Google Conquest Campaigns: Win Leads From Competitor Searches
When a homeowner searches your competitor’s name on Google, they are actively shopping. They have not called yet. They are comparing options. That is the window competitor conquest campaigns exist to capture.
Conquest campaigns mean bidding on a competitor’s brand keywords so your ad appears when someone searches “ABC Plumbing repair” or “Rivers HVAC near me.” The homeowner sees your ad alongside results for the competitor they were looking up. A percentage of them click. Some book. In markets where service keywords run $80 to $150 per click, competitor brand terms often clear at $15 to $35 per click because fewer advertisers bid on them. The economics work even at a lower conversion rate.
Why Conquest Works in Home Services
Home service purchases are high consideration. A homeowner who searches a competitor’s name is not loyal to that brand. They are researching. They probably got a referral, saw a truck, or heard a name, and they are using Google to verify before calling. That verification moment is your opportunity.
Conversion rates on conquest traffic run 30 to 50 percent lower than branded or service-specific traffic. But the leads who do convert are actively shopping, not passively browsing. Conquest’s value is not replacing your service campaigns. It is adding a second lead channel that captures homeowners who would otherwise call your competitor directly.
The Trademark Rule You Cannot Ignore
Google allows bidding on competitor brand names as keywords. It does not allow using competitor brand names in your ad copy. This is the line most advertisers either do not know about or do not respect.
You can bid on “ABC Plumbing” as a keyword. Your ad cannot say “Better than ABC Plumbing” or “Not ABC Plumbing.” Using a registered trademark in ad text triggers Google’s trademark policy. If ABC Plumbing has their trademark registered with Google, your ad gets disapproved and your account receives a policy strike. Even if they have not registered it, using competitor names in ad text is legally risky and strategically unnecessary. Your ad should stand on its own merits.
Campaign Structure for Conquest
Do not mix conquest keywords into your existing service campaigns. Set up a separate campaign with its own budget and bid strategy. Here is why:
- Quality Score is inherently lower on conquest keywords. Your landing page does not match the search term. Google knows it. Mixing conquest into your service campaigns drags down Quality Scores across those campaigns and raises your CPCs on terms you have already built authority on.
- Budget isolation prevents cannibalization. Conquest keywords can eat budget fast. A separate daily cap means your service-keyword campaigns keep running even if conquest burns through its allocation by noon.
- Clean performance data. You cannot evaluate whether conquest is worth scaling if its numbers are mixed into your core campaign reporting.
| Setting | Recommended for conquest campaigns |
|---|---|
| Match type | Exact or phrase only; never broad match on competitor names |
| Daily budget | $20 to $40 to start; separate from service campaigns |
| Bid strategy | Target CPA or Maximize Conversions (not Maximize Clicks) |
| Ad schedule | Match your business hours plus 2 hours on each side |
| Location targeting | City-level or specific zip codes; skip radius targeting |
| Landing page | Dedicated “why us” page, not your homepage |
Set match type to exact or phrase. Broad match on a competitor’s name will serve your ad for “plumbing repair” and every variation, defeating the purpose of the campaign entirely.
Ad Copy That Works Without Mentioning the Competitor
Since you cannot reference the competitor, your conquest ad needs to win on its own. The most effective conquest ad copy for contractors leads with a specific differentiator the homeowner would find compelling while comparing providers.
- Speed: “Same-Day HVAC Repair | Dispatched in 90 Minutes or Less”
- Guarantee: “100% Satisfaction Guaranteed | Licensed Phoenix HVAC Contractor”
- Availability: “24/7 Emergency Plumbing | No Weekend Surcharges”
- Proof: “Family-Owned, 3,200 Reviews | Serving Denver Since 2001”
Avoid generic language like “Quality Service” or “Trusted Local Experts.” If your conquest ad could appear for any business in any industry, it is not specific enough. The homeowner is one click away from calling someone. Give them a concrete reason to make that click yours.
Landing Page Strategy
Sending conquest traffic to your homepage wastes the click. Build a dedicated landing page for conquest campaigns. It does not need to be long or complex.
What it does need:
- A clear headline stating what you do and where, within the first two sentences
- Your three to five strongest differentiators listed explicitly (response time, license number, guarantee terms, review count and rating)
- A phone number above the fold, formatted as a tap-to-call link on mobile
- A short form: name, phone number, service type. Nothing else. Every additional field reduces form submissions by roughly 10 to 15 percent.
Do not build a page that attacks the competitor. That is legally risky, looks unprofessional, and typically converts worse than a straightforward value page. Let your credentials and differentiators make the case.
What Budget to Expect and When to Evaluate
Start with $25 per day for your conquest campaign. Run it for 30 days before making any decisions about scaling or pausing. You need at minimum 20 to 30 conversions to have statistically meaningful CPL data. Evaluating after 10 clicks is a common way to kill a campaign that would have worked with more time.
Performance benchmarks for home service conquest campaigns:
| Metric | Expected range | When to scale |
|---|---|---|
| CPC on competitor brand keywords | $12 to $40 | If CPL lands within 30% of service campaigns |
| Click-through rate | 3 to 7% | Below 3% means ad copy needs rewriting |
| Conversion rate (form + call) | 4 to 10% | Below 4% usually means a landing page problem |
| CPL vs. service campaigns | 1.2x to 2x higher | Pause if more than 2.5x your normal CPL |
If your conquest CPL is within 30 percent of your service campaign CPL after 30 days, increase budget by $10 to $15 per day and hold for another 30 days. If it is more than double, pause conquest and audit your landing page before restarting.
The Competitive Intelligence Bonus
Beyond leads, conquest campaigns produce something most contractors do not expect: market intelligence. Your search term report shows which competitor names homeowners in your area are actually searching and at what volume. If you bid on eight competitor names and 75 percent of your impressions come from two of them, those two are your real competitive threats in the market.
That data shapes more than your ad strategy. It tells you which competitor trucks to look for at supply houses, which company to ask new customers they compared you against, and whose positioning language you should study on their website. You are not just buying leads. You are buying a window into who your market actually shops.
Three Actions to Start This Week
- Build your conquest keyword list. Search your trade plus your city in Google. Write down every competitor name that appears in the top five paid or organic results. Start with two or three names, not twelve. Run the small list cleanly before expanding.
- Create a separate conquest campaign with a $25 daily budget. Set exact or phrase match on competitor brand names. Write three ad variations, each leading with a different differentiator: one for speed, one for guarantee, one for proof (reviews or years in business). Set Target CPA as your bid strategy with a target 20 percent above your current blended CPL.
- Publish a conquest landing page before the campaign goes live. Keep it simple: headline, differentiator list, phone number, short form. Point your conquest campaign exclusively to this page. Do not run conquest traffic to your homepage or a generic service page. The landing page is where most conquest campaigns fail, and getting it right before you spend matters more than getting the keywords right.
Conquest campaigns do not replace service-keyword campaigns. They run alongside them, capture a different segment of the market, and often do so at a lower CPC than your core terms. The homeowner who searched your competitor’s name is not gone. They are still on Google, still comparing, still deciding. A well-structured conquest campaign puts you in that decision at a cost that makes the economics worth it.