The Ultimate Traffic Strategy_ Stealing Competitors' Traffic Without Compromising Your Own

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If you've been running Google ads for 45 seconds or longer, you

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know that there's a philosophical war being waged on the battlefield.

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That is brand traffic.

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Do I bid on my brand traffic?

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Now, I have been on both sides of the spectrum, oftentimes in

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this same day because it's hyper dependent to your situation.

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So on one side you have people saying, I'm gonna get that traffic anyway.

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Why on earth would I pay for it?

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On the other side, you have people saying it's hubris to believe that,

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and all I'm gonna do is posit some.

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Concepts here that will allow you to make the decision for yourself

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based off of your own circumstances.

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The first puzzle piece that you should possibly think of when you're talking

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about branch traffic is poaching, are other people bidding on your brand?

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And these aren't always competitors, by the way.

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They can be alternatives.

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If I were Greyhound Bus, I'd be bidding on all of Southwest Airlines

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traffic because I can get you there a whole lot cheaper than Southwest can.

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And Southwest people are looking for the cheapest possible form of transit.

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As an example, you don't necessarily have to worry about competitors.

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You have to worry about competitive alternatives.

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Is your traffic being poached from a paid ad perspective?

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And if it is, it probably makes a lot of sense to bid on your brand traffic

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because A, you're gonna pay exponentially less than your competitors are.

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So that's first and foremost.

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B, you're going to be far more relevant than they are,

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so you're gonna rank higher.

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And then C, you're gonna put yourself in a position to protect.

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The entirety of your ad spend from being stolen right at the bottom of the funnel.

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So if your paid traffic is being poached.

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Now that doesn't necessarily mean that you should do this, just if people

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are advertising on your name, because they might do that no matter what,

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and there's nothing you do to stop it.

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It's if they're doing so effectively.

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If you think they're actually being able to draw people away from you, then

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you should bid on your branded traffic.

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I can tell you I had one of the highest performing real estate investment

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campaigns on the planet for seven years, and one of our core strategies was to

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go into a new geography and just bid on whatever investor was spending the most

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money on radio, television, and newspaper.

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And it worked.

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It worked.

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And those poor suckers had no idea what we were doing.

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they should have been bidding on their own name because they would've.

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Protected themselves from us, especially at the time, the real

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estate industry was so antiquated.

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They were just so far behind that times they didn't even know we were doing it.

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So we were able to go in there and just swoop in and take this literally

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hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Some of these advertisers I saw their ad spend.

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They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in radio specifically

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and genning up all of this interest.

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And what happens when somebody hears a radio ad, they Google it.

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As a ubiquitous truth.

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don't care how many times they repeat the phone number at the

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end of the ad, nobody's ever written that phone number down.

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They're just like, oh yeah, the fast home buyers I'll search for them later.

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Search for fast home buyers.

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Bam, my ad.

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Hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads, and we were able to poach them.

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So protect yourself from being poached if it's happening.

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That's one reason why you'd wanna bid on brand traffic.

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A kissing cousin to that is the fact that if somebody's bidding on your

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brand and you are not, They're paying way less than they would be otherwise.

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Google's an auction system based off of relevance.

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It's based off the V Victory Auction Model, which is developed in like the

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1700 or something, and it says the second the highest bidder wins the bid,

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pays the second highest bidders price.

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So what that means is because you're the most relevant result, you're going to

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rank the highest and pay the least, but the amount that you pay sets the floor.

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If you don't enter the auction, then the floor is set much lower.

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But as soon as you enter the auction, not only do you get to set the floor,

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but the floor that you pay and the floor that they pay are disparate.

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Because it's ba, it's greater on a curve cuz they're massively irrelevant.

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So if people are bidding on your branded traffic, yes you wanna protect your brand,

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but you can also go in there and cost your competitors a significant amount of money,

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which is, I think, strategically sound.

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that kind of all lives in the competitor camp.

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Now, when you bid on your brand traffic, the other thing you're

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giving yourself, and this is getting more and more important with every

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passing day, you're giving yourself visibility into what's actually

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working from a conversion perspective.

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Google has a massive attribution problem, and actually if you ask

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me, it's not a problem at all.

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I think they can see all the attribution.

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I think they're not giving it to us because they're terrified

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of anti privacy, antitrust, anti whatever, regardless of why.

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We can't see full conversion paths any longer unless we pay for the data bidding

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on your brain of traffic unveils those conversion paths, and it can do so in ways

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that help you make educated decisions.

