Talking about competitors on your own website to improve quality score

[Zoope]

Hi Mozzers,

I'm seeing more and more companies improving their quality score by including information about their competitors on their website, when driving traffic from competitor brand terms. For example, for 'Yahoo Mail' related terms, Zoho drive traffic via an ad to this page:

https://www.zoho.com/mail/yahoo-mail-alternative.html

I'm planning a new campaign targeting competitor keywords and wondered what people think about this approach, and the legalities around talking about and comparing yourself to competitors on your own website?

[RobCairns]

Hello,

I would say that from a user experience standpoint, this is a terrific idea. You give you prospects everything they are looking for upfront and without them having to go to multiple websites. It is, of course, more advantageous if/when you can show that you are a better option than your competition, although showing that you are better across all fronts might leave some people suspicious of your brand.

It can be a bit of a double-edged sword, although I personally believe it is a risk worth taking if your products/services are comparable in quality and cost to your competition. I've been down this road with several of my clients with mixed results - as long as our content marketing strategies were controlled and reviewed for quality, we never had a problem. If people fire from the hip without fact-checking, you can run into real trouble.

Legally speaking, the waters are a bit muddier. For one, if you are copying anything from a competitor's site and showcasing it on your own, you are (at the very least) plagiarizing. If you misrepresent them in any way, you are liable to legal action, which can get messy. You also put yourself on their radar for future events and time periods, so it is best to have your ducks lined up before you go this route assuming you are competitive to them.

That being said, there is nothing in the law stopping you from price comparison tools, etc. Using a company's logo is gray territory. I would also add that you make sure you are not trash-talking your competitors if you are going to compare your products/services with theirs. Make sure you can back up literally everything you are saying with demonstrable facts, and you will be okay.

Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to me at any time and we can put our heads together on how to make your new campaign work!

Cheers,

Rob

[Alick300]

Hi RobinEx,

I don't understand which quality score are you talking about. are you running campaign on google Adwords/Bing because these two advertising platform using quality score for each keyword??

If you want to target competitors brand name to get more visitors/leads that then you are on right path and many Advertisers on various advertising platform using this idea.

For Google Adwords & Bing you can target competitors brand name as keyword but you can't use competitors brand name in your ad copy*

I'm sharing an article in which you will find pros and cons on above technique.

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/06/12/bidding-on-competitor-brands

Hope this helps you.

Thanks

[Zoope]

Hi Alick300,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I'm talking about quality score when running an Adwords campaign, and landing page relevance being a factor for each keyword. So if I'm bidding on 'Competitor X' as a keyword, talking about 'Competitor X' on my landing page will increase relevance and quality score.

Thank you for sharing the article... really useful!

[Alick300]

Hi,

No you shouldn't use competitors brand name on your website because competitors will ask you to remove or will take some legal action against you & strictly no in Adwords ad copy. I know many advertisers who use competitors brand name as keyword including me but we don't use their brand name on any web page.

QS mainly affected by CTR so don't bother about using their brand name on the website just try to get maximum CTR.

Thanks

[Zoope]

Thanks Alick300,

It's interesting to hear a mix of view points. In my industry (cloud software) it's more commonplace, and as @Robert Cairns states above, it can work well.

As with most areas of digital marketing, I think I'll tread carefully with a test and learn approach