In a world filled with competition, it makes sense that eCommerce marketers would try their luck by stealing potential customers from other stores. But how do you get them? Smart companies strategically advertise on sites frequented by those shoppers who are looking for something specific and relevant. This means there’s no need to spend heavily upfront on marketing campaigns if all these people will be browsing independently anyway on google or etc. Instead, you can target your competitor’s audience and any other relevant audience with more efficiency. Since they are your competitor’s audience what you’re offering is already relative to what they want.
It’s super important that you do competitive research before engaging in any of these strategies. Competitive research can provide you with tons of invaluable information about what works and doesn’t in your eCommerce business. So you’re never left behind when it comes to competition. You’ll be able to stay one step ahead, using a combination strategy from research into competitors’ products as well customer service, marketing & more!
1- Adwords Targeting Competitor’s Brand Name
The concept of competitor targeting on AdWords is pretty simple. You can list out the competitors in your industry who offer similar products and services. And then you bid on their branded terms. So when a user searches for their name or some kind of service related to your industry, your brand shows at the top. It’s simple as that.
But if you do it wrong, a bidding war can end up costing more than your ad and ignite a legal issue out of nowhere.
For example, when you search for the Hemingway app, you can see that Grammarly and other three companies are heavily targeting that search term:
With this strategy, you can use your ad campaigns for more specific audiences which are more in line with your own campaigns’ goal type. This will allow you to target your competitor’s customers more efficiently. This allows advertisers to attract customers while keeping existing customers interested.
How you do it:
First, you create a custom audience and choose the option to target “People who searched for any of these terms on Google.“
So now take your list of competitor terms and add them to your new Custom Audience.
Watch Out!
Yeah bidding on competitors’ brand names is good and all but there are some things you should not do. These are:
- Using a trademarked brand name in your display URLs, such as optimum7.com/betterthanapple
- Using a trademarked brand name in your ad text such as Better Than Apple
These are the no-cross lines that will erupt the legal issue that we out of nowhere
2- Adwords: targeting Competitor’s URL
In addition to keyword and search intent targeting for your Custom Audiences, you can also enter your competitor’s URLs. This will enable you to identify and target customers that visit specific URLs so you can get a competitive edge.
Create a list of all of your competitors’ URLs so and AdWords makes an audience off of those domains. So you can target the audience that visits that URL.
How to do it
To find people who have the same interests, you can create a custom audience and select “Include people with the following interests or behaviors”.
Next, there is a section, “Expand your Audience by Including,” click on People who browse types of websites.
Select “People who browse websites similar to” and you’ll be given another area where you can add in as many competitor web pages as you want.
This strategy is a more top-of-funnel approach that can help you make the introduction with your users who are interested in what you offer.
It focuses on one specific user behavior if your competitors have pretty similar websites.
3- Youtube Ads on Competitor’s Youtube Videos
Targeting Competitor Channels
Imagine if you could display ads on your competitor’s YouTube videos.
This marketing strategy is really bold, but it’s super-efficient and works like a charm. It involves placement targeting on Youtube. This strategy puts you in front of your competitors’ audiences by advertising on your competitors’ YouTube videos. With this strategy, you can easily get new customers for your own business. Sounds too good to be true right?
If your business sells shirts, a crowded market, for example, you may want to target a competitor’s video. Having your ads appear on your competition’s videos gives you a competitive edge that can help you reach new loyal customers.
To do this, head to your YouTube ad placement options:
Then you type your competitor’s name,
Also, you can target specific competitor videos too,
Search-Based Targeting
Another way to target competitors is search-based targeting. It wouldn’t be efficient to just slap your ads on any user’s screen right? So you target certain keywords which are related to your business and narrow the range a little bit.
Search-based video ad targeting allows you to strategically place your ads on videos by getting a glimpse into the user’s YouTube search history.
When you know what your target audience is looking for on YouTube, then it becomes a lot easier to shift the customers your way and get that competitive edge.
4- Linkedin Ads for competitors audiences
It’s important to not only know who your competitors are but also which potential customers they’re trying so hard to reach. A lot of people think that if a competitor has already reached some niche market then there isn’t room left for them. However, this is wrong because you can never how interested those individuals may actually be in what you offer.
