Using Google Ads to Target Your Competitors' Customers

[00:00:00] It is Wednesday, March 27th. Today, copy Cat Tactics, how you can target customers of

[00:00:07] your competitors and not run a foul of Google's ad policies. LinkedIn now has DMs for pages,

[00:00:15] the ad market keeps defying reports of its death, and YouTube gives marketers more control

[00:00:20] over their channels why you should steer clear. I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead today in

[00:00:27] Digital Marketing. Hello, every other Wednesday I am joined by our Google ads correspondent Jill

[00:00:33] Sasqueen Gales. Jill spent six years at Google and today runs a fantastic Google ads training

[00:00:38] program called Inside Google Ads. Hello Jill. Hello Tod. So I have noticed some interesting

[00:00:45] conversations on LinkedIn lately about competitor targeting in Google ads. Can you walk us through,

[00:00:53] I mean, let's start at the beginning. What is competitor targeting? First of all, competitor

[00:00:57] targeting is an umbrella term for when you're showing ads to people when they're looking for your

[00:01:02] competitors. So if you are Lululemon showing an ad to people when they're really looking for Nike,

[00:01:09] show them your Lululemon ad and try to get them to come to your website instead. And there are tons

[00:01:14] of different ways to do this, but the most common would be to try to show your ads on your competitors

[00:01:22] websites if they do have ads or on their YouTube videos to create a custom segment on your competitors,

[00:01:28] brand terms, or by search conquesting we call it by actually adding your competitors brand names

[00:01:34] as keywords in your own search campaign. So you show up when people search for them. Is that not

[00:01:40] against some kind of Google policy? Or do they just turn a blind eye to that? It sounds a little

[00:01:44] devious. Some people think it's devious or unethical, but it's actually completely allowed. It

[00:01:51] doesn't break any policies and it doesn't break any laws. The key is that you can't pretend to

[00:01:56] be another brand. You can't intentionally mislead consumers. So if I'm Lululemon, someone searches

[00:02:03] for Nike, I have that as a keyword I want to show an ad. My ad can say Nike. Check out our running

[00:02:08] shoes. In fact, my ad can't say Nike at all because Nike is trademarked, but my ad can say

[00:02:14] Lululemon running shoes are best for example. So that's the key is you can't be misleading

[00:02:20] consumers, but depending on what your competitor's brand name is, you can potentially get around

[00:02:26] the trademark thing or you can get creative. And for example, something I posted last week that

[00:02:30] got a lot of attention is I was looking for Hey Jen AI. It's the name of a generative AI tool.

[00:02:36] And the first ad that came up was from a competitor called Sinisthesia. And Sinisthesia's ad

[00:02:42] tech said, Hey, generate AI videos. So they weren't actually using the brand name and I don't even

[00:02:50] know if that's trademarked or if it would have been against policy, but because it's similar to

[00:02:54] real words, they could say, Hey, generate AI videos and grab attention. So you can get really creative.

[00:03:01] I've also seen examples of this in the accounting space, you know, one accounting company saying

[00:03:06] quick, you know, time to do your books. So it didn't get quick books, but not in a way that

[00:03:11] infringes on trademarks was long as you're not using trademarks and misleading consumers about

[00:03:17] who you are. Then it's absolutely fair game. It sounds like it's a very fine line. You got to walk

[00:03:22] though. I know you're not a lawyer, but I mean with your background having worked at Google for

[00:03:27] quite a bit of time, do you think that you could say and claim it under fair comment or fair

[00:03:32] dealing something like better than Nike, you know, where you're not claiming to be Nike,

[00:03:39] you're making what you believe to be a factual statement. Just how would that do you think internally

[00:03:44] have been dealt with at Google? Was that have been okay, fine? That's probably fair comment

[00:03:48] or do you think that would have been against policy? You can't do that because you can't use the name

[00:03:52] Nike in your ad text because Nike is trademarked. So you can't use another company and that's where

[00:03:57] people sometimes run into trouble if you sell Shopify apps, you may not be able to use the word Shopify

[00:04:03] in your ads because Shopify is trademarked. If you are I don't know a department store and so you

[00:04:08] sell all these other brands, you need to get authorization to be able to use those brand names in your

[00:04:13] ad text. And actually when I worked at Google, one of the rules we had as a sales team is we were

[00:04:18] never allowed to recommend competitor conquests. So if a customer wanted to run this kind of campaign,

[00:04:25] of course they would, but we weren't allowed to advise them like hey you should really advertise

[00:04:29] in your competitors and we had some outsource optimization teams. We weren't allowed to have those

[00:04:34] optimization teams work on competitor campaigns because of course very bad look for Google to be

[00:04:39] actively encouraging people to do this. All right, so let's say that someone wants to try this,

[00:04:44] try to target their competitors customers on Google ads. How do we start? What do we do?

[00:04:49] Firstly, I will say get creative with your ad text. You can't just use your normal ad text and

[00:04:53] expect that to entice people who are looking for a competitor. You'll want to stick to your brand

[00:04:58] voice of course, but getting a little cheeky or sneaky or funny can be a helpful way to grab attention.

[00:05:05] And then something else I recommend people try is something I came up with called indirect

[00:05:09] competitor targeting. So rather than explicitly trying to advertise when people are searching for their

[00:05:15] brand name with indirect competitor targeting, you're trying to advertise when people are looking

[00:05:20] for keywords related to your competitor. And the way you can do that really simply is by using

[00:05:25] keyword planner and Google ads. It's free tool. And usually when you go to keyword planner,

[00:05:30] you type in your own website to get ideas for keywords you should use. But what I like to do is go

[00:05:35] to keyword planner and type in a competitor's website because that will then tell you which

[00:05:40] keywords Google associates with your competitor. And then you can advertise on those keywords,

[00:05:46] which are not brand names, and show up on a lot of searches that your competitor probably also

[00:05:51] shows up for organically and potentially paid. So I call that indirect competitor targeting.

