The digital landscape is becoming increasingly competitive, and it’s hard for your brand to be noticed in the crowded landscape. That’s a significant problem for small and medium-sized businesses that may not have an adequate budget to run massive brand awareness campaigns that demand attention. So, how do you survive in this competitive environment?One of the best options is to bid on competitor names when advertising on Bing or Google Ads. This strategy can help you boost brand awareness—after all, customers can’t choose your brand if they don’t know you exist. Reaching potential customers when they’re searching for your competitors is an effective way to show them that your brand exists and can also offer them the solution they’re searching for. Maybe your products or services are better than the brand name they initially entered in the search bar, so you can leverage this opportunity to show them that.Based on the brand you want to bid on, competitor names are sometimes cheaper than more generic keywords that refer to your products or services. This will allow you to reach prospects who are perhaps down the purchase funnel and are comparing products from different brands. When your bidding gets visitors to your site, schedule a customized strategy call with our team of conversion specialists, and we’ll be happy to help you hit conversions out of the park.
Which Competitors Should I Choose?
One common mistake when bidding on competitor names is to bid on the wrong competitor. Typically, when deciding which competitors to bid on, go for businesses you’re competing against. Also, select companies you feel you have a competitive edge over, whether it’s a bigger supply or better prices.Also, avoid focusing on big-name corporations, instead of companies taking business from those big companies. Let’s face it: your neighborhood grocery store isn’t a huge competition to a big retail company like Walmart. Although your neighborhood grocery store may have better prices on organic foods, for instance, that’s not enough to justify bidding on Walmart’s brand name. The competition for a small grocery store is other grocery stores in your neighborhood and maybe neighboring areas.
When Is it Too Expensive to Buy Ads/Rank for Competitor Names?
Bidding on your competitors’ names is a risky move. Because no business likes having their clients stolen from them, and if your competitors have any pay-per-click knowledge at all, they’ll notice you’re bidding against their brand. They’ll see that their brand name keywords are costing more or ranking lower. That may encourage them to bid on your brand name keywords and start a bidding war, which may drive up bidding costs.However, even without the bidding wars, your cost per acquisition can shoot up because consumers looking for a brand name may ignore your ads, lowering your click-through rates. Google and other popular search engines love high click-through rates because that means they’re doing an excellent job by connecting web users with relevant results. Search engines love click-through rate so much that they consider it when calculating your quality score; a high click-through rate means a high-quality score and vice versa. Ultimately, a low-quality score will rank your advertisements lower on search pages, increasing the costs to run those ads.If you still want to bid on your competitors’ names, or if you’re already doing it and not seeing the results you want, here are five best practices to help you use this marketing strategy effectively.
What Are The Best Practices for Competitor Name Ranking?
1. Run Your Own Branded Campaigns
Even if you already appear on the first page organically for Google-branded searches, you should still run your own branded campaigns. That’ll enable you to dominate the search results. Also, having your brand appear several times on search pages will build customer trust, ultimately improving your click-through rates.This will also allow you to review keywords to see what customers associate with your brand. Brand name keywords are pretty cheap, and when you bid on yourself, you have nothing to lose.
2. Focus on Makes You Different
If you want to take customers from your competitors, you need to include individual deals and perks unique to your brand on your Google Ads. When creating your Google Ads, first look at your competitors’ ads to see what they’re offering. Then, if you can provide more value, start writing your ads.Potential customers looking for your competitors may have already made up their minds, so you’ll need something eye-catching and unique to sway them potentially.Decide if your unique value proposition is less expensive, offers more convenience or higher quality, and run with it.
3. Be Careful with Your Messaging
Because you can report competitors for using your brand name and keywords in their marketing campaigns, they can also report you. So, don’t use branded keywords you don’t own in your marketing copy. However, you can work aspects of your competitors' names into your ad copy without explicitly using their brand names. For instance, you can naturally use Adidas’s “sports” elements in your copy without being overly aggressive.Bidding on competitor names is immediately an act of aggression, so don't be too hostile in your ad copy. It’s tempting to be flippant in your ad copy, but what you say reflects on your brand. Putting down your competitors on your ad copy may turn off prospects from doing business with you.
4. Leverage Your Landing Pages
These prospective customers showed relatively high intent to do business with another brand. So, most likely, they weren’t looking to make the switch.Your landing pages should clarify why your products or services are better. For example, why should they buy from you over who they were looking to purchase from? Also, make it as seamless as possible for them to convert before going elsewhere.If a customer was searching for Company ABC and instead clicked your ad, they should be redirected to a dedicated landing page. Your landing page should, for instance, explicitly use Company ABC's keyword to build quality score, explain how your products are better and give a clear and eye-catching call to action.
5. Test and Optimize Your Ad Copy
Competitor bidding works differently for every single brand and industry. So, it’d be best if you honed in on a strategy that gives you better results.This means you should consistently test your ad copy and learn.
- Focus on the keywords that are working. Exclude those that aren’t yielding desired results. Optimize your bidding strategies.
- Look for new competitors. Exclude those who aren’t yielding desired results.
- Don’t expect results to be the same for different competitors.
Final Thoughts
Bidding on competitor names might be an effective brand awareness strategy, especially if you’re in a competitive industry or your brand isn't well known. However, choose your competitors wisely, build a dedicated landing page, and test and optimize your ad copy and landing page copy. Once people click on your ads, are you ready for them to purchase? The conversion specialists at Ampry are ready to help you set up successful on-site conversion that will yield the results you want. Click this link to request a customized strategy call with one of our skilled conversion experts now!