Ad relevance with competitor keywords

Hi folks,

This is my first post so bear with me. I'm also an AdWords novice so please forgive me if this question is silly (I did do a forum search first for similar Qs before posting). Oh, and please, I really could do with help, so try not to TL;DR.

Background:

Right, basically I am trying a very basic AdWords campaign to help my friend's small local business. He has a little skate shop in our town and its the only one here. There used to be another but that is long gone. Anyway, I noticed a volume of search traffic that is searching '<old competitor name> <town name>' (e.g. "skateland london"). So, since it isn't sensible to target these searches using organic SEO, I thought it would be well suited to an AdWords campaign. I thought it would be ethical to target these searches as since the old skate shop is gone, we're doing consumers a favour by offering them a local alternative to the shop that no longer exists.

So, the ad I've set up is a basic brand ad, including text saying "<town name>'s ONLY skate shop". Now, since the keywords in the campaign are variations of "<old competitor name> <town name>" and we can't use the competitor's brand in the ad copy, AdWords is scoring the ad with a below average ad relevance (which it really isn't) and giving a high suggested bid estimate.

So, my question is: Is there anything I can do to increase my ad relevance in this instance or do I just have to accept that because of the nature of the ad and targeted keywords, its going to cost more??

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!!

...Burtolio...

 

34 views and no replies. Has no one got any ideas on this one?

 

For reducing costs you can do this:

1) Just use <old shop> keyword in ads and on the page
- If <old shop> is gone and it's not trademark I see nothing against using the keyword in ad text. Competitors are doing it all the time, not only with gone brands. It's not agaignst Google Adwords policy to use it, if it's not a trademark.... Be more "assertive" ;-)
- Just mention <old shop> on landing page.... e.g. "Your favorite skateshop <old shop> in our city is gone? Do not worry, we are here!"

2) Try to raise CTR
- Keywords score is not only thing what makes CPC. Try to raise CTR to get lower CPC. Write better ads, optimize.
- Use exact and phrase kw match
- Use Ad Extensions (Address, phone, sitelinks)

3) Raise max. CPC
- It looks like you have no other competitor in your town. So raise max. CPC for a while. You will obtain good CTR (because no other is advertising) and some account history. So your overall acount rating will raise and it can reduce your total costs. As I said, keyword score is not only one what makes total CPC http://www.semexpertise.com/understanding-google-adwords-ad-rank-quality-score-cpc-ctr/