The short answer is: yes! The long answer is you need to be careful when targeting your competitors in Google Ads in order to avoid legal issues and capitalize on your competitors leads.
The key legal points to take into consideration:
- You should avoid using a trademarked brand name in your ad text, or trademarked brand names in your display URLs as Google can remove any use of trademarks in your ads following a complaint.
- You can use trademarked brand names if you are an authorized advertiser, a reseller or are an information-based site.
- You can protect your brand by trademarking it.
So how can I target my competitors without starting a pricing war on the keywords that can cause you to lose money? Here’s some food for thought:
- Beat them on prices: research your competitors and see if you can offer higher discounts when bidding on their audience.
- Expand your value proposition: differentiate from the competition and position your brand against what they don’t do.
- Use better ad extensions: do a basic research of the ad extensions your competitors are using and capitalize on what they are not using.
Read the full article and discover everything you need to know to do AdWords competitor targeting right!