Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

During several recent SEO and SEM campaigns, I’ve seen a few clients trying to bid or pursue organically their own brand or company names. This is a good strategy if you have obscure brand names or company names: Cleaning Product 5, Chicago Consulting, or Joe’s Diner. But if you are a major brand and your customers are smart enough to go after that specific brand name, product name, or company name which you have trademarked and patented then let them. Don’t spend your ad dollars going after something like that. It would be better served putting it to use in other more competitive segments where you cannot make headway either organically or with PPC.

Also, I’ve noticed a practice recently by some unsavory marketing firms, who shall rename nameless, who bid against other marketing firms’ names to compete against them. Seriously? Do you think it’s worth your ad dollars to bid for a user who was obviously looking for “Company X” and instead saw your ad for “Company Y”? Do you think that is an effective strategy beyond making yourself look unprofessional in the ad landscape or that the person will have a last minute change of heart and instead say “Well, I was going to spend several hundreds of thousands of dollars with Company X, but I saw your ad and I guess I’ll flop over to you instead.” Somehow I don’t think that is the case.

Bottom line: I think bidding against your competitors is only an effective strategy very early in the buy cycle of a purchase where the user is still defining their search criteria and trying to put competing companies next to each other. If I am searching for “cherry cola” and I see an ad for Cherry Pepsi and Cherry Coke, I may go either way, but if I search for Cherry Coke, I’m not likely to be dissuaded by an ad for Cherry Pepsi.