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2017 SEM growth hacks: Monster growth from brand protection

Are your competitors bidding on your branded terms and driving up your CPCs? If so, what can you do? In part 1 of her multi-part series on brand protection, columnist Lori Weiman provides some advice on how to make your brand terms work for you, even when the competition is fierce.

Lori Weiman on April 21, 2017 at 1:15 pm

Today’s article presents one of the more powerful search growth attack strategies for 2017: PPC (pay per click) brand protection.

This article is the first in my eight-part series presenting SEM marketers with the most effective growth hacks for 2017.

As CEO of the ad monitoring company, The Search Monitor, I see the ads, campaign strategies and performance results from agency and brand clients. In this series, I will use this data to present the best growth hacks for 2017.

Why does brand protection matter?

An ongoing and serious problem threatening your SEM revenue is competition from affiliates and competitors bidding on your valuable, high-converting branded keywords. The result of the increased number of advertisers competing against you is obvious: higher CPCs (costs per click), lower clicks and a lower click-through rate (CTR). We estimate that each competitor with ads running on your brand or brand-plus keyword terms costs you a 10 percent loss in clicks and a 20 percent increase in CPC.

If we flip brand bidding around from a problem to a solution, you can turn competitive brand bidding into a monster growth opportunity for your SEM team.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Lori Weiman

Lori Weiman is CEO and co-founder of The Search Monitor. The Search Monitor provides marketing intelligence to SEM, SEO, and Affiliate Marketers. Prior to TSM, Lori developed real-time bidding and tracking products for paid search and affiliate marketing. Lori is a frequent speaker at conferences such as SES, SMX, Search Insider Summit, and Affiliate Summit.