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For other campaigns and campaign types, including non-Google ad related campaigns,

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Facebook ads, for instance, if you bid on branded traffic, you'll notice that

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your conversion path will end with brand traffic from a paid perspective.

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But then you'll be able to see in some instances, the referral source,

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especially if you're using analytics properly, capturing first data first

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party data properly, et cetera.

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So bidding on branded traffic lifts the veil slightly.

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And again, it depends on, what business you're in, how long your

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sales cycle is, those types of things.

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what kind of multi-touch environment you're in.

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Google did a study and found it, took 20 clicks to sell a candy bar, but

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500 clicks to sell an airline ticket.

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So you have to ask yourself, where between candy bar and airline

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ticket is my product or service?

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And in terms of how many touches we're going to receive and the more touches.

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The more likely it is that you're losing data and bidding on your brand

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traffic, even though you're paying for traffic that you might get.

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Otherwise, the visibility is worth paying for, especially because branded

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traffic tends to be far less expensive.

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Otherwise far less expensive than other types of paid

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traffic campaigns, I should say.

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Next point.

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You get to decide what the narrative is.

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the primary point against building on branded traffic is,

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dude, I'm gonna get this anyway.

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I rank phenomenally well, organically, they're searching for my brand

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name or name of my product.

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I'm already the, not only position one, I'm positions one, two,

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and three, and I'm in the local pack, and I'm in the video pack.

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I'm gonna get the traffic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Fine, fine.

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I hand it to you, but you're not gonna be able to control

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the narrative, what they see.

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Google decides it's based off of metadata or onsite descriptions.

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Google delivers content that you don't get to decide at all.

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You get to influence, but you don't get to define, and paid traffic is

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sensitive traffic and they're in a very specific point of the funnel.

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So when you bid on branded traffic, the offer that you make is specific.

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The landing page that they visit can be very, very specific.

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The way you remarket to them is specific, so you get to control the narrative and

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that con, that controlled narrative, can absolutely be worth it, especially

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if you have a really diverse offering.

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If you have multiple products, multiple services, a massive catalog.

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All you're doing when you're allowing people to go back to, your

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root domain, let's say, is you're keeping 'em in the messy middle.

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You're keeping 'em confused.

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And for prospects that have already found their way down to, the middle or the

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bottom of the funnel, or even the bottom of the middle of the funnel, if you don't

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mind me convoluting the conversation.

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It stands to reason that you'd want to be able to control what is

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it they see and how they see it.

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So what my advice to most advertisers is don't max out your brand campaigns

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because that that is where it gets a little bit too excessive.

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I would buy the 20% of the branded traffic that makes 80% of the impact

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and that becomes pretty easy to find, to be frank because branded traffic

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is one of the few campaign types where conversion tracking is still rock solid

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cuz it is extreme bottom of the funnel.

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And you do generally see results.

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Right away.

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where other campaigns it takes longer.

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Results are diluted.

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You have to worry about time lag.

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Brand campaigns are nice because you can see how effective they are and the.

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Brand traffic can be segmented according to a myriad of factors, and so figure

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out within that available segmentation what branded traffic is working for

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you and bid on that branded traffic.

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And you can do that, by the way, simply by limiting the amount of money you

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have to spend in your brand campaign.

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Google's gonna do this for you and say like, oh, okay, we

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have a limited amount of money.

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We have a certain target.

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Goal define inside of the campaign and all traffic is a bell curve.

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We're gonna go to the center of the bell curve and that's the best way to

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make sure that you're being efficient and effective with your brand traffic.

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I do believe and agree with advertisers and businesses that say, look, I'm

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gonna get this traffic regardless.

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Why would I pay for that?

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It's a good point.

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it's a balance of risks.

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So based off of everything that I posited here, I would turn this

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back around on you and say, okay, well when would you pay for it?

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Cuz it's not never.

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Like, it's not never, it's somewhere between 1% and 99%.

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It's not zero and it's not a hundred.

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And then you get to decide on the spectrum what the right answer is for you, and

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you're never gonna get it perfect.

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It's an iterative process.

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So I'd love to hear from you.

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What are other reasons that you've been on brand traffic

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that I'm not even thinking of.

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What smarter, better, more wicked ninja hacks do you have?

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And the other thing that I'm really interested in is how

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do you speak to brand traffic?

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What are the best offers that you've noticed for brand traffic?

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And maybe even more importantly, how do you steal other people's brand traffic?

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Cuz that's fun, that's fun to do, especially when you have snarky

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competitors out there and you have the opportunity to eat their lunch.

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So I hope this is helpful.

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I'd love to hear from you.

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Hit me in the comments.

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Let come subscribe.