One of the best things with PPC advertising is the fact bidding can be done on any search term (including brand names), and gain traffic from such a search term. 
Coincidentally, one of the worst things with PPC advertising is that the same thing can happen. This is because it allows competitors to bid against your brand name to take away traffic that should be rightfully yours.
Nothing is stopping competitors doing this. But, there are always ways to limit the damage caused by competitors bidding for your brand name. After all, it’s almost a ‘double negative’ when this happens – you lose some of your targeted traffic which then goes to your competitor to benefit them. With this in mind, here are a few ways you can deal with your competitors bidding for your own brand name.
Reach Out First
Bidding wars are never a good idea on PPC and tend to cost both parties a lot of money. Things quickly escalate and, before you know it, your return on investment of your PPC campaign is in the red.
This is why it is sometimes best to reach out to the competitor that is bidding on your brand name. They understand the implications of what you are doing and also understand that you are very likely to defend your brand name, by creating a PPC campaign for your brand name in response. CPCs will increase due to this, which will not benefit either party. Reaching out to the party is almost a ‘truce’ to prevent any negative implications from occurring, due to the original targeting from the competitor.
Start Bidding for Your Own Brand Name
If the competitor refuses to take down the PPC campaign, then you next best bet is to react and bid back. Set up your own campaign and compete for the traffic that your competitor is trying to steal away from you. This should:
- Raise the CPC, hopefully deterring the competitor from competing
- Reduce the CTR of the advert, and resultant traffic the competitor is gaining
- Also allow you to show a different result than your homepage, which might be good for new releases or special offers
Of course, you need to make sure the ROI of the campaign makes it financially feasible to execute such a PPC campaign. However, part of this campaign’s objective is to deter the competitor from competing for your brand name. For example, if the campaign cost £10,000 to deter the competitor, that may save you £000,000s from maintaining contextual traffic looking to convert for you.
Start Bidding for Your Competitor’s Brand Name
Another technique that can work is to do exactly what the competitor is doing to you, but to them (especially if the competitor for the brand name is low). This will either 1) cause the competitor to reach out and call it ‘truce’ or 2) steal traffic from their brand name at a cheap price. Either way, it is definitely better than leaving the competitor to taking traffic away from your brand name search results!
