[Interview] What are the rules for making your Google Ads campaigns perform?

Since 2018, Google has allowed advertisers to use brand names in their Google Ads campaigns in Europe, without prior control. What's more, there are no restrictions on bidding on keywords containing brand terms.

While this policy may seem favourable to businesses, particularly by facilitating the work of legitimate resellers, it is a real source of problems for brands. The reason is that nowadays, on Google, anyone can do anything with your brand in the search results.

The consequences for brands are harmful: pressure on bids, recovery of traffic by third parties, impact on their image, damage to their customers, etc.

To address these issues, we interviewed Jérémie Lipfeld, CEO of Monibrand.

What are Google's rules on buying brand keywords?

Advertising campaigns on Google are very effective levers for acquiring leads, traffic, visibility and growth for a company in the short term. In fact, we've noticed that this acquisition lever provides an instant return on investment, more precise targeting and real-time management of the allocated budget.

Buying a keyword from a third-party brand can be intentional. It may be the work of an unscrupulous competitor who wants to use it as bait to make their own brand stand out. For them, this explains the success of their paid referencing and the purchase of sponsored links. Worse still, counterfeit sites like to do this to attract traffic and sell fakes under the guise of legitimate resale.

But the purchase of brand keywords is also often done accidentally. Advertisers can sometimes position themselves on a word that resembles the brand or simply on a generic term (such as internet box) that may be associated with the brand name by the search engine. And they won't even know it.

Obtaining a sponsored link in the first positions on search represents a unique opportunity to be visible and to generate qualified traffic.This is what motivates unscrupulous advertisers to deliberately bid on branded keywords that will bring them visibility and traffic.

How should you analyse your keywords to ensure that your Google Ads campaigns perform?

Choosing your keywords

When running your campaigns on Google Ads, there are a number of things you can do to boost your visibility.

First and foremost, it's essential to choose the right keywords for your business. These must be varied and relevant, while respecting the terms requested by Internet users on search engines.

Your choice of keywords should also be linked to your own landing pages. You need to pay particular attention to ensuring that your keywords enrich your ad campaigns and add value to your meta description, enabling you to stand out from competitors bidding on your keywords.

Your list of keywords should enable you to achieve a good return on investment when setting the budget for your campaigns. To achieve this, a study of the performance of these keywords must be carried out. You should therefore opt for a good search volume, which should not be too high, to avoid being too competitive, but also to avoid spending more and not getting the visibility you want.

You need to ensure that you have the right CPC for the volume of searches per keyword. This study and monitoring will enable you to stay within your budget and at the same time achieve a good conversion rate.

The choice of location

An analysis of the performance of your campaigns on Google will enable you to remove irrelevant keywords or those that perform poorly. We advise you to target different keywords per ad group. Create three ad groups with three different lists of keywords. You'll then be able to see which group of keywords performs best.

We also recommend that you study the performance of your campaigns according to location. This is because the visibility and performance of your campaigns will differ depending on the distribution radius. This monitoring will enable you to focus your campaigns on the most relevant areas. For example, try to distribute your campaigns in three different areas.

How can I protect my brand and my keywords on Google Ads?

There are various measures you can take to protect your brand on Google Ads.

Monitor your brand on Google Ads

Start by monitoring what people are doing with your brand on search engines.

If you want to have a complete overview at all times of the day and across different locations, there are technological solutions that allow you to automate this monitoring.

Don't forget to look at all combinations of generic keywords

We saw above that Google displays campaigns based on generic words (such as box internet), even when Internet users use them in combination with brand names (such as box SFR). This is done without even being requested by the advertiser in question.

Buy your brand on Google Ads

This measure is fundamental: every brand needs to be positioned on Google. What's more, it's the best way of providing yourself with numerous opportunities for attracting traffic and developing conversions.

Contact the advertisers who use your brand

Get in touch with everyone who advertises on your behalf. Most of the time, a simple exchange is enough to put an end to this practice, even though it remains time-consuming.

Exclusion lists of branded terms can be used to prevent them from being suggested by Google alongside generic keywords.

Use a legal service to exert pressure if necessary

Registered trademarks are protected by intellectual property rights. Only advertisers authorised by the trademark owner may use them, including for digital communication and promotion purposes. A lawyer or legal support will be able to point this out to an advertiser who does not respond to your calls... And it usually works.

File a complaint

As a last resort, don't hesitate to take the matter to court. Out-of-court settlements are often reached, and the reason is that the law is on the side of the brands. A 2015 ruling by the Court of Cassation concerning a dispute over misleading commercial practices on search engines is a good illustration of case law that has been in existence since 2010. It determines that a trademark can be purchased as a keyword, provided that this does not harm the trademark or its functions.

Under no circumstances must the use of the trademark word create confusion in the mind of the Internet user about the product, its origin or its owner.

The Monibrand solution takes account of all these recommendations, which will enable you to regain control over the use of your brand on Google ads in the future.