Target Competitor Traffic in Google Ads

If you’ve spent any amount of time in Google ads you should be familiar with the concept of targeting users for your product, service or brand. If you’ve tried marketing a brand new product or service on Google ads, you’re probably equally familiar with the painstaking and expensive process of find the right segments to attract high quality & engaging users with your offer.

How do I find my best target audience?

This is a common starting point for an ad campaign and depending on your experience in the industry, it may be a challenging question to answer simply or quickly. Are you targeting men, women, athletes, homebodies, people with pets or any other numerous configuration of attributes that may align with your product or service? The question seems simple, but getting your data in front of the right people isn’t always.

To find your target audience on google you have a few levers:

• Interest Group, Affinity, In-Market
  • Sports
  • Finance
  • Games
  • etc…
• Demoraphic group target
  • Sex
  • Househould Income
  • Age
  • Location
  • etc…
• Search Themes (new!) OR Keywords
  • Search Themes: up to 25 Terms or phrases that may align with what a user in your target group is “googling”
  • Keywords: A list of keywords that match google searches made by a user and can be expanded by google ads to broaden your reach
• Your Data
  • You can match look alike segments from:
    • Conversions
    • Google Analytics Traffic
    • Manually uploaded data (CSV)

While not a completely exhaustive list of targeting options, you get the general idea. Using the above options you must figure out the most effective cross section of users to drive traffic to your product or offer that will convert, and hopefully, drive your desired business result (income, leads, awareness, etc…).

What if I don’t know who my audience is?

This is a common starting point. Each of us doesn’t know what we don’t know. If you find yourself in this predicament, we recommend that you move one level up from your audience to your market…

• Who are your competitors?
• What authorities exist in your space?
• Where do people take interest or find information about similar products or services?

Asking a few simple questions like the one above can shed light on a lesser known targeting strategy in Google Ads. By finding out similar websites or even mobile apps in your space, there is a way to build custom segments that allow you to target users that frequent those websites and mobile apps. You can now tap into an audience that has already been refined by your competitors and begin offering your product or services to them as well.

While targeting competitor traffic isn’t a guaranteed win for you ad campaigns, it can be a great place to start prospecting. Make sure to use meticulous data collection to monitor how well your campaigns are performing so you can continuously optimize and work towards success. Whether it’s your first conversion or your one-thousandth… you’ll need to stay active in this competitive advertising marketplace.

If you need help with any of these concepts please consider reaching out for a no-cost, no-commitment marketing consultation today.