Pay-per-click activities can boost brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads. PPC Marketing is challenging to master, especially when so many other competitors are fighting for the same audience.
It is essential to analyze your competitors. You will be able to learn about the Google Ads strategy of your competitors and their tactics.
Six key steps are involved in a PPC Competitive Analysis.
Find out who your competitors are
Analyze your PPC strategy
Analysis of landing pages and ad copy
Target your audience
Analysis of their advertising budget
Analysis of their performance and ROI
Learn how to perform a competitive analysis using PPC.
Identify your competitors
To begin any Competitive Analysis, you must first know your competitors!
Pay attention to this step, even if your company is established and you have detailed information about your competitors. New companies are constantly entering an industry or expanding; they could be your competitors.
You can use your knowledge of competitors to identify them (your marketing and sales teams will likely be well-versed in the market). Some other great tools will help.
Google Ads Auction Insights helps you compare your campaign, ad, and bidding strategy to your competitors.
Analyze their PPC strategy
You can then analyze the PPC strategies of your competitors. Look at how advertisers combine SEO with PPC to cover organic and paid channels. Here are some ways you can do it.
Keyword Research
It should be easy to find out what keywords your competitors rank for if you have already performed an SEO competitive analysis.
It’s also worth checking PPC, as you may need to catch some terms or phrases.
You can use tools such as SEMRush Keyword Gap Tool to find out what keywords your competitors are bidding for.
To determine the cost-effectiveness of a keyword, it’s essential to look at both volume and CPC. This will allow you to identify any gaps in your keyword strategies.
Ad Placement Analysis
Check out where your competitors are displaying their ads. Are they mostly appearing on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), on specific websites, or social media channels like YouTube?
You can do this with a href=”https://www.similarweb.com/”>Similarweb/a>. Similarweb can be used to accomplish this.
Monitor your search results.
You can use paid or free tools, like those we have already mentioned, to see your competitors’ search engine rankings, their ad copy, and how much they spend on advertising. It will inform your ad strategy and bidding strategy.
Use Ad Intelligence Tools
Spyfu, an Ad Intelligence tool, allows you to view the past performance of competitors’ advertising campaigns. It includes ad spending, click-through rate, and conversion rate.
Ad Copy Analysis
Look at what your competitors do to improve your copywriting performance. What are their unique selling features, and how do they position their product or service?
Do they use specific keywords in their ad copy or not?
What is the tone or style of the approach or content, e.g., formal, friendly, humorous?
What images or videos are they using to generate clicks?
What kind of CTAs do they use?
What colors are used to advertise their brand?
Analysis of Landing Pages
A good landing page will do wonders for your conversion rate. Content should be well-structured, relevant to your audience, and have a strong CTA.
Make sure your landing page copy is in line with their source. If someone clicks on an ad from Facebook, is the landing page what they expected to read? Does it match the message and appearance of the Facebook advertisement?
Google’s Auction Report can help you identify the top landing pages of your competitors. Make a list, and then take a closer look. What works well, and why? What can you improve on or learn from?
Consider Conversion Rate Optimization to ensure you do everything possible to convert prospects into leads and customers.
