byte Size: Google Ads Display Tactic To Target Your Competitor’s Customers

There are lots of ways you can use what you know about your competitors to your advantage when it comes to Google Ads.  One trick we use for clients, which isn’t a “trick” so much as it is just common sense (and taking advantage of a Google Ads feature anyone can use) is to use your competitors to setup a Custom Affinity Audience in a Google Ads Display campaign.

What you do, essentially, is creat an audience of people who’ve visited URLs you provide (your competitors) in the past 30 days.  Logically, this audience is comprised of both potential and existing customers of whatever competitors URLs you enter.  Your display ads can be shown to this Custom Affinity Audience when they are browsing publisher sites in the Google Display network, ads are served by Google and they meet all other targeting criteria.

Make sure to limit the frequency any single ad is shown to a single user (in whatever time period you’re flighting).  Reducing the frequency will increase reach.

Audiences will require a certain frequency of impressions (of a specific ad or group of ads or message) before brand recognition (or brand awareness/recall) happens.

Keep in mind:
You’re targeting people who’ve visited your competitor’s sites within the past 30 days.  While this is certainly a qualified audience for you & your products or services, it also is an indicator that your competitors are known to the potential customer, perhaps even searched for.  This mean’s the CTR% (Click-Through Rate) will likely be low (don’t expect anything great here).  The Conversion Rate, however, should be above average for your Display campaigns, especially if you use messaging and language which highlights your competitive advantage(s).

Want to use Custom Audiences in your Google Ads account?