Home / Case Studies / Competitor Keyword Bidding
Case study : Google Ads : B2B SaaS
A B2B SaaS client was paying $124 per signup. Competitor keyword bidding took it to $73.
Generic category keywords were pulling in browsers, not buyers. We built a separate competitor campaign, wrote ads that positioned without naming anyone, and pointed the traffic at a comparison page instead of the homepage. Cost per acquisition dropped 41 percent in 90 days and monthly signups went up 68 percent.
The challenge
Every click was going to someone still deciding what to buy.
The account was spending its full budget on category keywords like project management software and team collaboration tool. Cost per click sat between $8 and $14. Conversion rate was 1.8 percent. That put a single free trial signup at $124, against a product priced well below what that acquisition cost could support.
Nothing was technically wrong. Tracking was in place, quality scores were acceptable, the landing page loaded fast. The problem was who the keywords were reaching. Someone typing a category term is browsing. Someone typing a rival product name is comparing, and they have already decided they need the category. The account had no presence on any of those comparison searches.
What we did
Five changes, all inside one new campaign.
Nothing in the existing generic campaigns was paused. The competitor structure was built alongside it so the two could be compared against each other on the same account, same budget ceiling, same tracking.
01
Shortlisted three competitors from fourteen
We pulled auction insights and brand search volume for every rival appearing in the account. Two market leaders were excluded because their brand terms were being defended at bids the client’s contract value could never repay. The three chosen were similar in size, with a clear feature gap the client could argue against.
02
Built a ring-fenced campaign at $50 per day
Competitor terms went into their own campaign, never mixed with branded or generic. Manual CPC opened at $6, one ad group per rival, exact and phrase match only. Separate budget meant the test could not quietly cannibalise the campaigns that were already producing signups.
03
Wrote ads that positioned without naming anyone
Trademark rules block a rival’s name inside ad text, so we wrote around it. Headlines ran on the difference instead: built for teams over fifty, not just startups. Each ad group carried copy aimed at the specific weakness of the rival that ad group was bidding on.
04
Sent the traffic to a comparison page, not the homepage
Our CRO team built one page that opened by acknowledging the visitor was evaluating options, then laid out feature, pricing and support differences in a table. It converted at 6.2 percent against 1.8 percent on the generic landing page.
05
Cleaned the search terms every week
Brand searches drag in traffic nobody wants. Across the first month we added 96 negatives covering job listings, login pages, support articles, pricing complaints and tutorial queries. Existing customers were excluded through an audience list so the account stopped paying to reach people who had already signed up.
06
Reported on blended CPA, not campaign CPA
A competitor campaign can look expensive in isolation while lifting the whole account. We reported the blended number from week one so the decision to scale was made on total cost per signup rather than on one campaign’s column in the dashboard.
February 2026
Audit and build
Auction insights review, competitor shortlist, campaign structure and comparison page brief.
March 2026
Launch and clean
Campaign live at $50 per day per competitor. Weekly search term reviews, 96 negatives added.
April 2026
Comparison page live
Conversion rate on competitor traffic moved from 2.4 percent to 6.2 percent within three weeks.
May 2026
Scale
Budget doubled on the two rivals producing under $80 CPA. Blended CPA settled at $73.
The results
February against May, same account.
Competitor terms cost less per click than the category terms the account had been defaulting to, and converted more than three times better. Both numbers moved in the right direction at once, which is why the blended figure fell as fast as it did.
What made it work
The campaign was cheap. The landing page did the work.
Plenty of accounts already bid on competitor terms and get nothing back, because the traffic lands on a homepage that assumes the visitor has never heard of the category. This visitor has. They are three tabs deep into a comparison. The page has to join the comparison rather than restart the pitch.
The other half is discipline on negatives. Brand searches pull in job seekers, existing customers looking for a login, and people hunting for a support article. Left alone, that traffic will quietly consume a competitor campaign’s budget and make the strategy look like it failed.
This structure now runs in every Google Ads management engagement we handle for B2B SaaS clients, alongside LinkedIn ads for reaching the same decision makers by job title and content optimization for ranking organically on the comparison queries the ads are paying for.
About this result
Questions people ask about this campaign.
Yes. This client started competitor campaigns at $50 per day per competitor, which is roughly $1,500 a month for the whole test. Competitor keyword bidding is one of the few Google Ads strategies that works at small budgets because the search volume is naturally capped by how many people look up that brand. You do not need to outspend anyone. You need to be present on a narrow set of terms with a landing page that answers the comparison the searcher is already making.
Average cost per click on the competitor campaigns was $8.40 compared to $11.20 on generic category keywords. Broad category terms attract every advertiser in the market, which pushes bids up. Brand terms attract a much smaller field, usually the brand owner plus two or three challengers. Fewer bidders in the auction means a lower clearing price, which is why brand bidding competitors often costs less per click than the generic keywords most accounts default to.
Bidding on a competitor’s brand name as a keyword is permitted by Google Ads policy in the United States and most of Europe. What is restricted is using a trademarked competitor name inside your ad text, which can trigger a trademark complaint and disapproval. This client’s campaigns bid on competitor terms but never named a competitor in any headline or description. All positioning was done through differentiation language instead.
Blended cost per acquisition moved from $124 to $73 over 90 days. The competitor campaigns produced usable conversion data inside the first three weeks, but the first month was spent on negative keyword cleanup because brand searches pull in job seekers, support queries and login attempts. The clean CPA number arrived once the comparison landing page had been live for a full month and the search term report had stabilised.
Your turn
Want to know whether competitor terms would work in your account?
Send us your website and Google Ads access. We will look at what your rivals are paying for their own brand terms, whether those auctions are affordable at your contract value, and what your current spend is going to instead. Free, no retainer, no sales pitch, back within one business day.