- 2 clients are in the same industry, but one sells B2C locally, while the other sells wholesale B2B Nationally, including the local market.
- Both clients know each other and the retail store buys and promotes the wholesaler's products - but not exclusively.
- They both are interested in having our company manage AdWords accounts for them. I am already managing the B2B account and my employer has quoted and pitched Adwords to the B2C client.
- In the local market both clients will be bidding on many of the same industry and product keywords, which means the campaign manager (Me) will be bidding against himself, at least locally.
- I have a concern about the ethics of this situation, or if this type of in-house competition violates any of Google's policies, or GAP terms of use. I cannot find anything in the GAP or AdWords Help Areas.
As the only GAP certified campaign manager at this agency, I will be the one managing both accounts.
My one feeling is to not run the national wholesaler's ads in the local market so they are not in competition.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
They're not direct competitors, after all, and even though some ads might overlap geographically, they'd be aiming to reach different prospects.
Give careful thought to your keyword choices, including wise use of negatives. Someone looking for a wholesale supplier would likely search somewhat differently than a regular consumer, so your skill at targeting might minimize quite a bit of the prospective overlap.
In cases where both advertisers do end up showing in the same search results, the quality and clarity of the ads would make the difference for getting the right clicks for each client. That again is a matter of your skill.
Consider that most searches would likely have multiple advertisers in any case. The B2B guy might think it was quite all right for one of "his" retailers to be pushing down other advertisers who don't sell his products.
In your particular case however, I might take both clients. You say one is B2C and a wholesaler. The keywords would therefore be different it seems to me.
I don't believe it violates any Google policies. They don't care who your clients are or what they sell.
If you want to take both clients, go ahead. You suggestion of locking out the national client out of the local one is good, as long of course that you explain the situation to both, or at least to the national one. But I don't see why you'd do that if one is B2B and the other B2C. Like I said, different markets, different keywords, different approach.
What you have to think about too is what happens if you take other B2C clients in same industry in other areas?
The challenge will be that both clients want to bid on the same keywords which are generic to their industry, for example "refrigerators".
One client is a retail store, the other is a manufacturer and wholesaler of one specific brand, which is the retailer happens to carry.
The wholesaler has a section to "find a dealer", so they don't mind getting consumers as they can lead them to a dealer, one of which is the other client.
So, it could be a double win for the B2C client as they could get a visitor regardless of whose ad is clicked-on.
