Google Advertising Tools, 2nd Edition

Targeting the Competition

Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum, and we all have competition. In many ways, this is a good thing because it forces us to be our best. Competition also means that we can analyze the advertising campaigns of others in our business niche and follow their example when that seems to make sense.

If you are new to a business niche, and there are established players who have been in the business for years, you might take a look at the keywords these competitors have targeted. To do this, type common industry terms into the Google search box and see whose ads come up on the search results page.

As an initial place for your AdWords iterations, these keywords might be helpful. Do take care in your ads to differentiate yourself from the competition by price, product, or attitude: “We try harder!”, “The low-cost provider”, and “Truly effective widget” are all examples of this kind of differentiation.

At the fairly extreme end of targeting the competition, you could actually bid on the competition as keywords. If you figure that there are players so dominant in your industry that some buyers search for them by name, then it might make sense to advertise on these search results. For example, a small photo stock provider might bid on the names of the large stock photography aggregators Corbis and Getty.

If you are the dominant force in your industry, you might want to target your competition to make sure anyone who searches for them knows that you exist (and are an appealing ...