How do you build a strong competitor campaign? If you are not seeing the results you want, this post is definitely for you. We will show you how to build a competitor campaign and grow your business.

Today, we’re discussing one of my favourite topics: conquesting – building and running competitor campaigns on paid search to drive revenue and grow your business.

People Can Not Pick You As A Solution, If They Don’t Know You Are An Option.

Why Do A Competitor Campaign?

When people launch paid search for a brand, they usually start out bidding on brand and generic search terms followed by remarketing. However, you can change that order and bid on competitor terms (after bidding on brand) because customers searching for a competitor are going to be solution/ problem aware and a lot lower in the funnel (towards your conversion).

This especially applies for newer brands – competitor campaigns are great for building brand awareness in the market. After you have built a foundation with your brand and competitor campaigns, inject effort into working on generic and remarketing campaigns that can be higher up the funnel.

How To Do A Competitor Campaign

Let’s say you are going to launch an ecommerce SaaS solution and compete with Magento and BigCommerce. The increase in CPCs over the last few years makes it a really tough space and industry to compete in. Once you’ve built a robust competitor campaign, you’ll find competing in the space is easier – at least, from my experience with brands.

What Does Your Competitor Campaign Look Like

A lot of people who get asked, “Who are your competitors?” will list out their direct competitors in their space. In our case we would say that Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, Selz and BigCommerce are the brands we are competing with.

That leaves a lot of players out of the mix. This isn’t about who you think your competitors are but who your customers view as your competitors. Your customers could build their own custom solution as one option, but also have indirect competitors including Wix, SquareSpace and WordPress plugins. Additionally, most SaaS brands are always competing against a free option – never underestimate the power of free.

When you include who your customers view as your competitors, it opens up a lot of opportunity that might not have considered before you started building out your competitor campaign(s).

Your Keywords

There are a lot of standard competitor keywords you can utilize because customers always search for these terms when looking at and researching SaaS brands. Some examples might be:

Ecom SaaS Brand
Ecom SaaS Brand Reviews
Ecom SaaS Brand Pricing
Ecom SaaS Brand vs
Ecom SaaS Brand Competitor

You must dive deeper though.  We look at websites like AnswerThePublic.com to furhter understand the space and illuminate what else people are asking related to different brands and categories.

Your Ads

Do not mock, bash, or mention your competitor(s) in your ads. You should only focus on your brand and your unique selling point (USP). It is also important to note that if you can only compete on price then your brand may have already lost. A cheaper price is not a defensible moat.

Building an ad that has an emotional or psychological pull is usually going to perform better than a simple ad that states your product is cheaper. Besides, are customers that only care about price the sort of customers you want?

Your Landing Page

Beyond covering the 5 points of a solid landing page below, it’s super important to avoid sending traffic to a generic landing page that you might use for your brand traffic. Lot of brands do this, and it hurts their brand and business.

Similar to your ad above, you want a landing page that covers how your brand is different. If you are trying to explain a complex subject, you can use a video or if you want to prequalify people, then showing pricing on your landing page may make sense. You may get more leads or customers without pricing but the quality tends to go down as well.

You can even do a direct comparison so customers can understand if you are the right solution for them. Maybe you’re only right for customers working at the enterprise level or those who are more medium in the SMB market. Drawing a line in the sand and saying this is the box we play in is a great strategy as you focus everyone around a core customer.

5 Points To A Better Converting Landing Page

Features & Benefits
It’s important to strike a balance here and not get into so much detail that your landing page feels like it’s full of text. Write a brief one paragraph summary and 3-5 bullet points for clarity. Come back to this section many times and edit the copy to remove any bloated or unnecessary verbiage.

Message Match
Making sure you’ve connected your advertising to the landing page that a customer lands on is important. Too many ad to landing page journies fail to show continuity and lose the customer before they even get started.

Hero Shot
The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true in the short attention span world of the landing page. The hero shot is the visual representation of your offer and can help people gain a better understanding of what it is or what it looks like. For maximum effect, it should show context of use. This means showing rather than telling how it will be used by a customer.

Social Proof
Use third-party endorsements to prove you’re legitimate. Examples of social proof are customer testimonials, social signals (how well received is your offering on public networks), number of customers, awards and of course, customer reviews.

One Goal
Have only one action you want someone to take. Don’t distract your potential customers with more than one goal or a dozen outbound links. If you build a landing page that covers everything above, then you’ll position your SaaS brand to compete on a higher playing field and understand what make your customers tick.

Don’t Forget About Your Account Structure

Lastly, whether you build an alpha beta account structure or go for single keywords ad groups (SKAG) is up for debate and really depends on what you already have in place. Both are valid options when you are building out an account.
What I really wanted to highlight here is what happens after you decide your account structure…

  • Who are your competitors?
  • What keywords should you bid on?
  • What does your ad say?
  • What does your landing page look like?

That is it for this week. See you next time.

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