Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Getting Cheap and Hungry Traffic by Bidding on Your Own Brand Name

The problem

Christian Bedard of www.calimacil.com sells high-end and high-quality foam swords for live action role-playing aficionados. With such a targeted niche, Christian thought he had tapped out all the potential keywords in the swords, shields, and live action weapons department. How could he generate more traffic when there didn't seem to be any?

The solution

Christian discovered a clever AdWords strategy not from one of his competitors, but from Dell Computers. While searching for a Dell machine, he noticed that the company was bidding on its own brand name, even though the entire first page of Google search results was about Dell Computers. Happy to borrow promising ideas wherever he could find them, Christian bid on the keyword [Calimacil] and headlined the ad “Calimacil Official Site.” (See Figure 19-6.)

One of the smartest things you can do as an AdWords advertiser is notice what works on you while you're searching. Most innovation is just borrowing a good idea from somewhere else and applying it where it has never been applied before.

Figure 19-6: An effective ad that capitalizes on searches for their own brand name.

Even though the Calimacil listing comes up at the top of the organic listings for the ...