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Are you having trouble finding out which PPC competitors are poaching your customers? Do you wish you knew what strategies they use? Are they doing something better that you’re not doing?
If only there was a way to peek over enemy lines and see what they’re up to. Well, you can essentially gather all of the intel you need by spying on them. No, we’re not talking about corporate espionage (that’s illegal). What we’re talking about is a PPC competitor analysis—a sort of digital reconnaissance mission where you get to live out your James Bond fantasies.
A competitive analysis gives you intel that can help you uncover who your online rivals are, new revenue-generating keywords and how you should position your brand against your competitors to maximize PPC success. Without conducting a competitive analysis, you’re essentially shooting in the dark—resulting in poor decision-making, missed conversion opportunities, and wasted ad dollars.
So, how do you go about conducting a competitor analysis? And, what tools can you use?
In this blog, we’re going to fill you in on our favorite PPC spy gadget and offer tips that will help you uncover valuable insights into your competitors’ PPC campaigns. Basically, we’re the Q to your Bond. Now, here’s your mission.
SpyFu: A Competitor Analysis Tools to Add to Your Arsenal
Software like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and even freebies like Google Ads Auction Insights can give you a behind-the-scenes look at how businesses like yours are running their campaigns. While we use a mix of these tools in our digital arsenal, one of our favorite tools for competitor analysis is SpyFu.
Spyfu comes with a whole suite of tools designed for the express purpose of digging up dirt on your competitors’ PPC strategies, revealing everything from their monthly ad spend to their top performing keywords.
Later on we’ll get into how you can use SpyFu to arm yourself with insights, but first you’ll need to answer three questions:
What to Look For When Spying
- Who are your competitors?
- What keywords are they targeting?
- What is their messaging strategy?
Scope Out The Competition
Before you can even start digging into the nitty gritty details of what your competition is doing, you first need to know WHO your PPC competition is. NOT who you assume they are. Who they actually are.
It sounds like an obvious place to start, yet many businesses make the mistake of assuming that their offline competitors are the same as their online competitors. In most cases, that’s not entirely true. When it comes to PPC, your actual online competitors are the companies that are bidding on the same keywords as you.
For example, we’ve had discussions with many service area contractors who insisted that their main online competitors were the other big-name contractors in their city. But after pulling the data, it became clear the ads that were consistently showing on their target keyword sets were actually from lead gen websites—not their local counterparts.
So, how do you suss out your true PPC competition? Enter SpyFu.
SpyFu has a very handy tool that allows you to identify all the major players in your market. All you have to do is simply enter your domain name into their search bar, and you’ll instantly get a list of sites that are bidding on the same search terms as you.
From there, you can get a bird’s eye view of the competitive landscape. Maybe, you expected to see a long-time rival make the list. Or, perhaps, it revealed a previously unknown competitor. In either case, you can use the data to identify your main competitors that pose the biggest threat to your PPC dominance.
Investigate Their Keyword Strategies
Knowing your competitors’ top-performing keywords gives you a crazy advantage in AdWords auctions. Like fishing with dynamite type of crazy advantage.
Gain Intel On How They’re Writing Their Ads
How are your PPC competitors positioning their product or service? Are they using clear call to actions? If you’re in a crowded industry, how can you use all of this information to stand out?
You could easily spend hours researching each and every single copy variation your competition has used trying to find the words that will get your customers to convert. Or, you could use SpyFu’s Ad History tool and save yourself an afternoon hunched over the computer.
With SpyFu’s Ad History tool, you’re essentially gaining access to the competition’s winning copy combinations that they’ve spent months (or maybe even years) testing.
SpyFu’s Ad History tool shows both current ads and every ad variation they ever used going back 16 years, revealing which copy has been the most successful over time. Bam! Their winning headlines and ad copy, right there at your fingertips.
For instance, here’s an ad for a carpet cleaning company that offers a discount.
If you’re just starting your campaign, this can help you find fully optimized copy right off the bat. Or, if you’re in a writing rut, this can help you find new angles to work.
This isn’t to say you should copy and paste everything word-for-word. For starters, that’s pretty underhanded. More importantly, it probably won’t be effective in helping you stand out in a crowded marketplace. Our suggestion is that as you’re looking through their campaign, take notes on the ads’ features, messaging, offers, and advantages and look for opportunities not capitalized on by your competitors.
Wrapping Up
A competitive analysis is key to achieving a competitive edge in the online battlefield, and you can bet if James Bond did PPC he would say the same thing. With tools like SpyFu, and the techniques shown above, you can gather all the data you need to inform your strategy and improve upon your competitors.
That’s not to say that the mission is over. The key is to turn all this intel into an actionable strategy that ties overall into your PPC and search goals. If you have any questions about conducting a competitor analysis or wondering how you can use software like Spyfu and apply its findings to your campaigns, reach out to us today. Let’s connect.
