“The most unprofitable item ever manufactured is an excuse.”
Isn’t that the truth, especially in business, and even more so, when you are making the decision as to whether or not to promote your business through PPC advertising. Don’t worry. PPC is not going to EAT ALL YOUR MONEY. That is just another excuse people give to avoid risking success. Truth is what makes a business succeed at PPC and stand out from the competition is; they understand their customers. The most crucial factor of all when it comes to the world of digital advertising is – understanding your customer.
But to better understand who your customer is and how to target him better, you need to have a guideline that will help you know what to do and give you insight as to what your competition is doing. Once armed with this information you can take advantage, step up your game and outdo the other guys.
But let’s start at the beginning
You can’t really start looking at what your direct competitors are doing until you know about targeted keywords and how to choose the good ones.
Pick Them Right
PPC ads are based on keywords or key terms. You choose the keywords you want to target and Google shows your ads for those words or terms, placing you at the top of the results list.
However, you must be careful with the keywords you target and avoid selecting them simply because they get a lot of traffic. Doing this may get you clicks but it won’t get you paying customers. Make sure that the selected keywords or keyword phrases are specifically relevant to your business. So for example, if you sell car tires don’t use keywords that relate to bicycle or truck tires. Your keywords need to blend well with your ad copy and with your website copy.
Think Like A Customer
You need to be a customer, or at the very least put yourself in the customer’s shoes. It is not that hard, you are, after all, a customer of other businesses. So just think of what you want, what you are looking for when searching for a business or service like yours. What words would you search for to find a service like yours? Write these words down and bid on your brand terms. These words can offer inexpensive ads, convert well, and help your search engine rankings.
Be Specific
When it comes to Google PPC campaigns the more specific you are with your choice of keywords, the better. Avoid adding keywords that do not relate to your ad, even if they do generate a lot of traffic – the people that come from these ads won’t be interested in your product. Stay away from single word keywords which are too generic. Instead, use two to three-word keyword phrases that target your customers. And of course, once you have the keywords you want to use variations of it, just like a customer would type in variations of the keywords. These can include Synonyms, serial numbers, shop name or store and even singular or plural versions of the terms.
Target Your Competitors Keywords
Ok, so once you have a couple of campaigns going, and are targeting the right type of customers, you can really step up your game and go much further than your competitors if….
You Watch and Repeat
No. It is not cheating to learn about your direct competitors, and see what keywords they use. In fact, now there are tools like SEMrush that can help identify the keywords they use. With this knowledge, you can determine whether any of those keywords are appropriate for your business and then integrate them into your PPC campaigns, your content and your ad copy as well.
Target Competitor’s Brand Keywords
Yes, we know this method is a little controversial but for some businesses, it works. Want proof? Think of it like this. People are on a competitors email list, they get an email from this brand. If you target the brand name, Google may serve the ads in the section above Gmail accounts. This gives the reader another option for the service they are interested in. YouTube users are seeing this trend as well. When you are looking for any certain brand, chances are you’ll have to sit through another ad before getting your video served, and in some cases, it is an advertisement for a direct competitor. Why does one business target the brand keywords of a direct competitor?
Brand Loyalty Is A Thing of The Past
Recent brand loyalty research indicates that loyalty is not what it used to be. In fact, almost 80% of all people retract their brand loyalty much faster than they did 5 years ago. Just go and ask a millennial, he will probably tell you that he is not loyal to any certain brand, and if he is, it is because the company has worked hard to retain his loyalty.
So if you want to really outdo your competitor target some of his trademarks (keywords he is known for), this way you’ll get clicks from people who are interested in your product.
Use Customer Affinity
Another option to get that one-up on your competition you need to use a Google feature called Custom Affinity Audience, but not on your website, instead, on your competitor’s website. This allows you to target specific audiences, and if you use it well, this type of audience will be interested in your ads. But here is the secret to using this tool. You need to target your competitor’s landing page or home page. Adwords will then tell you who their affinity audience is, their behavior and interests. Then you simply target the keywords that fit their affinities.
Hopefully, this guide helps you identify the specific actions you can take to get that competitive edge you need.
