Bid­ding on com­peti­tor brands in PPC is tempt­ing. Few vic­to­ries are sweet­er than steal­ing a sale or lead away from your com­pe­ti­tion. But PPC con­quest­ing isn’t easy.

The search engines know that the most rel­e­vant ad for a brand search is an ad from that brand – not its com­peti­tors. Qual­i­ty score on com­peti­tor key­words is usu­al­ly low – after all, few adver­tis­ers are will­ing to list their com­peti­tors on their web­site, and trade­mark rules often pro­hib­it adver­tis­ers from using com­peti­tor brands in ad copy. And yet, PPC con­quest­ing can be prof­itable. Here are five ways to suc­ceed at PPC con­quest­ing.

1. Create Great Landing Pages

A suc­cess­ful PPC cam­paign begins with a good land­ing page. Don’t even think about bid­ding on com­peti­tor brands until you have a strong land­ing page in place. Remem­ber, users searched for your com­pe­ti­tion – it’s up to you to con­vince them that you’re a bet­ter choice. Show the users how you stack up and why they should choose you over the com­pe­ti­tion. One effec­tive way to swing users to your side is to use land­ing pages with a com­par­i­son grid, like this:

This adver­tis­er actu­al­ly grades the mar­ket leader, giv­ing them a B+. Notice that they gave them a decent grade that isn’t too low. Giv­ing the com­peti­tor an F would seem disin­gen­u­ous. But a B+ is believ­able.

They’re also using col­or effec­tive­ly, even to the point of putting excla­ma­tion points in an octa­gon shape – the same shape as a stop sign. We’re con­di­tioned to stop and pay atten­tion when we see that red sign.

Good land­ing page prac­tices also appear on the page – a promi­nent form, the phone num­ber in three dif­fer­ent places, and a sug­gest­ed pack­age for users to buy.

Oth­er ways to con­vince con­quest prospects that you’re bet­ter are:

• Rat­ings and reviews. Let­ting your sat­is­fied cus­tomers speak for you is more trust­wor­thy than brag­ging about your­self.
• Free tri­als or demos. Let your prod­uct speak for itself in a risk-free man­ner. Offer­ing a free tri­al or demo shows that you stand behind your prod­uct and are con­fi­dent it’s the right choice.

Land­ing pages that offer some­thing of val­ue are effec­tive con­quest­ing tools, too, espe­cial­ly for com­plex prod­ucts or ser­vices. Maybe your main offer is a free whitepa­per down­load. You could cre­ate a land­ing page for con­quest key­words that offers mul­ti­ple whitepa­pers and assets with a sin­gle signup, like this:

This adver­tis­er is offer­ing 18 whitepa­pers and 42 case stud­ies (a total of 60 assets) for free. It’s clear that they real­ly want your busi­ness.

Engag­ing con­quest vis­i­tors via chat is anoth­er way to con­vince them to buy from you. Proac­tive­ly ini­ti­at­ing a chat to answer ques­tions shows that you’re inter­est­ed in the prospect’s needs.

2. Use Compelling Ad Copy

Put your best foot for­ward in terms of your offer and val­ue propo­si­tion in ad copy. If you’ve designed good land­ing pages, this should be easy to do.

What would you rather get: one whitepa­per, or 60 as in the exam­ple above? Focus on your best offer for con­quest terms – if you can, try to beat what­ev­er your com­peti­tors are offer­ing.

3. Use RLSA

RLSA, or remar­ket­ing lists for search ads, are avail­able in both AdWords and Bing. With RLSA, you can adjust bids and/or ad copy accord­ing to past user behav­ior, the same as you would for dis­play remar­ket­ing. But the ben­e­fit here is that you’re still bid­ding on key­words.

Use RLSA to increase bids on users who’ve pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed your site but didn’t con­vert. I usu­al­ly use the max­i­mum +300% bid mod­i­fi­er on this traf­fic, and it’s worth every pen­ny.

You can also use RLSA to show dif­fer­ent offers to those who already vis­it­ed your site and are now search­ing for the com­pe­ti­tion. Give these folks your best pos­si­ble deal.

4. Use Misspellings & Modified Broad Match

Hav­ing trou­ble get­ting your ads to appear on com­peti­tor brand search­es? Get cre­ative.

Try bid­ding on mis­spellings of their brand. Bid on “wall­mart” instead of “Wal­mart” and you may have a bet­ter chance of get­ting your ad to appear.

You can also use mod­i­fied broad match to your advan­tage.

Let’s say you’re a cloth­ing retail­er com­pet­ing with Wal­mart. You could bid on “+Wal­mart +kids +cloth­ing” (with­out the quotes). You’ll often have a bet­ter chance of your ads show­ing on these longer tail phras­es than on just “Wal­mart.”

5. Bid On ‘Cancel’ Keywords

If you’re in a ser­vice or con­trac­tu­al busi­ness, adding “can­cel” terms to your key­word list can dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve results in your com­peti­tor cam­paigns.

Peo­ple look­ing for ways to can­cel a ser­vice are often dis­grun­tled cus­tomers. Show them why you’re bet­ter in your ad copy and on your land­ing pages. Per­suade them to switch.

We’ve also seen high­er qual­i­ty scores on “can­cel” key­words than on the brands them­selves. Con­sid­er this exam­ple:

Com­peti­tor brands have a qual­i­ty score of only 2. But look at the “can­cel” terms:

The low­est score is 4, and one key­word has 10/10! While “can­cel” key­words are usu­al­ly low vol­ume, they have a high con­ver­sion poten­tial.

With the right land­ing pages, ad copy, and strat­e­gy, your search con­quest­ing cam­paigns can be a good source of qual­i­ty traf­fic and sales or leads.