A competitive PPC hack while bidding on your competitor’s trademark terms.
We all know that bidding on trademarked terms gives you the highest ROI (Return on Investment). What if you want to bid on your competitor’s trademarked terms? Not only should that give you a reasonable ROI boost, but it should perform better than your non-branded terms.
Well, Google allows this type of bidding but it punishes you a lower quality score and higher CPC (Cost Per Click). Why? Because you’re not allowed to use your competitor’s trademark in your own ad copy, the ad relevance with respect to the keyword and the quality score, gets lowered.
However, please keep in mind that you can still use your competitor’s trademark in the display URL of your ad copy and drive up the quality score. Take a look at how Chevrolet did this against Ford, in the following example:
This excerpt from Google AdWords’ trademark policy will help clarify my above point here:
“…Google can investigate and may restrict the use of trademarks in ad text. This process does not apply to trademarks used in an ad’s display URL (the website address shown in green within an ad). “
I hope you were able to find this tactic very useful. This helps convey to us, as PPC advertisers, that we need to be fully aware of the current policies, as well as any changes that happen in the Google AdWords ecosystem. Our NetElixir Insights Lab frequently conducts quantitative studies to better understand these changes.
This month, we’re focusing on studying the performance impact of the elimination of the right-hand side ads in the Google SERP. We’ll be presenting our insights through our webinar on April 28 from 2:00 to 2:00 p.m. EST.
