How to Steal Your Competitor's Leads With Google Ads
Bidding on a competitor's name means paying the most expensive clicks in your account to interrupt someone who's already decided. Done right, it wins your most qualified buyers. Here's the four-step build.
By Dave Ten
Competitor campaigns are one of the hardest things to set up in Google Ads. You're doing two hard things at once: intentionally lowering your quality score by showing up for searches that don't exactly match what you sell, and trying to change the mind of someone who's already at the end of their buying journey. They know the vendor they want, they're literally searching that vendor's name, and you're the pattern interruption.
Most people build these like a normal campaign and burn money on the most expensive clicks in the account. Done right, it's a heavy hitter that nets some of the most qualified customers you'll ever get. Here's how to build it in four steps, but first, the quality-score piece, because that's what makes this campaign behave unlike any other.
- 1Build your competitor listThe real set of rivals your buyers compare you against, from inside and outside the account.
- 2Choose the keywordsTurn each competitor into the right, measurable keywords, without wasting spend.
- 3Build the campaignStructure, bidding, cunning creative, and the comparison page that makes it profitable.
- 4Read it and decideJudge it on the right signals over the right window, and know when to switch bidding.
Step 1: build your competitor list
Start inside your own account. Filter your search terms report for the comparison words buyers actually type, and whatever brand sits next to them is a competitor your buyers are actively weighing against you. That's one of the strongest signals you'll find.
| Comparison words buyers type |
|---|
| vs / versus |
| alternative / alternatives |
| competitor / competitors |
| compare / comparison |
| instead of |
| best |
Then check Auction Insights, on your brand campaigns (the most accurate read, since those advertisers are bidding on your name) and account-wide. Note that some names are giants whose competing product is just a subset of their business, that matters for how you bid on them in step 2.
Finding competitors outside the account
Google the exact problem you solve, phrased in your buyer's language, and read page one. The ads, the organic results, and the listicles are all competitor sources. Reddit is underrated too: buyers vet vendors by asking there.
The offline research almost nobody does
This is where the best list comes from. Ask your sales team which names come up over and over. Filter your CRM by closed-lost reason, and by churned customers, for competitor mentions. For the deepest read, pull your sales-call transcripts and have AI flag phrasing like 'we're looking at', 'currently using' or 'comparing', which surfaces both the competitors and the exact language to use against them.
Take names back off the list
Step 2: choose the keywords
Every brand's set looks similar: their name on its own, their domain, and their name plus pricing, demo and reviews. Add versus plays, them versus you and them versus other brands, to catch buyers already in compare mode.
Watch for homonyms. If the brand name is also a common word (think 'apple'), bidding it pulls in junk alongside the company. Use longer-tail keywords that can only mean the company, like 'apple iphone'.
Step 3: build the campaign
One new campaign, and every competitor gets its own ad group, so you can read and control each one on its own.
Bidding: Manual CPC first
Start on Manual CPC. The campaign has no data, and conversions from your other campaigns do not carry over to this one. Start on Max Conversions too early and it often refuses to spend, because these are the priciest clicks in your account and the algorithm won't gamble on them without data, so you never get the learnings going. Move to Max Conversions after roughly 100 to 200 clicks, once you've narrowed to the one or two ad groups actually worth it.
- 1Launch on Manual CPCNo data yet, and conversions don't carry over from your other campaigns. You set the bid and stay in control.
- 2Around 100 to 200 clicks in, try Max ConversionsNow it has learnings. It costs a bit more per click but starts choosing the clicks with funnel actions behind them.
Max CPC and budget
Pull the top and bottom bids from Keyword Planner. The low end is roughly what the competitor pays for their own name; you'll sit middle-to-high. If you already bid these terms in a broad campaign, your search terms history is a better gauge, and your realized CPC should actually drop now that a relevant ad and page replace the generic ones. Coming in blind, start near the top of the range and adjust fast.
| Ad group | Max CPC | Budget (2x) |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor A | $18 | $36 |
| Competitor B | $14 | $28 |
| Competitor C | $22 | $44 |
| Campaign total | $108 |
Ad copy: throw shade, don't trash them
This is the fun part. You can't slander a competitor, but you can be cunning. Build a mood board of their messaging and put a sharp spin on it that pushes your standout points.
The comparison page (make-or-break)
This is what wins or loses the campaign. Build a clear, unbiased them-versus-you comparison page, ideally a table, point by point on what actually matters, where you're the better option the buyer just didn't know about. You're catching someone fully committed to a vendor and giving them a reason to reconsider and book a demo before they sign. That's where the revenue is.
| What matters | You | Competitor |
|---|---|---|
| Time to value | Days | Weeks |
| Pricing | Transparent | Call for a quote |
| The thing you win on | Built in | Add-on |
Assets and negatives
Assets are free real estate. Sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets and images expand your ad for the same cost, so add them, competitor-specific ones at the ad-group level, comparison-wide ones at the campaign level. Then, before you go live, phrase-match negative every competitor keyword in all your other campaigns, brand included. That funnels the traffic into this campaign, the one with the highest quality score because it targets those terms directly, instead of leaking into a broad campaign that pays more for it.
Step 4: read it and decide
The first one to two weeks are crucial, and low click-through rates with high CPCs are completely normal on a brand-new competitor campaign. If a broad campaign was bidding these terms before, benchmark against its CTR, CPC, cost per lead and top impression share. Otherwise just watch the early signals.
Around 100 to 200 clicks in, the campaign has enough learnings to try Max Conversions. It'll cost a bit more per click but start choosing the clicks with funnel actions behind them. If a demo request is too rare to optimize on directly, feed it micro-conversions (a demo-page visit, time on site, VSL engagement) and climb toward the demo. Stay on Manual CPC if your CPC is already reasonable, you're already converting, or you're already near full impression share.
Judge the whole thing on deals, not cost per lead, because it nets some of your most qualified buyers. Give it two to three months before a verdict on a high-ticket offer, where one contract can be six figures; on a low-ticket subscription you should see conversions sooner. Write the review date down before you launch so you actually hold yourself to the window.
The takeaway
Competitor campaigns are the hardest campaign in the account and one of the biggest hitters when they land. The clicks are expensive and there's no getting around that, so what makes or breaks it is the comparison page. Build that first, get real customer feedback on it, and the expensive clicks turn into your most qualified pipeline. The reusable negatives and the bid-and-budget worksheet are in the playbook below.