Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro

03:03 - When to bid on competitor brand names, and when to avoid it

05:50 - Why competitor keyword bidding requires a different approach

06:56 - How to decide which competitors to target

08:35 - Step-by-step process for setting up competitor bidding campaigns

09:49 - Being creative with ad copy when you can't use competitor names directly

12:24 - Recommended bidding strategy

13:35 - How to create winning landing pages for competitor campaigns

15:10 - Key metrics when assessing competitor bidding campaign performance 

17:00 - Cases where competitor bidding can backfire

17:20 - Sophie’s response when she found out a competitor violated an agreement to stop bidding on each other

18:24 - Using forums like Reddit to research competitor complaints and guide your campaigns

20:32 - Key optimizations for competitor bidding campaigns

22:10 - Sunk cost fallacy

22:32 - Wrapping up / final thoughts

‍

Overview

In this episode of the Paid Media Lab podcast, James speaks to PPC Expert Sophie Logan about her approach to running high-performing competitor campaigns across paid search.

Sophie is the PPC lead at Beauhurst, a leading private company database tool for the UK market. Specializing in B2B and SaaS brands, Sophie has many years of experience in the high-performance marketing space under her belt, and regularly shares her experience as a speaker at numerous conferences and industry events. Sophie is also a regular contributor to Search Engine Land, making her a highly influential voice in the PPC space.

We could think of no one better to discuss competitor bidding than Sophie, so we had to get her on the podcast to outline the key considerations to ensure success from the practice. During our chat, Sophie offered her insights into how to pick the right battles when it comes to competitor bidding, while also generating a good return on ad spend. 

After years of experience with competitor campaigns, Sophie explained her strategic approach to bidding on competitor keywords – and judging by our conversation, she’s got the process down to a fine art. Her impressive beginning-to-end strategy clearly left no stone unturned, and ticked every box to ensure success for competitor keyword bidding on any scale.