Have you ever heard of Competitive Conquest Advertising? Even if the term is unfamiliar, you’ve likely encountered the outcome of this strategy.

Competitive Conquest Advertising or CCA is when competitors bid on your brand name in search engines to capture prospective clients who are searching for you.

This tactic diverts valuable traffic from your site, potentially leading to lost revenue and diminished brand authority. It’s an irritating but inevitable aspect of Google search ads that must be managed and counteracted to protect your business’s online presence and customer base.

Here’s how to identify if you’re being targeted and what measures you can take to defend your brand.

Recognizing the Tactic

Unfortunately, even if you don’t see these ads appear when you Google your brand name, it doesn’t mean they are not there.

Good advertising managers often filter their ads by location, time and other factors. They strategically target specific communities rather than just brand names, ensuring their ads are shown to potential new customers searching for competitors.

Detecting a Threat

At Rhoads Creative, we have tools to tell us if this is happening to our clients’ brands or communities. The last thing any business wants is for a customer to search for your company only to be lured away by a competitor’s ad. Thankfully, competitive conquest marketing doesn’t just happen overnight and the warning signs can typically be detected and countered to protect your online presence.

CCA in Residential Construction

Luckily, residential construction and service companies don’t face the same high costs as SaaS companies, where clicks can be valued up to $100.

However, targeting specific keywords is difficult with Google’s AI-driven approach to ads.

Larger builders often advertise for any search containing “homes” or “builders,” which many regional builders include in their brand name. This saturates the market and makes it challenging for smaller regional builders to stand out on those very general search terms. This is why it is so essential to research unique keywords that are both low-cost and high-conversion. At Rhoads Creative, this is our specialty.

The Consequences

So, what typically happens to businesses that don’t address competitive conquest marketing?

These tactics can lead to a dramatic drop in organic traffic, with fewer users and a lower click-through rate (CTR). Additionally, when users click on a competitor’s ad, they enter that company’s retargeting ecosystem, increasing the chances of permanently converting your customer into their own.

How to Fight Back Against CCA

What’s our advice? We have two words: Fight back.

Here’s how.

Ensure Your Brand Always Ranks First

At Rhoads Creative, we’ve developed specialized tools that ensure your brand consistently secures the top spot in search results. Our proprietary system monitors and adjusts your bids every hour, guaranteeing that your ads remain above competitors in search rankings. This approach allows you to maintain dominance in your brand’s search traffic, effectively preventing competitors from siphoning away your potential customers.

By leveraging these advanced tools, we ensure that your brand is protected and continues to attract the right audience without interruption.

Target Competitors

While not always recommended, bidding on competitors’ brand names can sometimes lead to a mutual “call off the dogs” agreement, discouraging aggressive tactics from both sides in the future. You can almost hear your competitor say, “no, we don’t want to do that again.”

Leverage Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

One of the most effective ways to reinforce your brand’s presence in search results is by leveraging Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). This advanced strategy allows you to tailor your search ads to users who have previously visited your website, ensuring that your brand stays top-of-mind as they continue their online journey.

It’s important to understand that a common scenario occurs when potential customers first visit your website after searching for general terms like “new homes near me.” These visitors often leave your site to continue their research but return later, searching specifically for your brand name. This behavior indicates a heightened interest and intent to explore your offerings further, making it critical that your brand appears in the top position of their search results.

By using RLSA, you can customize the ad message to resonate more with these returning visitors and segment them to ensure they see ads that reinforce their decision to choose you.

How Do I Know My Tactics Are Working?

Once you are dominating the first position with search ads and RLSAs, one of two things will happen:

1. Competitors Stop Their Ads: They may cease their ads due to high costs and low returns.
2. Outspend Competitors: With the right strategy, we can determine their spending and adjust our budget to outcompete with them.

By actively employing these strategies, you’ll fend off competitive threats and position your brand to thrive in even the most challenging markets.

Wield Your Inherent Advantages

The good news is that you have an inherent advertising advantage in how Google calculates costs.

About 30% of the ad cost formula is based on the quality score, which measures how well your landing page answers the searcher’s query.

For example, if someone searches for “Nike sneakers,” an ad from Adidas will cost significantly more per click because it’s less relevant. The user was searching for Nike-branded sneakers, not Adidas. This means it’s much cheaper for the brand owner to advertise for their keywords than their competitors.

While combating competitive conquest advertising is challenging, we can defend your brand and outmaneuver your competitors with the right strategies and tools.

Stay vigilant, monitor with the right tools and leverage your advantages to maintain your market position.

The Rhoads Creative Advantage

At Rhoads Creative, we specialize in digital marketing for the construction and home services industries. With over 30 years of experience, we understand the nuances of competitive conquest advertising and its unique challenges.

We help you maintain your brand’s integrity and achieve superior ad performance by employing advanced digital marketing strategies and leveraging cutting-edge tools. Whether you’re combating competitors directly or subtly outmaneuvering them, Rhoads Creative has the expertise to secure your brand’s place in the market.

Contact us today to schedule a short discovery call and learn how we can safeguard your brand and maximize your digital marketing efforts.