Brands coming after your paid search ad keywords like “The Hamburglar on cheeseburgers“
Audience: Google Ads PPC Managers, VP of Marketing, CMO, Branding Strategists, Creative Directors
Goal: Improve advertising spend, control brand messaging
What is PPC Conquesting?
Competitive PPC Conquesting refers to the practice of bidding on other brands in order to capture clicks from competitors. Buying other competitors band keywords can be a double edged sword. On one hand you’re getting qualified traffic to your business, on the other hand you may be bidding up keywords at higher CPCs with lower conversion opportunity. Unless the customer finds your ad message overwhelmingly compelling, they’ll likely ignore your ads.
Pros of Conquesting:
- Conversion opportunity at a lower than average CPC
- Out-compete smaller brands for clicks
- Block out other brands from bidding on your product names
Cons of Conquesting:
- Conversion opportunity at a higher than average CPC, inflating cost
- Lower conversion rates, increasing cost
- Associating with lower quality brands, perception of lower quality
Many of Google Ads automated strategies like PMax rely on some conquesting to drive results. Most companies are not aware this conquesting in going on in the background of PMax. As they have become more automated, Google bidding strategies may seek out similar brands to find conversion opportunities. During this process, Google has no basis for what constitutes a quality conversion or lead. The only factor they consider is your bid strategy target goal; ROAS, CPA, etc.
Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of a conquesting strategy.
All Is Fair In Love & PPC Bidding War
By running automated PPC conquesting strategies, you’re automatically opted-in to a bidding war for brand terms. Without removing any negatives or setting brand controls, Google is free to pick up any brand keywords it finds. Google may decide to bid mostly on your own brand name or they may decide to spread some of the bids to other brands. It’s likely there will be a hybrid of bids on a variety of close matches until they find clicks that begin to convert.
In this example, Target is getting out-bid in shopping for their brand name but shows up organically below. Target may have decided this is a lower quality click and excluded the match or simply didn’t have enough budget. To the strongest snugger goes the spoils…
There is a wide range of product pricing from $19-$50 and Target has decided its not worth their PPC spend here.
Why Does It Matter?
You may ask, what does it matter if I’m buying any of these brand terms for my brand or other brands? By having all of these Brands conquest in each other, it effectively raises everyone’s CPCs to unsustainable levels. What was once $2 per click in 2019 is now $16 per click. There may be lower value brands taking up your PPC budget to the tune of $10-20 per click. So, I what do you do about it?
1) Brand Keyword & CPC Controls
Consider apply brand controls to campaigns to prevent lower converting brands from showing up in your keyword click reports. Sometimes these are brands there are much smaller than you but don’t really convert well or have any real awareness. These may be brands that Google doesn’t really have any business bidding on like products you may find on Temu or lower quality products on Walmart. Do you really want to show up for a cheap brand with poor customer reviews?
For premium brands at $50, do you really have a chance competing with a $15 product on generic broad searches? Probably not, right?
2) Even More Brand Controls
Consider setting up separate brand ad groups. This will give you much more control over where you brand shows up on Google Ads. Segmentation of brand + product goes a step further to help refine the brand message for customers. Consider adding custom attributes to your Shopping feed for products in a highly competitive niche. These controls may help you avoid spending too much on lower quality clicks in a highly competitive market.
- Segmented Brand Campaign, major competitors with their own brand ad group
- Exact match brand keywords
- Avoiding broad match on brand
- Dynamic search ads on product comparison pages, showcasing the key benefits vs other brands
- Shopping ads with brand segmentation built-in
- Careful not to aggressively target shopping listings with your brand name as this could flood PMax Shopping results and increase your CPCs for brand
3) Surrender (Sorta)
Maybe there is nothing you can do to stop other brands from conquesting your company name. Maybe the best strategy is to ignore this impact and focus on what you can control. After all, having much better messaging is likely to increase your quality scores and lower your branded CPCs vs competitors.
A more more tips and ideas below:
- brand differentiation ~ key in on your unique features and benefits
- creative that really stands out
- better messaging ~ talk to your customers in their own language
- creative and more clever ad copy
- Official, TM, (R), and other insignias to validate the brand in ads
I hope you have found this POV helpful. Please share this post on the socials. Also feel free reach out to me with any feedback or questions.
More Resources
Google Ads Branding Dos and Don’ts
Google’s Trademark Rules