What is Conquesting in Advertising? Competitor Conquesting Banner
What is Conquesting in Advertising? Competitor Conquesting Banner

What is Competitor Conquesting in Advertising?

Competitor conquesting is centuries old. The Aztecs, Incas, Egypt, and Babylonia were all actively conquesting throughout their reigns. In competitive conquesting advertising, conquest ads are the placement of an advertisement for a product or service next to a competitor’s editorial content, searches, or ads. In a sense, it is a form of digital trench warfare where competitors want to capture as much web terrain as possible.

Conquesting was widespread in ancient times because civilizations had spent a significant amount of time accumulating resources, had desirable land, or were simply large enough in number to pique the interest and appeal of another group of people. Today’s motivations aren’t all that dissimilar. Large corporations invest a significant amount of time and money in developing their brand.

For example, look at the results below when searching for the Asana collaboration tool on Google.

Conquest Marketing Example of Asana in Search Results

The first result is from monday.com, bidding on the competitor keyword to ensure they rank at the top of SERPs. The meta title is witty, informing users that monday.com is “so much better.” For brands, conquest marketing can be a real sucker punch as it siphons off guaranteed traffic that you have invested marketing spend into acquiring.

Is Competitor Conquesting Legal?

Google removed the restrictions that prevented brands from bidding on competitor’s brand keywords as of June 4, 2019. This means that you can’t report your competitor to Google, but don’t worry – there are ways to combat conquest advertising – read on to learn more.

The only condition left is that your competitors cannot use your trademarked brand name in their ad copy. Although this restriction makes it more expensive to bid on competitor brand keywords, the approach is still very viable in modern marketing operations.

Understand what your Competitors are Doing

The first step in developing successful competitive conquesting campaigns is understanding what your competitors are doing in terms of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). You can either outsource keyword research services to an agency so you can hit the ground running, or you can use one of several tools to get a feel for the current landscape, collect ideal keywords and setup campaigns on your own.

SEMRush can help you identify the keywords and ads placements your competitors use and where you could be lagging. Head to SEMrush > Competitive Research > Keyword Gap > Enter in your domain and your competitors domain > Select the “Paid” keyword type option, and look for competitor brand names in the “All Keywords” section. This list will give you roughly all the keywords your competitors are targeting on paid search campaigns, so you can identify the best list of competitors to run your own ads, and whether or not you need to employ a counter strategy – if your brand name is being targeted.

Using Moat, you can view all conquesting ads on display networks within a single platform. Moat can quickly show you the products competitors are promoting and the calls to action they are using. 

There are many other tools available if you do a quick Google search (which is likely full of conquest advertising campaigns). 

Once you’ve figured out what’s going on in the competitive landscape, consider how you can “own” this space. Omnichannel marketing tactics such as display and paid search conquesting campaigns necessitate a high-frequency approach to shift a user’s consideration set. It is necessary to surround a user to drive the thought leadership required to change the mind of your target audience.

Advantages of Competitive Conquesting

Where less competition exists when bidding on brand names, these terms tend to be less expensive to bid on. Businesses can receive a lot of clicks and impressions for a fraction of what is spent elsewhere when businesses don’t pay close attention to bidding on their own brand names. 

As generating conversions is a challenging undertaking, not everyone is prepared to spend a higher CPA when being outbid on their own brand names. However, when competitors are running strong brand campaigns, the cost to conquest competition goes up.

Bidding on rival brands is a terrific way to increase brand recognition. The more you appear in a customer’s search for a specific brand, the more likely they will buy from your store. It’s the perfect way of saying, “Have you heard of us?” to show that you operate in that space. For example, several brands are bidding on “HubSpot” to show they provide a similar offering.

Competitive Conquesting Advertising Example - Paid Search Conquesting of HubSpot

There is almost no better way to acquire a more targeted audience for your goods than those looking for companies that sell similar items to yours. Everyone looking for your competitor’s brand is also looking for yours. In addition, every conversion you get is one less than your competitors can get, which is key for a small emerging industry.

Cons of Competitor Conquesting in Marketing

Bidding on a competitor’s brand name carries the risk of inciting conflict. To your competitors’ benefit, you open a door for them to bid on your brand name and steal part of your future sales. While if you’re bidding on their brand names, they’ll have to pay more to bid on it, the same goes the other way. It becomes more expensive for you to convert on your branded campaigns when others bid on your brand name.

There is a good possibility that if a person searches for a brand online, they have already decided to buy from that store. This means that your branded ad’s CTR will become lower because of this. It may not seem like a big deal, considering that there is no cost to you if people don’t click on your advertisements, but a low CTR can lower your Quality Score and increase the cost of your ad appearing. Even if someone doesn’t click on your ad, you’re still paying for it in some sense.

paid-search-conquesting-quality-score

Image from WordStream

Bidding on your competitors’ keywords through a strategic search engine conquest campaign can be helpful, but it can also be costly. You may have to restrict specific campaigns or reallocate some of your budgets, especially if a bidding war starts.

