Norway’s most famous Online Marketing expert Karl Philip Lund published an article about brand mark bidding today. He basically approves of:

- Merchants buying their own brand even though they’re on number one in natural search results
- Merchants buying their competitors brand keywords
- Merchants letting affiliates buy their brand keywords
- Merchants allowing others to bid on their brand

I actually would recommend only the first of these suggestions. Merchants should bid on their own brand. Even if it doesn’t help anything it doesn’t hurt either. When prepared properly merchants will pay as less as 1 cent per click for their own keyword. Furthermore it could even provide advantages such as the choice to send your prospects directly whereever you like. In most cases people who search for your brand will expect to get to the start page first though. You should have a good reason to send them somehwere else.

As for letting others bid on a merchants brand: basically I wouldn’t even let my affiliates bid on my brand. Why would I do that? I’m fine when my ad is shown. What would I need another one for?
I can only think of one reason to make an exception: merchants might want to let their top affiliates use their brand. This way they could help to make the affiliate’s campaign more profitable. In return affiliates will promote the merchant more heavily with more competitve keywords.

I don’t see any single reason why merchants should allow anyone else bidding on their brand.

Last but not least: I also wouldn’t recommend to bid on a competitors brand. Not only that it’s unfair and might have a negative impact on the merchants reputation but I think there’s always a legal risk when doing so. Therefore I’d suggest to refrain from buying your competitors keywords.

Merchants should ask Google to ban everyone else from bidding on the merchants brand keywords. That’s quite an easy process. You just need to fill out a little form provided by Google and send it to them. After a few weeks it won’t be even possible for other advertisers to trigger their ad with the brand keyword. (This might work a little different with other search engines.)

Karl Philip’s conclusion is based on his own as well as Seth Godin’s thoughts:

- By buying their own brand keywords merchants have the possibility to control which offers the prospect is about to see first
- If merchants don’t buy their brand keyword others will take that number 1 spot
- Since a merchants ad fits best to the keyword it will become cheaper soon whereas competitors need to pay more for the merchants brand than the merchant does
- Merchants can lead customers directly to special offers

I agree with the first argument (see my thoughts above). However the other thoughts don’t quite convince me. No one will take your spot when you tell Google to forbid bidding on the keyword in the first place.
Also, there’s no question about who pays more or who pays less for a keyword. You, the merchant, are the only one who pays anything at all. The argument might apply for other search engines though.
Certainly you can lead a prospect directly to a special offer. However why don’t you just make it visible on your start page? I’m sure merchants want everyone to see that very special offer anyway, don’t they?

What do you think?