In case you missed it, I’ve written a lot lately about how to target your competitor’s audience in a cost-effective way. especially, Ways to Target Your Competitors on Google Ads Without Searching and how to use Low-Cost Paid Social for Competitor Audiences.
Well, I’m not done yet. If I feel like they make sense for my client’s goals, I’d try some of the cheaper Google Ads alternatives below. Some will be more common than others, but hopefully you’ll see the value right away. They include:
- Reddit community
- YouTube search results
- re-locate
Google Ads Alternatives to Competitor Targeting
For these options, we will continue our CRM platform advertisement example (What is CRM, you ask?).
1. Reddit community
Although not one of them Top Social Media Marketing Platforms, Reddit is one of the most visited websites in the world. So there is a good chance that at least a portion of your target audience will visit the channel. Of course, Reddit has an advertising platform.While most of the basic targeting options are pretty generic (I wouldn’t recommend starting here unless you have a big budget), there is a targeting area you can use Reddit ad I always look first. This will be an option called “Community”.
Communities are essentially Subreddits, which are categories of specific groups on the Reddit platform, often where ads can be served. So take the time to see if your competition will show up.
In the image above, I’ve selected an industry where I know some of the competitors’ names will be bigger brands. This is because not every subreddit is available as a community targeting option. Therefore, this option may only be available for brands whose competitors are larger brands, or the desired target audience may be similar to those interested in those brands.
So, continuing with my example of advertising for a CRM platform, I might target Salesforce, Zoho, HubSpot, and Zendesk’s community.
⚠️ Attention! Reddit is a different beast. Many people on Reddit don’t like being publicized, and they will let you know publicly. That’s why it’s important to research each community you target.
- How do people get involved in the community?
- What is the tone of the community?
- Is it more educational or fun?
You need to make sure your ad reflects this tone.This is for competitor positioning Because you may be showing ads to users who are focused on your competitors.
2. YouTube search results
In-feed video ads (formerly TrueView discovery) are the first YouTube placements Advertisers can use Google Ads for video campaigns to target only YouTube search results pages. This has changed slightly with the introduction of responsive video ads, but the setup is pretty much the same. We should always remember that YouTube is a massive search engine. It is actually the second largest search engine after Google.com. But you can place in-feed video ads at the top of YouTube search results like this.
The example above is not a video ad, but a video ad can appear at the top of the results. When users look for Salesforce videos on YouTube, other CRM companies may come up and take the number one spot for videos. It’s easy to do. When setting up a video campaign in Google Ads, go to the Network section. There, you can choose to target only YouTube search results.
Now, you don’t always have to target only YouTube search results, but it’s an option.This is the only time I use it when I’m targeting only YouTube search results Keyword targeting for video campaigns. My volume will be much lower because I’m removing any audience based targeting, but my results will be more specific.
I usually see higher view and completion rates on YouTube results page campaigns because I’m very specific.
⚠️ Attention! Just make sure you have a meaningful video Competitive advertising. Remember, people go to YouTube to watch videos. With streaming video, you pay per view. Make a longer, engaging video showing why you are the better choice.
3. Almost everywhere (retargeting)
I could have sworn I included this in my previous post competitive advertising strategy,but I do not have. Shame on me because it’s one of the easiest ways to stay in front of a competitor audience. The vast majority of paid media platforms offer URL-based audiences for retargeting. Should we list some of them? OK, here goes…
- Google (Search, Display, Discover, YouTube)
- Facebook/Instagram (Facebook redirect strategy is here.)
- Microsoft (Search, Audience Advertising)
- Know almost
- Snapchat
- Tik Tok
- Tabla
- super brain
- Yahoo Native
- So…a lot…more…
Retargeting is an easy way to get in front of users after they’ve already visited your site from a competitor’s campaign. To get started, head to the following posts:
⚠️ Attention! Whether you’re targeting via search or any other means, you’ll need to add UTM parameters to your ad URL. You can use any naming convention you want, as long as you can tell which visits are coming from your competitor-targeting campaigns.
The image above is an example from Google Campaign URL Builder. For this fake Quora ad campaign, I made sure I had “Competitor” in my campaign name.This way any visit to that competitor campaign will be logged and I will repeat this process for every competitor campaign I run across all my channels Paid Media Strategy.
For a very specific reason, I try to keep competitor naming conventions consistent across all channels. I’d like to be able to combine all of my competitors’ active visits into one audience. This will help me have a larger audience for my retargeting campaigns.
If you need to segment your competitor’s campaign audience based on channel or initial ad experience, you can do so based on the UTM parameters you use.Retargeting users in this way may be more affordable than continuing Bid on expensive competitor keywords.
Professional Type: Just make sure that after their first interaction with your brand, the second interaction fits the right user flow.
Competitor positioning: we have many options
I’m not saying that bidding on competitors’ keywords is a bad idea. I do this now with many clients and we see success, but I would say that we should always be aware of all our options.whether trying to build awareness For new audiences or trying to steal market share, your target audience is likely to visit more sites than Google. Test your competitor’s audience in these ways I mentioned or in some of my previous posts on competitor positioning. I’m sure you can find some options that make sense for your account.