What to do when Competitors Target your Brand Keyword

It’s important to take action on competitive conquesting ads against your brand. You don’t want to lose potential clients simply because your competitors are showing up more prominently on search engine results about your brand. Here are some measures your marketing team can take to combat digital competitive conquesting efforts:

Strengthen your brand’s digital real estate

Although your SEO efforts may be paying off, helping your branded keywords to rank on position #1 of organic search results, paid ads always show above organic listings. Expand the space your brand occupies on queries for your brand name by creating branded search campaigns. Even if your competitors are not bidding on your brand name, having the additional real estate above the fold in search results increases the likelihood that users will end up in the right place.

Branded campaigns also enable you to A/B test different pages that appear in sitelink extensions, CTAs, promotions and messaging to see which content resonates the most with customers.

Ask competitors to stop bidding on your keywords

Many marketers might argue that a business would never comply with a request to do so. However, in some cases, competitors may not actually be aware that it bid on your keywords, for example if an agency isn’t being transparent with the campaign structure they’ve set up. Ads can automatically serve due to Google’s liberal keyword matching or the businesses’ lack of negative keywords in their targeting settings.

File a trademark complaint with Google and other search engines

This option only makes sense when competitors are using your brand name in their ad copy. If so, and you own the trademark to your name, you can aim to reduce infringements of conquest ads by filing a complaint with Google and Bing.

Conquest competition with your own advertising campaigns

Although CPC is higher when bidding on competitor keywords, there can be many benefits of doing so. Starting a bidding war may force them to stop bidding on your brand name, although be conscious of your marketing budget. Read on to learn how to build an effective conquest marketing strategy.

How to Develop a Conquest Strategic Marketing Approach

Search engines know that ads direct from a brand are more relevant than those from its competitors. As we have already said, the Quality Score on competitor keywords is often low where trademark rules still restrict you from using brand names in the ad copy. However, there are still several strategies to help you succeed at competitor conquesting.

Build excellent landing pages

A solid landing page is the first step to a successful PPC campaign. Don’t even consider bidding on competitor brands until you have a good landing page. You have to persuade users that you are a better option than they found when they looked for your competition. Tell them why they should choose you over the rest by showing them how you stack up.

Competitor Conquesting Concepts - Landing Page Table

Image from formstack

The comparison table can focus on the features where you know you can sweep away the competition. Everyone is attracted to a bunch of green ticks. That’s not to say you should give all your competitors red crosses, as that would appear disingenuous. Create an intelligent comparison that works in your favor. 

Competitor conquesting marketing campaigns often have bespoke landing pages with specific seed keywords. Mentioning specific competitor brand names on your landing pages helps to improve Google Quality Score, since the landing page becomes much more relevant to your targeted competitor keywords. Optimization of your landing pages brings SEO into the equation, creating a need to thoroughly understand the nuances between SEO vs PPC.

Free trials and demos or other value-added incentives are excellent ways to keep visitors on the page once they click through to you. For example, links to whitepapers or other bottom of funnel content help to nurture customers and generate leads, since the intent of users landing on this page usually indicates they are in the consideration phase of the buying cycle.

Make your ad copy compelling

If the ad copy doesn’t support the proposition, there is not much value in investing in competitor keywords. For example, the ad copy below from Asana tells searchers to look at the side-by-side comparison of them and their competitors. What better way to convince someone to change their mind?

Search Engine Conquest - Conquest Marketing Examples

Image from Click’d

Remarketing and display ads

Both Google Ads and Bing offer remarketing lists for search ads. You can adjust your bidding based on user behaviors and increase bids for users who visit your site but do not convert. You can show different offers to those who previously visited your site and are now searching for the competition, giving them the best possible deal. 

Search engine conquest advertising is one of the more overt methods.

Recently, Amazon’s AmazonBasics batteries sparked a stir when they appeared prominently above search terms like “Energizer.”

The same can also apply to social media or Google display retargeting. For example, you could use Facebook interest targeting to reach out to your competitors’ followers. Facebook allows geo-conquesting marketing to target competitor audiences. You can also create display conquesting ads that target users who have visited your competitor websites or searched their brand name keywords, and set placements for those ads on comparison pages within unbiased industry domains.

Summary

Putting these conquest marketing concepts into action is challenging, but as long as you have a robust strategy, conduct lots of research, and see a genuine benefit from the activity in your KPIs (learn how to measure marketing effectiveness here), there is much potential. Smaller companies can benefit by acquiring traffic from larger competitors and taking a piece of the pie – see our post on B2B startup marketing strategies to learn more.

If you believe that your product or service is better and can create content supporting your case, competitor conquesting is worth a shot. Learn how Stark Visibility’s Google Ads Management Services can help you get started.

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