If a competitor is bidding on your brand name, they're intercepting people who already decided to buy from you. The fix is a small, tightly-scoped brand campaign that pushes you above them in the auction. For most Australian SMEs this costs $50-$300/month and returns a multiple of that in protected revenue.
Is this actually happening to you?
Open an incognito window and search your brand name. If you see paid ads from competitors above your organic listing, you're losing brand clicks. Some Australian industries (legal, finance, trades, SaaS) see this constantly. Others rarely.
You can also check the Auction Insights report inside Google Ads (campaign or ad group level) to see which competitors overlap with your brand keywords.
Why brand defence works
Quality Score on your own brand terms is almost always 10/10 - the ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience are perfect because the user is searching for you. That makes your CPC very low, often 5-30c per click in Australia.
Meanwhile, competitors bidding on your name have low Quality Score on those terms. They pay much more per click than you do for the same auction. That asymmetry is why brand defence is so cost-effective.
How to set it up
A clean brand defence setup looks like:
- •A dedicated campaign called something like "Brand - AU"
- •Exact and phrase match keywords for your brand name and common variations (misspellings, "[brand] reviews", "[brand] login")
- •A monthly budget cap of $100-$500 depending on how often competitors actually show up
- •Manual CPC or Maximise Clicks bidding - Smart Bidding can over-spend on brand terms
- •Ad copy that explicitly reinforces "this is the real us" - your tagline, your USP, your phone number
- •Sitelinks to your most relevant internal pages (services, contact, pricing)
Don't use broad match on brand
Broad match brand campaigns will balloon spend by matching to anything tangentially related. Phrase and exact only.
How much budget you actually need
Brand search volume is the cap. If 800 people a month search your brand name and your max CPC is 30c, your theoretical max spend is $240/month - and most months it will be much less because you'll dominate the auction.
A good rule for Australian SMEs: budget around 5-10% of your total Google Ads spend for brand defence. Below 5%, you might miss high-intent clicks; above 10%, you're probably overspending.
When NOT to run brand defence
Brand defence isn't always worth it. Skip it if:
- •No competitors are bidding on your brand name - check first, don't assume
- •Your organic listing dominates the SERP (multiple sitelinks, knowledge panel, no paid ads above the fold)
- •You're a new brand with low search volume - there's nothing to defend yet
- •Your trademark is registered and competitors have already been served with a Google trademark complaint
Running brand campaigns when no one is bidding against you just means paying Google for clicks you'd have got for free. Re-check the SERP quarterly.
The trademark route
Google's policy lets competitors bid on your brand name as a keyword, but they can't use your brand name in their ad copy if you hold a registered trademark. File a Google trademark complaint via the Google Ads Help form - it usually takes a few days. This won't stop competitors bidding, but it makes their ads much less effective.
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