[00:05:56] And it's a great thing to try if that search conquesting is just too expensive for you to keep up.

[00:06:02] Structurally speaking in terms of like campaign structure, are these best to be grouped together

[00:06:06] with your regular campaigns or should we break them out into their own ad sets or completely separate

[00:06:11] campaigns altogether? I do recommend keeping it in separate campaigns. You should have your brand.

[00:06:16] If you're running brand, your non brand campaigns, kind of your generic category terms if you're

[00:06:20] running that and then search conquesting should mean its own separate campaign just because the

[00:06:25] budget was signed to that, you may want to change with some different frequencies that at different

[00:06:29] levels. And then the profitability that is going to be very different brand being your most

[00:06:34] profitable, conquesting potentially medium or at least profitable and then non brand somewhere

[00:06:40] in the middle there as well. So if you are going to do search conquesting, I always recommend having

[00:06:44] a separate campaign so it can have a separate budget and a separate bid strategy. Yeah good stuff.

[00:06:49] Jill thanks you in two weeks. Thank you. Jill's asking Gales is our Google ads correspondent. She's

[00:06:54] here every other Wednesday. You can learn more about her Google ads training program at our affiliate

[00:06:59] link at b dot link slash GA training and you can watch our full unedited interview. There's a link

[00:07:07] to it in today's newsletter which you can sign up to for free by tapping the link in the show notes

[00:07:11] we're going to today in digital calm slash newsletter

[00:07:14] today's episode is sponsored by nerd wallets smart money podcast nerd wallets trusted financial

[00:07:24] journalists use fact based reporting for some much needed clarity in the finance world helping you

[00:07:30] make smarter decisions with your money. And if you like the format of this podcast, you will love

[00:07:35] theirs. It's packed with information but it's brief. Last week they had a great run down on car

[00:07:41] prices not just the numbers but why car prices moved. How weather affects that market? It was super

[00:07:46] interesting. They also cover things like boosting your credit score, putting money away for

[00:07:50] retirement saving on travel and so on. So yeah listen to nerd wallets smart money podcast on your

[00:07:56] favorite podcast app future you will thank you. LinkedIn is rolling out a welcome addition to its

[00:08:02] company pages a better messaging system. This has been in testing since last summer but this week

[00:08:08] the company confirmed it is turning the new system on across all business pages. The new system

[00:08:13] adds a message button to a company's profile page much in the same way it appears on personal

[00:08:18] profiles and it acts the same way a message button on a Facebook brand page does let's people start

[00:08:24] a conversation with whoever is managing your LinkedIn page. You can turn this option on or off via

[00:08:30] the inbox settings and administrators will be able to see incoming messages in the same place their

[00:08:35] personal messages show up and you can add labels to make it easier to keep track of common topics

[00:08:40] for now though as is often the case the API appears to lag a bit behind the native site so far

[00:08:47] six platforms have been given the backdoor keys bird CRM brand watch hood suite octopus sprinkler

[00:08:55] and zoho. A strange decision by YouTube will give brand managers more control over their channel

[00:09:05] but this might be control you don't want to use as you may know YouTube recently added a shelf on

[00:09:12] channels called for you unlike other shelves like the playlist shelf you can't really control what

[00:09:18] appears in the for you section. YouTube's algorithm will show a different set of videos for each

[00:09:24] visitor but now YouTube is letting channel managers lock specific videos to that for you shelf

[00:09:31] this is good for control freaks but comes at a risk because the content you're jamming there

[00:09:36] may very well not be something every visitor would be interested in. Also YouTube is now offering

[00:09:42] notifications for when your upload precheck is complete to set this up visit studio mobile

[00:09:49] tap your profile picture tap settings then push notifications and select the toggle button that says

[00:09:55] policy now you can step away and when your precheck process is complete you'll be notified via the

[00:10:01] studio app. This is an option apparently only for monetized channels.

[00:10:10] McCale Parachand the head of Microsoft's advertising division is leaving the post to quote

[00:10:16] explore new roles unquote quoting from bloomberg's coverage of this today quote this comes a week

[00:10:22] after the software giant named another executive to oversee consumer artificial intelligence work

[00:10:28] and Microsoft CEO asked Parachand to report to that new executive. Parachand who had been chief

[00:10:35] executive officer for advertising and web services will report to chief technology officer Kevin

[00:10:40] Scott while searching for his next role unquote.

[00:10:44] The US advertising market surged by 10.4% last month over the same month last year marking

[00:10:54] its strongest growth in nearly two years and despite the doom and gloomy may have heard about

[00:10:58] the state of marketing budgets February actually represented the 11th consecutive month of growth for

[00:11:05] the sector. The last time the markets saw double digit growth was two years ago just before a decline

[00:11:10] led to a recession that lasted until about one year ago. Now that downward trend appears to be

[00:11:15] reversing and analysts expect a strong year ahead especially with political ads spending in the US

[00:11:21] and major events like the Paris Olympic Games on the horizon. Last month's leap in ad spending

[00:11:27] is attributed not just to the top 10 ad categories which saw a 7% increase but significantly

[00:11:33] to the smaller categories which grew by nearly 15%. Tomorrow our agency has a full day offsite

[00:11:46] staff meeting so no regular episode tomorrow but rest assured I will still be in your earballs with

[00:11:50] a new interview with the marketing scientist who has figured out the effect that slowing down video

[00:11:57] has on your brand's perception so if you've got a product video you want to know whether or not

[00:12:03] you should show your product being used in slow motion there is an answer to whether or not you

[00:12:07] should do that and we'll have that tomorrow thanks for listening see you then