One day, one of your customers sends you a nice email informing you that someone is Top 1 on Google using the same… name! Your company name!
Really⁉ How could this happen?
You immediately understand the potential disaster 😱
- Visitors often click on the first ads that seem relevant, therefore the other one
- Huge detriment to your sales
- A hijacking of your brand’s reputation
- A tremendous amount to spend to fix it
- A battle lost in advance
- Some AdWords knowledge to acquire as quickly as possible
- More than Google, there is collateral damage: Google's partners (such as Amazon)
Don’t panic, take a deep breath, GetRank.io has the solution. 😅
In this article, you will discover what you can do to prevent a competitor from stealing your brand name for number one ranking purposes on Google.
And most importantly, why it is so important to regularly monitor your brand name because it can happen anytime and anywhere...
1/ What is brand monitoring?
2/ Why should you monitor your brand name?
3/ How can you notice that your name brand has been “stolen”?
4/ Is bidding your competitor's name legal?
5/ How can you do brand name monitoring?
6/ What GetRank.io can do for you?
1/ What is brand monitoring?
Brand monitoring is the process of tracking different channels to identify where your brand is mentioned. Knowing where and how people are talking about your brand will help you better understand how people perceive it, and lets you collect precious feedback from your audience.
Brand monitoring is also used for a wider range of activities including market research to put together information and insights as:
- Branded Keywords
- Topics, events, and industry trends
- Influencers and industry micro-influencers
The branch of brand monitoring that interests us is “brand names monitoring”. It is the act of monitoring your name, all over the world. Make sure your own brand name is always listed first on Google.
2/ Why should you monitor your brand name?
Google AdWords is not an exact science.
You've focused your efforts on getting your advertising to be first on Google. It ensures you a high click-through rate, and positively affects your Quality Score. This number one ad on Google assures you 80% of your customer acquisition.
Then, in just one day, all of your efforts to maintain your Top 1 position🔝 can be wiped out. And your reputation with it.
Any efforts it will take to regain your position will be superior to what you spent to get to the top. So unfair. 😠
Monitoring your own brand can prevent this from happening, or minimize it if it does.
3/ How can you notice that your name brand has been “stolen”?
There are several ways to find if your brand name has been “borrowed”, or “stolen” as you wish. Here it is:
- You are informed of this by one of your kind customers, as I said in the introduction
- You can check your website’s analytics and see a downward curve, lower traffic than usual (you need to verify asap if your website is functioning correctly)
- You google your brand name and see that another website is at the top of the paid search results for your brand name.
4/ Is bidding your competitor's name legal?
The first thing that appears on your mind when you see another ad with your brand name is “WTF”😆.
The second one is “Is it even legal?”.
Unfortunately, the answer is "yes". Additionally, leveraging a competitor's brand is quite common in digital marketing. If your name, (or your client brand name) isn't trademarked, then there’s no issue for the search engines.
If they are just bidding on your brand keywords without any trademark infringements, then you can’t report them. If the competitor is stepping on your trademark toes, then you can report it to Google here.
Before you do, make sure that the competition is using a branded phrasing you have officially trademarked. Otherwise, the whole process will be more difficult than it’s worth.
You can also simply ask the company to stop targeting your brand keywords, not sure you will get an answer!
The sooner you can remove their ad, the better for your brand.
6/ How can you do brand name monitoring?
Sure you can do your brand name monitoring in a “handmade” way. Google has some brand monitoring tools such as Google Alerts. You can track your name in one country at the same time.
This is very time-consuming but this is a way to do it to begin your brand name monitoring.
You can add a keyword in and you’ll receive emails when someone uses it on the web. You can use it to track your brand name. It is quite basic though, just offering up the mentions with no analysis or long-term overviews. Another more robust alternative to Google Alerts is using a free account with The Online Body Guard.
6/ What GetRank.io can do for you?
GetRank.io monitors your brand name to make sure you are always in the first position!
Here is what GetRank.io can do for your brand name:
- Monitor your brand's ranking on Google every day in all the countries of your choice
- When someone is bidding on your brand name, we alert you via email
- We automatically launch the ad at the same time in every country you choose!
- We stop the ad when the competitor stops bidding on your name.
💸 You don't need to do anything and you can save up to 80% on your AdWords budget!💸
Conclusion
Losing your ranking because of aggressive advertising is really "annoying", to be polite.
🔥 GetRank.io is the tool that empowers you back to your number one position!🔥
You can stay relaxed, GetRank.io takes care of your name! Get started today by creating an account.