The world of online advertising is growing fiercer with every passing day. Of course, making sure that you connect with your audience and create ad campaigns that speak to their needs is paramount, but it’s not enough. If you want to dominate your market, then you need to pay close attention to what your competitors are doing. Learn from them, and outsmart them. Therefore, a big part of your marketing strategy should focus on monitoring your adversaries and following their moves closely.
The question you may ask yourself now is how you can spy on your competitors and gain an advantage? How can you get your ads at the top of search engine results without draining your budget?
Let’s take a look at the tools you can use to learn more about your market, what keywords your competitors are using and what their quality score is.
Hopefully, this article will not only inspire you to broaden your strategy but can also boost your average position in Google search and drive down your cost per click.
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Who Are Your Top Competitors?
If you want your Google AdWords campaigns to succeed, then you need to start by understanding who your competitors are and the strategy they are using to reach out to your audience. Log into your account, and you will find a detailed report on how your ads are performing compared to other campaigns that use the same keywords. Some of the data that you will find there includes:
- Impression Share: This metric shows you the number of impressions
received from the ads that target a specific search term. - Average Position of the ad
- Overlap Rate: This data refers to how many times your
ad was shown together with your competitors’ - Position Above Rate: This metric shows how many times your
competitors’ ad ranked above yours. Of course, you want to to keep this number - Top of Page Rate: A metric that you should pay special attention to is the frequency with which your page appears at the top of paid search
All these indicators can help you understand how your campaign is performing, if your keywords are relevant to your audience’s needs, if your ad text is catchy enough, and if there are any weak spots in your competitors’ campaign that you could leverage. If you manage to notice a pattern, then you could take action quickly and increase your Quality Score.
Why Is It Important to Spy on Your Competitors?
If you know what keywords your competitors are bidding on and how they perform, then you have a better chance at improving your AdWords campaign management. For instance, you can remove the search terms that only drive up your CTC without driving qualified leads to your landing pages. Or, if you could draw inspiration from your competitors’ strategy and target some of the keywords that generate a high ROI.
Of course, you shouldn’t target the same search terms as other businesses in your niche blindly. Google AdWords is a complex tool that requires both thorough research as well as a spark of creativity. The search engine giant looks not only at the relevancy of your keywords but also at the ad copy, location, your website’s design, and numerous other factors to determine which ad to display first. Knowing what your competitors are doing can enable you to take a closer look at your strategy and try to see if there are any marketing possibilities that you may have overlooked.
Although AdWords is an excellent way to gather plenty of data on what other businesses in your niche are doing, other tools can be just as useful. With iSpionage, for instance, you can see if there are any valuable keywords that you might have missed and that your competitors are leveraging. The tool also allows you to filter out only the keywords that other advertisers are using and rank them, so you get a selection of the best.
How to Adjust Your Budget by Looking at the Competition
In addition to determining the keywords your competitors are using and how you can use the information to improve your AdWords campaign, spying on other businesses in your niche can also help you establish how much you should invest so that you generate a high ROI.
To make things a bit easier, you can use Similarweb, a tool that shows you how much of a page’s traffic comes from organic search and how much from paid search. Having a glimpse at how much financial effort your competitors are putting into ranking better than you and other similar businesses will help you twitch your budget or look for alternative traffic sources.
A Short Recap on How to Research Your Competitors
Trying to create an effective campaign and come up with creative ideas that can drive leads to your landing pages isn’t a walk in the park. Learning what the businesses that outrank you are doing can give you a significant advantage in the race. Take a look at the keywords your competitors are using and try to determine if there are any options that they might have overlooked. Look at their traffic sources and see what you can do to improve yours. Find
out how you can minimise your CPC while generating the best results.
Conclusion
It’s not easy, but try not to leave any rock unturned in your attempt to create a profitable ad strategy. The more you know about your competition, the faster you will be able to react with a proper response and convince the search engines that you are the best option for your audience.
In case you get stuck while researching or want to know an experienced take on the metrics, ask the experts at Australian Internet Advertising about it. We’re here to guide you every step of the way.
