This is genuinely underused Google Ads move; targeting your competitor's customers directly. Let me walk you through it.

Inside your Google Ads account, there's a setting most people never touch: Tools → Audience Manager → Custom Segments. From there you create a custom audience, and instead of the usual interests/behaviors targeting, you go to "people who browse types of websites" and this is the key part, you plug in your competitor's website(s).

So say you're a premium brand and your competitors are more budget/mass-market. You can build a custom audience of people who've been browsing your competitor's site, and put your ads in front of them instead. You're essentially saying "hey, before you buy from them, check us out."

It's not a perfect science, it's not exactly the same as remarketing straight to their customer list, but it does guarantee a chunk of the people seeing your ad have shown interest in exactly what you sell, from a business you're actively trying to beat.

And if you want to take it further (this is the part that actually moves the needle), you get aggressive with your ad copy and creative. Directly call out the competitor. "Better than [competitor]." "Same quality, better price." "We include what they charge extra for." When you write copy like this, Google's smart enough to pick up on it and specifically show your ad to people who are already customers of, or considering that competitor. It knows exactly who to target based on what your ad is actually saying.

Now, how aggressive you want to get is up to you and depends on your industry, your relationship with competitors, and honestly your risk tolerance. But if you're comfortable with it, this works especially well inside Performance Max campaigns.

Bottom line: if your product or service genuinely is better than the competition, this is one of the most direct ways to say so, and get Google to put that message in front of exactly the people who need to hear it.

Small setup, potentially big payoff. Worth testing if you've got a genuine edge over a specific competitor.

Follow for more, this isn't the last strategy breakdown coming your way. 👀