Do You Know You Can Analyze Your Competitor’s PPC to Find Out Their Secrets?

If your competitor always seems to have the edge over you with their pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, it’s probably because they are keeping tabs on your business. Your competitor obviously knows what they are doing. You can use this to your advantage by investigating their strategy).

By doing a PPC competitor analysis, you can get insights into the ins and outs of their strategy. This post will break down competitor PPC analysis through these sections:

Once we are done, consider partnering with us to get the inside scoop of how experts go about it. Just call 888-601-5359 or contact us online to get started!

What are the benefits of doing a PPC competitor analysis?

PPC allows companies to “buy” or, rather, “bid” for certain keywords, so their company is at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) without having to wait for their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to kick in.

Key benefits of analyzing your competitor’s PPC include:

• Understanding your industry benchmarks: You usually don’t just do one competitor analysis — you do several. This way, you will know industry trends and user engagement strategies already in place in the market. You can then set your goals and objectives with these in mind to keep them realistic.
• Improving SEO: Get insight into the type of content they create and what users engage with. You can see the keywords they use, their landing page styles, and what type of content strategy they implemented. These factors all give you data into what works and whether you can use this information to improve your own strategies or include their tactics into yours.
• Tracking content and social media engagement: Check out how often your competitors post content and their engagement levels. How can you improve on this and provide more relevant information?

What takeaways can you get from your competitor’s PPC strategy?

You can learn so much from watching your competitors and how their PPC strategies are working for them. It can give you insights into:

• Landing page design: You must ensure your clicks work and convert. Analyze your competitors’ landing pages, messages, and call to action (CTA) to identify the best conversion practice for your company. Although sometimes what works for one company might not work for another.
• Benchmark ad spend: Your analyses can give you an estimate of how much your competitors are spending on their PPC campaigns. This will provide you with a benchmark with your own budget and insight into the level of your competitors’ investment. It will also give you knowledge of what keywords they are marketing towards and spending the most on.
• Growth opportunities: Once you understand your competitor’s PPC strategies, you can find ways to differentiate from your own offerings. This could revolutionize the way you spend on keywords to highlight different features, pricing, or customer service advantages from your competitors. It could also open the door to different keywords that they are not targeting, giving you a different angle.

Let’s analyze your competitor’s PPC strategies in four steps

You need to identify and act on a few areas when looking at your competitor’s PPC strategy. A good place to start is with the following steps:

1. Identify the keywords

You will want to use a keyword research tool to identify the keywords your competitors are using to target their PPC campaigns. There are three types of keywords you want to focus on:

• High-volume keywords: Look at the volume. Which of these keywords are attracting the most traffic? Are these applicable to your business?
• Niche keywords: This is where you start to look between the lines. These might be keywords your competitors are bidding on while using a low budget. You can spend a little higher and try tocapitalize on these less-obvious options.
• Keyword gaps: Now, look for keywords that your competitor should be bidding on, but is not. You can use this opportunity to target and bring them in for your own strategy.

Keyword research tools won’t tell you the exact success of your competitors’ campaigns with the keywords. But they will give you a rough idea if you compare your competitor analysis with your own keyword research.

You can also gauge their success by monitoring any changes. If they change their strategy, it might indicate that the campaign didn’t go as planned.

2. Identify your competitors

The term “competitors” is broad. Your offline competitor might be Joe, on the block over. But online, it’s a whole different world that you could be competing with. You could be competing against the Debbi sisters in a whole other state.

Identify who your PPC competition is by testing keywords that you have identified for your business and seeing who comes up. You can even check this on Google’s search engine by searching directly and seeing who appears in the “sponsored” sections.

A few types of online competitors you will encounter during your analysis of competitors’ PPC strategies include:

• Direct competition: These are the obvious ones that always appear in the SERPs. Your sales team probably also talks about them because they come up in conversations with your clients. These guys go after the same target audience as you and probably the same keywords as well.
• Indirect competitors: These guys don’t have the same product or service, but they share the same target audience as you. While they aren’t an obvious competitor because they are bidding for the same demographic and buyer personas, they are bidding on the same or similar keywords as you.
• Seasonal competitors: There are two versions of this: those who start with a big bang and then lose steam, and those who only make big bangs around major holidays. The best way to avoid this pattern yourself is to be consistent with your own marketing strategy.
• Local competitors: You know these guys because they are around you. They are competing with you online and for local searches.

3. Categorize and segment competitors

You segment the users on your site, right? That is, you break down your clients into different segments to get insights into how to personalize their experience and target your content towards them?

Your competitors are no different.

Segment your PPC competitors into different categories, such as affiliates, resellers, or even possibly partners. Maybe break them down into regions or different types of services —whatever categories make sense to you and your team to group them.

You can examine the metrics to determine the search overlap or percentage of shared keywords between you and your competitors.

This step will also help you identify who you should not be competing with. Create a list of competitors who share the same keywords but have a different product or service.

4. Identify weak and strengths

Once you have gathered all the data and information, this is where it will start to get really interesting. You can determine their weak spots and opportunities for your business. You can even run a competitor analysis on yourself to determine your own weak spots.

Each insight and information you gather will give you insight into your strategy and make your PPC campaign stronger than theirs.

3 PPC competitor analysis tools to get you started

You didn’t think we were going to leave you hanging, did you? Of course not!

To get you started on your PPC competitor analysis journey, you will need tools of the trade. Here are a few to get you up and running:

1. WebFX

We have some great tools to get you up and going, and they are free! For starters, you can try our latest PPC calculator to get you going on your budget.

We also have KeywordsFX, a free online keyword research tool that you can use to download spreadsheets of all the keywords you need.

2. SEMRush

If you have the budget, SEMRush has a number of online tools as well, starting from $119.95 a month. You will get access to a platform that will give you information like top keywords, a breakdown of your competitors, and even a breakdown of backlinks to your or your competitor’s website.

3. BuzzSumo

Starting from $159 a month, you will get a complete keyword toolkit, as well as a starting point for content ideas. Their new added feature gives you influencers on social media that cover specific keywords as well, bridging the gap between SEO and social media optimization (SMO).

Partner with WebFX to do a PPC competitor analysis for you

If you’d like to get an in-depth look at what others in your industry are doing and use that information to improve your own strategy, WebFX can help!

Our PPC marketing experts know exactly how to analyze your competitors and give you insights that will make your business stand out. You’ll learn how to target your keywords to ensure that you reach the right audience.

Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359  to speak with a strategist about our competitor analysis services!