Having competitors in your niche validates the value of what you sell. There are other methods out there for people to buy. But they all have drawbacks that you don’t. One might not work as well or be cheaper than another option due to various reasons including competition from others offering similar products.
By creating an audience that serves both your audience and the competitors can bring you good results.
How to do it
When you are at the second step of creating a campaign, go to audience attributes and select company,
then you select the companies you want to target,
5 – Facebook Ads to Target Competitors Audience
Facebook has become a major player in the advertising world and marketers can tap into its massive user base with Facebook Advertising. The vast number of people who use Facebook daily means that your ads will be seen by more potential customers than ever before.
Of course, you can use Facebook ads for more specific reasons. Like targeting a competitor’s audience. There are millions of Facebook advertisers and it’s safe to assume that you have a number of competitors.
When it comes to competition, you should be able to know how well you are doing compared with your fellow marketers using similar methods.
You have to do some competitive research to learn what assets or strategies your competitors may be using that works, so you can make a better version of it and flow the audience to your business.
You can supercharge your Facebook Ad campaign by targeting the fans of your competitor pages.
Do your due diligence, Find Potential Competitor Pages
In order to get the most out of your competition research, it’s important that you focus on who is selling what and where.
The first step in this process will involve creating a list of specific competitor pages which can be found through various strategies. Make note of their names or URLs for later reference! Here are some strategies for finding your competitors:
Search for the relevant keywords on Facebook
Search for relevant keywords into the Facebook search box and select pages. You can browse this list for additional information about companies related to what you do or things that might be of use within your industry.
Facebook Audience Insights
In Facebook Audience Insights, add interests that are relevant to your business. Click the Page Likes tab and view lists of people who have liked pages with those specific topics in common. In sorted by affinity score so you can find out which ones seem most popular among this demographic–the higher number being better!
Do Some Split Testing to Determine the Most Profitable Audience
There are many advantages to split testing your audiences. You can determine which group of people is best for delivering the results you want in an ad campaign, with data on what others have done before and their interests based on information from our page list! It’s a great feature that has helped us find specific targeting opportunities not available anywhere else
A huge benefit would be being able to properly target potential customers by splitting them into separate segments for specific targeting.
The tool helps you save time and money because it divides your audience into random, non-overlapping groups. You can then use this information to acquire significant data that will help with stealing customers!
Create Ads That Directly Targets Your Competitors’ Audience
So here is the problem Facebook doesn’t allow you to directly target the audience of your competitors’ pages. But we can easily get over this with the previous steps we just talked about. You do your research about who can be and is your competitor.
Then Facebook Ads allow you to target people with similar interests. Once you have done your research on content that interests your competitors’ audiences, you are in business. You will be able to deliver your ads more efficiently while showing up in front of your competitor’s fans.
You can target your competitors with interest-based audiences by navigating to the “Interests” section and entering your competitor’s name. There isn’t an exact formula for targeting your competitor’s ads. But if you create ads that target their audience, you will draw some leads from them.
To create a highly-targeted audience, you have to analyze the customer interests of your competitors very well. And then you can increase the efficiency even more.
So there are two ways to do this. Either you target similar Facebook pages or you target similar web pages.
First, let’s target similar Facebook pages:
You set up your settings as you see fit then click on the “Detailed Targeting”, and type the page you want to target.
You can also target similar web pages,
Final Thoughts
You might feel like you’re stealing someone else’s profits or livelihood when convincing people to switch from one competitor to another. It may seem “sneaky” and underhanded. But it is undeniable that if an organization was truly meeting its existing customers’ needs then they wouldn’t have any reason to worry over a new company entering the market. Which are simply giving unsatisfied buyers more options in order of preference!
Remember to always be cautious while executing these strategies for the well-being of your own business.
If these five strategies don’t work out well enough by themselves try adding some creativity into your marketing mix through social media campaigns.
Have trouble getting any leads? Or you are just not happy with the conversion rate of your business? At Optimum7 our experienced team can create a custom business plan to increase your conversion rates, online visibility and generate more leads. Don’t hesitate to contact us!
