As someone who has been dealing with leads daily, we understand how challenging it is to develop a list of exclusive, quality, and converting leads. However, you may not know that your competitors are taking a shortcut. Some businesses will steal sales leads since it is cheaper and produces outstanding results. Obviously, they will not be doing this practice if it does not contribute to their bottom line.
How to Steal Sales Lead from Your Competitors
To understand if your rivals in the industry are stealing from you, head to Bing, You can also use Google, but it would be easier to spot them on Bing. Type the name of your company on the search bar and hit enter. If your company is not appearing on top of the search result, but an advertisement of your competitor is present, it could be a way for your rivals to steal sales lead. So, how can you turn things in your favor? Simple, know how they are doing this and take advantage of their methodologies.
Bidding On the Company Name
Try to type SEMRush on Google, and you will notice that the top result is an advertisement of WebCEO. It is a legal way to encourage your competitors’ customers to consider your business instead. It is pretty OK to bid for the name of your business rivals as long as the term SEMrush is not directly included in the advertisement. On the contrary, it is unethical to use your company name directly on their promotion except when they are selling or promoting your product; it is a misleading advertisement. Here are more ways on how to steal sales leads.
- Using Part of Your Company Name- Other times, your rivals will bid for some significant part of your business name. For instance, if you are on electrical services, your opponents may bid on any keywords with ‘electrician.’ Therefore, if your business name comes with this term, their name will appear on top of the search result.
- Duplicating Your Name- Your rivals could be copying the name of your business to steal leads from you. For instance, it will be common to find a similar business name that operates in different states. It can be pretty confusing to your leads. It is a shady strategy that illegitimate and fraudulent companies use. Sometimes, they can even copy the design of your site to confuse your prospects further.
How Do You Take Your Leads Back?
You can take them back by starting your PPC campaign and bidding on their Company name as one of your target keywords. You will get on top of the search result, especially if the domain and company name are similar. It is also inexpensive than capturing leads from scratch. Another way is to improve your company’s branding. By keeping a consistent image, voice, and tone, your prospects will immediately identify if they are on the right website or not. You want to be unique to stand out and prevent them to steal sales leads.
Facebook Ad Campaign
Are you aware that your competitors can also steal your leads by setting up an Ad Campaign on Facebook that targets your page? The first step is to build a campaign that aims to promote your page. You will then be asked to add parameters that further customize the ad campaign. Your competitors can add the name of your business in the Interest section. For instance, Burger King can add McDonald’s in the interest section. Therefore, once a user shows some interest in McDonald’s, then the Facebook advertisement of Burger King will appear on their feed. However, learning how to steal sales leads using this method is more complex than the PPC method mentioned above. They will have to create a compelling ad copy to capture the interest of their leads. They will also have to conduct numerous testing to ensure that they will enjoy the best ROI.
What Are Some Ways to Use Facebook to Steal Leads from Your Competitors?
There are different ways to reclaim your leads from your rivals and steal sales leads from your competitors. Start with your posts that will effectively earn the trust of your prospects and nurture your leads. Start creating a post with valuable information and link it back to your official website. This step is crucial since you plan to capture the interest and earn the trust of your competitor’s audience. Once you have created the post, it is time to boost the reach of this post. In reality, you are only reaching 6% of your potential customers. If you want to guarantee that your target audience sees your message, Facebook will offer this option.
There is no point in running your Facebook page if you are not promoting it. Boosting your page content is a powerful marketing strategy. You have worked hard to raise the likes of your page; you definitely want to put your content right in front of them by boosting it. You should also consider implementing a direct lead generation strategy that will directly send the audience into your webpage, bypassing Facebook marketing.
Listening and Monitoring
One legal and ethical way to steal sales leads from your competitors is to use social listening and monitoring tools. Pay attention to the mentions and hashtags relevant to your rivals. There’s a chance they will have customers who are not satisfied with their service. If your opponents ignore their complaints, it is best to reach out to them and inform them that you can do things better. However, you should not shamelessly promote your company. Understand that this is about their problem, and you are here to offer an alternative solution. It is best to talk to them in private. Start by asking why they are dissatisfied with your competitors’ service. Identify the root cause of their problem and provide a sound solution. It is an excellent opportunity to gain the authority and trust of your prospects.
How Does This Work
One leading reason why many businesses are losing customers is due to substandard customer service. If you can prove to the audience that you are better at offering an outstanding customer experience, they can definitely choose you as their go-to solution. Just like nurturing a romantic relationship, if your competitors’ customers are not receiving the attention they need from that company, they will immediately look for that attention elsewhere. It is an opportunity for you to connect to them by offering them a service that exceeds the quality of your competitors. You can post your response rate on Facebook and show the audience that you are active in responding to your audience. Show that you can handle a high volume of customers efficiently and quickly. Offering better options is one effective ways on how to steal sales leads.
Stealing Customers Through YouTube
If you do not have premium YouTube subscriptions, you are pretty familiar with the advertisement that appears before or while watching the video. Some customers may find these inconvenient, but for the marketers, it is an excellent opportunity to steal sales lead of your competitors. Your audience will not have any option but to watch the advertisement. Nonetheless, be sure that you can capture their attention within 5 seconds before they even have the chance to click on the ‘Skip Ad’ option. Create a relevant and compelling video and then target the audience who will search on the name of your competitors. Once your potential customer watches your competitors’ video, they will first see your company’s name before watching the video.
Running Gmail Advertisement
If you are a Gmail user, you will notice a couple of native ads that will appear on top of your inbox. You won’t even have to know your target’s email address to reach them through their inbox. You can target them according to demographics, topics, or keywords. You can even send your native ads to users who receive emails from a specific website. For instance, if they are subscribing to your competitors’ websites, you can use Gmail native ads to appear on top of their mail list before they could even encounter the email message of your competitors. Start by adding ‘mail.google.com’ in the display ad network as a managed placement. You will then have to include a keyword such as the brand name or the domain name of your competitor. It will prompt the system to send your advertisement to your competitors’ audience and steal sales leads.
Using Twitter Ads
On Twitter, it is pretty easy to see the followers of your rivals in the business. However, do not just shamelessly promote your company to these audiences. Start by downloading the list using Followerwonk, Audiense, and Twitonomy. Upload this list on the tailored audience part of your campaign. With this, these audiences will see your advertisement in their Twitter feeds. It will possibly attract these prospects to your company.
Is it alright to steal sales lead of your competitors? To some marketers, this may seem to be a sneaky move. It may appear like you are stealing the livelihood and profit of others. Nonetheless, you need to remember that the customers will not consider the alternatives if they get their needs from their chosen companies. With the strategies we mentioned here, you simply offer unsatisfied leads a better solution.