your competitors, it becomes difficult for you to negotiate for a brand term truce with them. This will, therefore, require you to send them cease and desist letters requiring them to keep away from your brand terms. Doing so ensures that your competitors are scared enough to resist the urge to buy your brand keywords and therefore protect your brand name. Once your brand terms have been protected, it will ensure that search traffic gets to view your ads and click on them hence increasing your CTR and promoting your business.
There may also be a need for you to create terms and conditions that ensure your affiliates and resellers are curbed from buying your brand terms. Additionally, you may ensure that even the misspellings of your brand terms are also protected from your resellers. This will prevent the redirection of search traffic hence promoting clicks on your ads. Some of the ways you may deal with unauthorized affiliates include financial ramifications and termination in cases where they do not cease from practicing brand bidding without permission.
You should constantly monitor brand keywords so that you get to know of competitors who violate your brand and product keywords. You may consider using third-party tools that send reports of violation to the search engines. Ad intelligence will be achieved when you add your trademark to such tools so that you get evidence that you may use to build a case against your violators. Evidence that may be used in a lawsuit may be in the form of screenshots advertising activity in details such as dates and time may be ideal to bring your brand violators down and grow your business through PPC
Protecting your Brand’s Ads is Important
Protecting your brand in paid search is indeed important since it is a sure way to hike your PPC profits that contribute to the growth of your business. The branded campaigns have been identified as the most profitable PPC campaigns. There is a need for you to ensure that activities of competitors and any unscrupulous affiliates have been regulated in the interest of growing your business through PPC.
This will have desirable effects that will see the number of clicks on your adverts increase, a drop in the costs incurred for clicks and reduced campaign costs in general. With all this comes increased brand awareness through the paid search that will help to nurture and grow your business.
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