For business owners, being able to conquest your competitors is like finding the Holy Grail. It’s a method that has endless value and should be a ‘must-have’ in your strategy if you’re considering online advertising.

Here’s why.

Modern online marketing tactics aren’t stuck in the 90’s anymore – They’ve Evolved! There are actually tools out there that allow you to target all customers that enter your competitors’ stores with your branded ads. These same tools also know when someone searched for your competitors online, and can show your ads to them wherever they go.

Imagine: A customer walks into a competing store that they’ve been going to for 5 years. They sit down and take out their phone to open up an app. Inside that app, your ad shows a special discounted price on the thing they’ve been buying for 5 years. So they decide to give your store a chance.

And just like that, you’ve pulled one of your competitor’s loyal customers into your store.

How can online advertising do this?

Below, we’ll go through the competitor conquesting tactics that you can use online through programmatic advertising, but first let’s define what programmatic is – It is the online ad buying system that lets marketers reach their target audience at the ideal time with a chosen message. Machines automate and optimize this process that your audience interacts with across multiple device platforms (phone, desktop, tablet, etc.)

What Programmatic Advertising tactics are used to conquest my competitors?

There are 3 main tactics to do this programmatically.

1. With geo fencing: We can actually draw a fence around a geographic location (i.e. a store or event) and target those who enter the fenced area with a desired promotion or general branding.

The GPS service on every phone is what allows marketers to see when someone has entered into a fenced location and serve an ad. This data is then used to trigger an in-app advertisement to the person who entered the geo-fence. This ad is most commonly served while the person is still inside the fence, but it can also be served for 30 days after they entered the fence.

2. With Keyword search retargeting: When a potential buyer is in the research phase and is checking out your competitors, you can tag that person and show your ads to them wherever they go thereby influencing their final decision.

This tactic is perfect for reaching people all over the internet that show an intent to buy. If they’re researching your competitors, they’re most likely trying to make a decision. In the future, you should be there in front of your competitors to make sure you aren’t left behind.

3. With Contextual targeting: When a potential buyer lands on a page that has content on it that contains your competitor’s name, your branded ads can show on that page. This means when someone is reading something about your competitor you can show your message there as well.

Using this targeting ensures that your brand is found in all kinds of significant directories and review aggregators that people surf to find the right brand.

In 2017, the method of taking customers from your competitors by targeting both their brand and their stores is rapidly evolving and becoming more refined, but most companies are slow to adopt.

With this slow adoption, the first movers always reap the rewards and it’s what we see every day here. If you’d like to know more about competitor conquesting reach out to us here or give us a call.

You might also be interested in reading “The Future of Programmatic Advertising”

The other day I was reading 5 Lessons That Disrupters Like Facebook Teach About Succeeding Now and there was an extremely important point that made me think for a long time. The article talks about the importance of giving what your customer wishes to be served. This is what Facebook does with its remarkable feature called News Feeds. The key is to understand what your users can digest, and give them what they really care about rather than too many options, and hence adding complexity to their already complicated lives.

The key is to empower, not just interrupt.

Image Source: http://www.citadelsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/shutterstock_102141613_Empower.jpg

In my opinion, it is exactly this reason that makes Programmatic Advertising so popular. It is an attempt to present the right ad to the right person at the right time. Or like we defined in our blog, Programmatic advertising is the online ad bidding and buying system that allows marketers to reach the audience they’ve selected as valuable at the ideal time with a specified message. This system is automated by machines and touches online users across multiple device platforms. Programmatic Advertising alleviates marketers of the administrative tasks that come with traditional marketing strategies. With the use of automated technology, you can have media space that is specifically targeted to your intended audience.

Programmatic lies at the intersection of technology and data and leverages both.

Experts say the programmatic advertising is set to grow in a big way. Trends show how organizations are spending more on programmatic than even before. With a maturity in the tools and technologies that come with it, programmatic advertising will become more sophisticated, and make advertising even more relevant, useful and effective for the users.

What are some the key trends that will dominate the future of Programmatic Advertising?

Image Source: http://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/lt-blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/HiRes.jpg

Data Collaboration

More data points help in better analysis and customer profiling. Smaller organizations, however, just don’t have so much data to analyze. There’s a lot of data (especially related to customers) that is internalized but in the coming days, the focus will be to collaborate all this data. It will provide useful insights into user behavior (across devices), improved understanding and reaching the potential customers.

Mobile first

You cannot ignore mobile anymore. In fact, ad spend on mobile devices is increasing compared to desktop spending on Ads.

When everybody is focusing on mobile experience (including social media channels), why should programmatic be left behind? Cookie-based targeting and attribution as per the browser are still important techniques but brands should focus more on mobile-centric techniques.

Perfecting user engagement

Brands need the permission of the customers or users before they can display the ads. It’s a legal requirement. It is mandatory to seek permission of the user and programmatic advertising can help convince them to give that consent. If a user (based on an analysis of their personal data) can see deals and discounts for precisely what they’ve been searching for – chances are they will go for it. Brands that can master personalization of data for their users are most likely to lead the pack.

Programmatic will spread to other devices

Experts predict that by 2018 television ad spending in the US will reach $84 billion. The way TV ads will evolve in the future is an entirely different story. You will see technology-automated and data-driven ads on TV. More and more devices are getting connected like television and audio devices. Programmatic will enter all of these terrains and impact the way advertising is happening on all mediums.

Traditional Advertising methods have always focused on knowing the medium. Programmatic Advertising, on the other hand, focuses on knowing your customer, which is why it is widely accepted and now being predicted to dominate the future of advertising.

Schedule a meeting with our Programmatic Advertising expert to understand how your brand can gear up for the future.

Tags:- brandingcompetitor conquesting tacticsContextual targetingGeo-fencing