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How to analzye competition in terms of PPC?
Hello.
My boss wants me to analyze competitor’s PPC strategy. What is the best possible way to do it?
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1 Reply
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it depends on the type of market that you’re in.
recently my company started doing a competitive intelligence analysis to determine what our competitors were doing. this meant going in from a consumer perspective to try to see what the experience was like and seeing differences based off their website vs. ours. whether it was pricing, CRO, SEM/SEO work, there was always something to be taken away.
in terms of analyzing the PPC strategy, it could be tough but one thought that comes to mind is checking where your competitors are consistently showing up in the auction depending on the keyword you’re buying.
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You might be able to get a glance of what the competitor is doing with SEMRush, Spyfu…. but take it with a grain of salt as they are not very accurate.
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Pick your top keywords in terms of revenue/profit volume and look at audition insights over time. Conduct some searches in different goes to determine where competition is landing them and what there messaging and pricing is. Visit varies pages and parts of their funnel and determine how they are addressing re-targeting. You can use paid tools to get some information but most of the good stuff is paid and I’m the type to seek how to get that info on my own which is totally possible because all of the platforms use estimations which is why they all show different data.
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Tons of keyword research sites but http://www.ineedleads.co.uk is who we use
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I think there’s an easy way to look up Google ads by searching for the company name on Google then selecting view all ads.
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Use a PPC competitor tool SEM Rush, Spyfu, Similarweb. They aren’t very accurate but if you compare the results they have on your business vs competitors it will give insights on where they are focusing their efforts.
If you’re able to pull up live ads you can click on them and look at the tracking URL to see what they are using. No click ID indicates they aren’t using auto-tagging. Click ID but no other parameters mean they aren’t integrating their paid ads with any other tools other than its own platforms. Some companies will use valuetrack parameters (on Google) and pass through all sorts of info like the campaign, keyword, match type. This is useful if they are bidding on brand terms because it will tell you if they are specifically targeting the brand or it’s Google targeting it via broad match from another keyword.
If you can get ad copy from and landing pages from live ads or competitor tools you can plug the copy into Chat GPT and run prompts to do sentiment, tone, and call to action analysis.
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If your competitor has verified their Google ads you can see everything they’re running via SEM
+ On their ad, tap More (three dots icon)
+ Click “See more ads this advertiser has shown using Google”[https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-Help/answer/12155764?hl=en-GB#customize-your-ads](https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-Help/answer/12155764?hl=en-GB#customize-your-ads
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Most of the tools (SEMRush, Spyfu…ect) people will say are garbage as the data is incorrect. 95% of time with their data is not even close to reality. Using this data to understand your competitors will be like throwing pasta at the wall. Doesn’t work.
If you are going to look at competitors. You need to define who your (direct and indirect) competitors are. What you and your boss define as a competitor may be different then what your customers define as a competitor. Pick your top 3 competitor and build out battle cards that can tell you:
1. The main keywords you want to rank for and which of these your competitors rank for
2. Look at their landing pages, if they build them, and how they talk about their brand
3. What ad platforms they are on and which campaign types they are using
4. What their pricing is like (if that matters in your space)
5. Can sometimes read customer reviews to understand who each competitor targetsMost good competitor research is not going to be found in a tool. Ad platforms are not giving out the real data you want to know about. Even Google’s keyword planner is averages of averages for data. You can get some interesting data in keyword planner and auction insights but you will need to go beyond that to build a good overview of what your competitors are doing.
P.S. If you have a great Google rep, they can pull what is an Industry Report for you that looks at your competitors to understand how you compare to your peer set. The data they give you is anonymous, so you won’t know the exact competitors but it can supplement what you build.
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To analyze competition in terms of PPC, start by researching keywords and ad copy used by competitors. Analyze their landing pages and check their targeting settings. Use tools like SEMRush or SpyFu to gather data on their PPC campaigns, and track their performance over time. Use this information to refine your own PPC strategy.
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If you haven’t tried yet, try using Google Ads Transparency Tool: [https://adstransparency.google.com/](https://adstransparency.google.com/)
You can find and follow all kinds of ads that your competitors are using over the days.
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Here’s an article I wrote a while back about how to do it. However, with the Google Transparency tool available for many advertisers I would also incorporate that for your creative analysis.
https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/how-to-perform-adwords-competitive-analysis/
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Typical rookie exercise – you will never know actual conversion rates CPA roas revenue etc. focus on what you can control. Traffic conversion rates offer pricing life time value etc
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