How To Compete With a Very High PPC Bidder

What's wrong with second position?

So let them burn themselves out.

Stay on 2nd position for some time so that they can max out their budget. If they still run ads after a few days means they are making more money than expected so they are still continuing. In that case, u can bid higher than them.

PS: U can also focus on other keywords.

I have a simple question for you. will you be able to sustain a bid of $30 if say 200 clicks are made per day?. If you can, then your strategy is right. Go a head.

You already say you are running a successful campaign so whats the problem?

Its not all about the bid amount, you have to have a good relevant advert plus landing page.

I would setup another campaign and go for longer tail keywords with a very low CPC. Go to google keyword tool, type in the main keyword then export those keywords (normally around 800) copy and paste to bing. Set bid amounts really low. If you dont see any impressions increase bid amount.

I hope you have conversion tracking setup.

Hi mrripley,

As you likely are already aware, just because your competitor is bidding $40 a click he isn't paying his maximum bid, he's only paying one penny more than the second highest bidder.

So you could easily drive your competitors cost higher by raising your bid to the highest amount that does not exceed your top competitor's bid. This will force your competitor to pay very close to his maximum bid while you are paying only one penny more then the 3rd highest bidder.

Of course this only works out like that if you also have 10/10 Quality scores. So make sure you have split tested ads and have great Quality scores before embarking on this type of strategy.

Also, be wary of competitors that have 2 websites and are double serving ads. They could easily bracket your ads and drive your costs to nearly as high as the top bidder's Max bid.

So research and make sure you know who owns and manages the campaigns of your top 3- competitors in the auctions you compete in, and make sure you have at least a couple rounds of ad text optimizations done through A/B Split testing, before you embark on such a strategy.

HTH,

Don Burk

Focus on On-page optimization. If your website is more user-friendly and neat.
You can bid a little bit lower than your competitor. This will place their page-ad on top of yours' . If their site makes the new user leave it easily, it would set a threshold for new user. And once those same users visit your site, it would be easy for you to please them due to already low threshold w.r.t expectation and user-friendliness.
I mean to say on-page optimization can help you do business in less costs.
Let me know your thoughts.

Maybe I don't understand the question, but what SHOULD happen is that your competitor is going to maintain that first position no matter what you do, UNLESS you bid even more than them. You can drop your bid to $30 and the price they pay will be $30.01. You can drop it to $20 and the price they will pay will be $20.01.

Personally, I'd figure out what the lowest bid is that would get me the #2 position and then split test headlines and ad copy to compel people to click on your listing instead of the competitor's.

The longer you stay as an advertiser there, the better for you. They like seeing serious advertisers using their platform and if you keep at it, you will get better rankings.

Without knowing the full details I'd just settle for second position if it's not to crazy or look for other keywords/targeting.


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Try to add more keywords on your campaign. Add long tail keywords that your competitor is not bidding on. This way, you will gain 1st position

There's just a small flaw in your logic.

You may not know the basic CPC formula, published some years ago and admittedly may have changed, which is the ad rank of the competitor ranking below you (in this case, you) divided by their QS. To affect their CPC, you either need to increase your bid or improve your QS, either of which improves your ad rank. Plug in some numbers, play around and you'll see what happens depending on your bid and QS.

Setting your bid at $30 would increase their CPC but it doesn't mean it would remove them from the first position.

Another flaw in your logic is that if others are bidding that much, there's a reason for it. It's called market forces, supply and demand. It's not uncommon in the insurance industry for example to hear of $300 or even $500 cost of acquisition for a customer but it's worth it because the long-term value of that customer is so much more.

But if you want to try to smoke out the top competitor, go ahead and bid higher. I'd go higher since you say they are bidding $40. It won't affect your CPC until you actually are on top yourself (he'll become your competitor and have a new competitor himself and pay less). I'd just do it if my QS was high to protect yourself against a big CPC increase when it happens. The problem is, you'll have to reduce it yourself (he may be playing the same game) eventually and you're right back where you started.

$30 per click wow Like

Try bidding on long tail keywords and keywords that your competitor is not bidding on. This way, you will get cheap CPC

If you guys can make money spending that much push your competitor higher...see where backs off. If you cannot make money at that cost...let him keep going until he quits.

If your competitor is not having a huge budget, let him spend whatever he has. Also at 2nd spot, you have a good chance of getting customers with lower CPC if you have written attractive ads that mention your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). It can be really beneficial to you as you can beat your competitors at a lower cost.

2nd position is not bad, in fact, I never targeted the first position and the best performing positions for me were 2-4.

What you need to do is to focus on CTR and try to test different variations of your ad. Your ad copy should be smart and very well crafted to steal the click from the 1st position.