|    Overview‍

Many clients rightfully inquire if they should bid on their own, or even on a competitor’s, brand keywords. Having implemented both these brand protection and competitor con-questing strategies successfully for years, we wanted to provide hard data to show the what and why of this tactic.
As noted in our full case study for this client, we channeled all brand related searches into a dedicated brand campaign so the client could measure true performance in our other cold-lead targeting campaigns. During arguably the busiest month of the year for this client’s industry, in the first week of the month, we noticed cost per click was increasing within the client’s brand campaign. Facing the steepest depression in search impression share (73% IS) for their own brand name keywords since the campaign had been running for several months, checking the auction insights reports confirmed that our client’s competitors were bidding on our client’s brand name in Google Ads at the highest volume to date. Having rightfully established historical dominance for this client’s brand terms, quality score was high, which is how we were able to temporarily raise brand bids enough to make our client’s keywords more expensive for competitors to have a higher ad position than our client, thus reducing the ROI competitors were able to experience from bidding on our client’s terms. By the final week of the month this “bully” method resulted in both the number and intensity of competitors bidding on our client’s brand keywords being reduced to typical amounts. While our client’s brand campaign was still the best performing campaign by far in terms of conversion rate and especially cost per conversion, this surge in competition caused the conversion rate to drop to the lowest rate in months. As a final result of this competitive month, the client’s brand campaign conversion rate was at a nearly all time low of 43% which meant that out of over 350 clicks the client received, less than half of those people who searched for our client, clicked the ad, and converted. This is to show that even though a user searches for your brand, and you dominate the first page of organic search results, that user is not 100% guaranteed to become a lead. Though, you should still bid on your brand terms, otherwise a competitor will, and they consume the very market demand for your company that you worked hard to generate in the first place.
In the second part of this case study, within the very same busiest month of the year for this client, facing an attack on this client’s brand term by other competitors.

|   Goals

• Illustrate why these strategies should be tested

|   Problems

• Limited brand awareness
• Client sales approach
• Differentiation 

|   Strategies

• Reduce cost per conversion by targeting competitor keywords which indicate the user is further down the marketing funnel versus targeting general service related keywords.
• Protect investments of not only Google Ads marketing by bidding on brand terms, but also to provide better ROI on other lead sources as well such as traditional marketing, word of mouth, organic, etc.
• Expand impression share when other service/product terms have high competition

ABOUT THE CLIENT
Founded in 1986, this heating and air client has achieved over ten awards and certifications for their commitment to excellent HVAC service integrity, including being a Trane Comfort Specialist founding member. This family owned and operated company has provided service to eighteen neighboring cities and counties across a 75 mile radius for over thirty years. They are one of the most trusted and recognized companies in their state.

TYPE

Home Service

INDUSTRY
Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)

SERVICES RENDERED

• PPC Management
• Phone Tracking
• Landing Page Creation
• Conversion Rate Consulting