I was reading a post by Sarah Tillitt the other day regarding conquesting campaigns (search campaigns where companies buy the branded terms of competitors) and her entry struck a chord with me because conquesting campaigns and reputation management invariably come up during the course of any search marketer’s career.  It’s one of those sticky points where brands get really fired up about, but aren’t really sure how to respond to. I was fortunate enough where the first incident I had to handle had a three month window of time. This is most often not the case.  I was doing search for a very large pharmaceutical company whose patent for a flagship drug was coming to an end and they needed a search strategy to protect against the attack of the generics. 

As you see, I was very fortunate to have three months. Whereas, most of the time, you’ll engage in these initiatives with a very short timeline because the brand is already under attack by a competitor or a massive recall or a negative news event regarding your brand has lawyers bidding on your branded keywords to sell their services to sue your company.

In essence, there are three routes to take:

1. Use an emotional response
2. Address it in a direct, coordinated, measured response
3. Address it in an indirect, coordinated, measured response

For the first bullet point – you’ll be surprised by how many people see competitors on their branded terms, get really worked up and then walk away because they don’t know what recourse they can take. Then there are others who want to rain down fire and brimstone upon the wicked competitors and the search engines that empowered them.  Obviously, a heightened emotional state shouldn’t be when you craft your brand’s search marketing defense strategy.

Of the two measured responses that can be taken, there’s the indirect approach, which Coke is a good example of, and the direct approach, which Mattel used during the toy recall. Both were executed very well. GroupM Search has some great POVs and studies regarding these various strategies, so don’t hesitate to reach out to me for more insight. I won’t go into them in depth here because these strategies need to be customized to your specific issue, but I will talk about some proactive steps you can take to keep things from getting to the zero barrier stage.

File for Trademark Protection

The first thing you should do, if you haven’t already, is to file for Trademark protection with the major search engines.  All three engines allow for the trademark owner to file for trademark protection of some kind. Some have editorial policies in place that theoretically should prohibit conquesting from happening. Unfortunately, people are more cunning than machines at times and can find work arounds. So the best bet is to go ahead and file for Trademark protection.

When filing with each engine, you’ll be required to provide the name of the trademark owner, address, etc… along with the registration numbers for each trademark that you’re filling. If you don’t know what the registration number is for each brand you’re filing, contact the trademark/patent lawyer for the brand. If they’re slow to respond, you can try to find the number yourself at the US Patent and Trademark Office’s website, and look under “Trademarks” for “Search Marks.”  Depending on your brand, this could be a very harrowing process.

This simple step of filing for trademark protection alleviates a lot of your headaches up front. But do keep in mind, if your brand has retailers and resellers like Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc… who sell your products, you have to make sure that their paid search ads that sell your product doesn’t get blocked. This can cause a huge issue between your brand and your distribution channels. I should caveat this with another thought. Just because you file for trademark protection doesn’t mean you’re fully protected. The engines don’t proactively monitor for trademark violations, they catch it when then can. So it’s a good idea to still monitor your branded keywords intermittently.

Once your filings are done, brainstorm the various weaknesses in your product that competitors can use to attack you and prepare responses to those.  Also, brainstorm worst-case scenarios that can happen due to risks inherent in your vertical. For instance, every brand has to worry about a recall. Do you have somewhere on your website that addresses the various issues that may result in a recall? If not, do you have that content ready to deploy in that event? Some competitors will take advantage of a recall to start a conquesting campaign, so having a plan in place prior to anything bad happening makes sense.

Also, what are your company’s standard operating procedures on addressing your competitor’s brands directly? In the event that you’re the target of a competitive conquesting campaign, can you respond in kind and surround their branded terms with your messaging? Do you have a messaging strategy ready to deploy around your competitor’s brands? Do they adhere to the search engine’s editorial guidelines? Do you have a slush fund ready for these events?

When it comes to protecting your brand equity on search engines, it is imperative that you have a coordinated and measured initiative in place prior to anything happening. Trying to play catch-up in the age of the Internet is like being late to a baseball game and trying to swing the bat more often to make up for lost innings. It just won’t work.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!