In this article we will discuss some of the various needs of conducting a PPC competitor audit and analysis.
Who to use when conducting a competitor analysis for PPC?
There are many options for help with a conducting a competitor analysis out there. One should carefully select by the budget, time and expertise needed for running one for your business.
As a business owner, you can conduct an audit via many ways and with many different people or agencies.
You could always reach out to us for help to get started and PPC management services but hopefully you choose us. Usually agencies wont sell a stand alone competitor analysis but along your journey with an agency they could use this strategy. If your using a freelancer, they will usually charge you for this service. This is a pro to using an agency over a freelancer and any company using freelancers or just considering which to use should also consider that aspect.
These are all reasons to consider and weigh each of the options out there.
What is a competitor analysis for PPC?
A competitor analysis is using tools to look at what your competition is doing for advertising to get an idea on strategy, budget and missing keywords to target.
You might say I am a niche business and dont have any competition, or you dominate and aren’t worried about the smaller competitors. Eitherway, you should keep an eye on your competitors because underdogs can have an edge you might not be aware of according to Forbes. If your a large dominant player, sometimes an underdog can create an edge that eventually will eat into your market share. If your a small player, this is exactly why you should run a competitor analysis for PPC and SEO.
What data to use would be another piece to this question.
It will depend on your desired outcome from impressions, clicks, click through rates, cost per click, conversions, revenue etc. Some of the data points we won’t see via tools and they can only provide a limited view into say monthly search volumes, costs per click, probable budgets allocated and obviously we can’t see your competitors actual results with these tools but that would be very nice. You could a very niche business that upon checking an analysis might then dictate some pivots that could be made for your online digital marketing efforts.
Where should I run my competitor analysis?
There are a plethora of tools out there to run a PPC competitor audit and analysis.
Some we personally like to use are in the google ads interface itself.
Some others like, SEMRush.com, Spyfu.com, Moz.com and Ahrefs.com.
These are paid third party tools unlike google, will give you various angles of data that can be used to spy on the competition. I would highly recommend checking out each tool, seeing the pricing as these costs are usually covered by the agency you hire to get a competitor audit and analysis completed. If your planning on doing it yourself, know they for sure aren’t free and can cost hundreds of dollars per month for each! We tend to try to cross reference all these tools at various times because the data could change, but usually a couple at a time is a good way to ensure you are checking more than just one source and relying on that alone.
When to conduct a PPC audit and analysis?
Anytime is a good time to get started, especially if you have noticed a major change in your traffic, leads or conversions and revenue.
Things to consider is time allotment as one can easily get data analysis paralysis since if you are staring at data for too long, you might lose focus, get distracted and more. One should focus on the critical needs as cited by Forbes.com Lets face it, time is money and noone person should spend a full day on this process.
An hour or few should be sufficient if they have a direction and purpose in mind.
It’s best to set a specific amount of time and goals to focus on so you can use your time wisely.
Why use competitor data in your campaigns?
This data from the tools can help you in gaining powerful insights into potential missing content gaps, keyword gaps, costs per click gaps that can help guide you to making decisions about your online advertising needs and pivots.
If you have ever heard the saying, don’t recreate the wheel, its similar to that. We dont per se need to start from scratch as there are probably more than one business online doing ads in your area or more we can look at for this purpose.
Have you ever wondered why another company shows up for your brand? Well, they have you on their radar and you should have them on yours. This means they have your URL and or branded keywords in their targeted keywords or keywords might be so broad they are including your domain in their auctions on Google.
Google ads as it interlaces AI has started to leverage contextual learning about users of any website with things like custom segments that can be used on say a PMax campaign, display or video campaign. This AI features are a very helpful way to guide your signals to result into tangible outcomes with your strategy in online advertising.
In summary, everything should be clearly communicated, structured in a digestible way to result in a strategy. A competitor campaign can then be easily spun up or integrated into your campaigns depending on how your Google ads campaigns are built but one shouldn’t wait till things start to stagnate or struggle to get started.