It’s a well-known digital marketing strategy to buy Google Ads targeting competitors’ brand names.
Example:
Somebody Googles the SEO software, “Moz.”
Seobility is paying for their page, “Moz Alternative,” to show up first.
SE Ranking is paying for their homepage to appear prominently as well.
I’m going to show a free alternative to this strategy.
This is the entire search engine results page for “Moz”:
Right below are videos.
And the top video, Moz Review, only has 342 views!
Google is turbocharging user-generated content, especially video, regardless of view count, in its results… all over the place… in every niche.
Google “Answer The Public,” another popular SEO tool…
The second video, a YouTube Short, only has 135 views!
And these are big tools in niches with savvy digital marketers…
What happens when you want to target a local competitor in a niche that is not digital marketing?
Or any niche that’s not digital marketing, for that matter?
It becomes WAY EASIER.
Wayyyyyyy easierrrrr.
And it’s really an intense tactic.
Note that the Moz video with 342 views that ranks on the first page of Google for “Moz” is a REVIEW.
If you’re in a price-sensitive niche, people are a lot more likely to search for reviews before purchasing…
Here’s how to target competitors’ names with video for free
When it comes to video, Google values a few things:
- Relevance:
- The competitor brand name is at the beginning of the video title and description.
- Add a 50-100 word description for extra relevance. You can just use the transcript (proofread) of your video for this.
- Relevant thumbnail – a thumbnail that’s relevant to the topic.
- Recency – recent videos tend to do better.
- Trustworthiness – not a brand new account with one video.
- Concise – short form mobile videos, especially YouTube Shorts, do well.
Execute this for free:
Start posting videos NOW. Use my short guide here to get started – it covers subject matter in case you don’t know what to make. Spend 5 minutes posting a video a day with automations to make it so your videos auto-release everywhere.
If you already have social media accounts for your business you can try this now.
You could start with a title like, “[Competitor Name] Alternative – [Way In Which You’re Better (cheaper, more efficient, better results)]”
You could also do a How-To video for a competitor and in the video briefly share your company as a really great alternative that the viewer should probably use instead.
You literally can control the narratives of your competitors by doing this.
When you do post your videos targeting competitor brand names, post manually through the YouTube mobile app. If it’s a YouTube Short, you’ll have to go into YouTube Studio after the video is posted to add your description. Also make sure these videos release to every platform for maximum coverage. I have a detailed guide on how to post to each platform here.
Execute this with a budget:
Pay a micro-influencer to post for you. By doing this you don’t have to develop your own video account.
Use this guide for how to post.
Execute this with a bigger budget:
Pay a bunch of micro-influencers to hit your competitors’ brand names from every angle.
Google Search also likes variety, so overall it’s better to have multiple accounts targeting your keywords.
Again, use this guide for how to post.
Video
Video has opened up a new frontier of aggressive digital marketing tactics that companies are sleeping on.
This is one of those tactics.
Instead of paying for ads targeting competitor brand names, try doing video for free.
Compact Keywords
Compact Keywords, my 13+ hour SEO Course, has an extensive section on video.
The course is how to get results from SEO – not blog SEO targeting cold keywords – but instead scenario-based landing pages targeting people who want to buy now.
The pages are designed to get customers, users, and warm leads, rather than simply awareness.
And the course is easy enough for anybody to implement.
If you like the tactics I share in these articles, you’re going to love Compact Keywords.
