There are many parts of digital marketing that no one will teach you. You will have to learn them yourself. Since this poses a considerably vague prospect, we try to shed more light on a problem far too common in digital marketing but one which doesn’t get a lot of traction.
Imagine you’re running a B2B company that provides software maintenance services to companies. You have a great website that is optimized for SEO. Most B2B leads you get are generated from the content you rank on popular target keywords.
One day you search the name of your website on Google. The SERP in front of you is shocking. Your website is still ranked number in organic rankings. However, your direct rival’s website is appearing on the top of SERPs as a paid ad. In other words, people searching for your company will find your rival’s website listed first.
This practice is far too common. When companies in a niche all use digital marketing and search engines to grow their business, it is not uncommon for a company to pull a daring stunt and buy ad space using your company as a keyword.
Some of you still learning your trade at digital marketing institutes might be shocked to learn about this. Some of you might even wonder if this is legal (it is). What should your next step be? How should you respond to this provocation?
Understand the groundwork
First of all, posting an ad using a brand name as a keyword takes a lot of money and doesn’t actually bring a lot of conversions. So, if your competitor has done this to you, be happy that their company is spending a lot of money to do so.
Publish Ad on Your Own Brand Name
Your first action should be to take out a Google Ad on your own brand name. Google Ads allows advertisers to run branding campaigns on their own brand name at low costs and bring in a lot of conversions.
Many marketers don’t like running ads on their own brand names because they feel they already have a top organic listing and don’t need a separate ad. While they’re not wrong – consider this – are you happy to let your competitors take direct traffic away from you.
Respond in Kind
If you face such a provocation, respond by attacking the competitor’s brand name. This will let them know that you are keeping track of your own brand name and are not to be trifled with. Usually, this problem goes away after a while.
In Conclusion
There are some practicalities of working in the digital marketing industry which should be learned. One of them is competitors trying to leverage your brand name. In this article, we discussed how professionals should respond to these attacks by rivals and come out on the other side.
About the Author- Acharya Iyer is a digital marketing strategist and has worked for major B2C and B2B clients in his long career spanning twelve years. He currently gives guest lectures at top institutes in the country including DelhiCourses, known for its renowned digital marketing course in Delhi.
