PPC is a great way to gain contextual traffic about, near on enough, anything and from anyone. Just as this is a good point associated with PPC, it can also be seen as a bad point. Allowing advertisers to use any keyword to target their PPC campaign against, regardless of trademark and copyright, means that competitors can just as easily bid against your brand name as any other keyword they should so want to. A competitor doing this can potentially steal contextual traffic away from you, making it seem a double negative (you lose traffic and a sale and your competitor gains traffic and a sale). For this reason, here are some ways you can go about defending your own brand name in PPC advertising so that you minimize the impact of competitor’s bidding on your own brand name.
 

Check if they are bidding on your own brand name

Before doing anything, it is important to see if you need to defend your brand name at all. Remember PPC campaigns cost money, so there is not much point making a PPC campaign for your own brand name without the need to defend against competitors, who haven’t yet bid for your brand name.
 

Adopt a high CPC

Whoever is bidding for your brand name and whatever it is about is irrelevant. Your brand name is sacred in PPC because it makes clear web users are searching specifically to land onto your website – anything but a click onto your website is a complete injustice. For this reason, it is advisable to adopt as high a CPC as possible, so that your advert always gains the number one spot of paid search result. Although this will be potentially quite expensive, it will deter competitors from competing against you, whilst maintaining the organic traffic to your website: the way it should be if web users search for your brand name.
 

Attack competitor adverts

99/100 times, you should be able to reach top spot of paid search by implementing a high CPC. If you cannot or want to further defend your brand name, you can use the advertising campaign you have created to attack the competitor advert that is bidding for your brand name. For example, if you was Ferrari and Aston Martin made a PPC campaign for Ferrari, the advert could read ‘Nothing beats Italian horsepower’, attacking the fact Aston Martin is not an Italian super car company.
 
Ultimately, the above should help to deter competitors from continuing brand name targeting with their PPC campaigns. It is annoying that Google allows anyone to bid on brand names. But, as much as it is annoying, it is also an opportunity to do it back. Therefore, whoever is bidding on your brand name, do it back to them. This could even result in a ‘truce’ between you and your competitor – whatever works best to prevent competition for your own brand name.