Advertising campaigns that specifically target a company’s competitors have been employed since the days of “Mad Men.” These days, such campaigns often involve bidding on competitor keywords in AdWords. The benefits of this tactic are that your competitors are attracting prospects who would be a good fit for your business, and in some cases they may already be solution aware. They may be ready to purchase your product or service.
Though it may seem underhanded, online advertising is nowhere near as bad as the television commercials that claim to be “10 times better than the competition.”
11 Tips for Highly Effective Google Ads Competitor Analysis
Now that you understand how valuable it can be to spy on the competition, let’s go over some tips to do it effectively.
The great news is that it is quite easy and very few people can not be successful. There is a lot of useful information available if you know where to look.
1. Search for your main keywords
The importance of finding the right keywords is a well-known fact in the SEO community.
The choice of keywords is crucial for the success of your campaign.
Many people choose the same keywords, which makes it difficult to stand out from the crowd. The most difficult part is locating profitable keywords that your competitors have not already exploited.
First, search for your core keywords to see who is appearing next to your ads.
This is just a starting point. Something to begin with. The goal is to see which businesses you are in competition with.
Which competitors are vying for the top ad spots?
What type of language is used in their advertising? Is it action-oriented? Aspirational or fear-driven?
Then you can dig deeper.
The ads should match the language used in the query. If their ad is not relevant to the user, you may have an opportunity to create a new ad that is more relevant and user-friendly.
What about their landing pages? Are they relevant to the search query? Relevance affects quality score. If your landing page is more relevant to a certain keyword than your competitor’s, then that is a keyword you should target.
You want to identify your competitors and see how much effort they are putting into each keyword.
If you create too many impressions that don’t generate clicks, your click-through rate will suffer.
After finding out who your target audience is, you can start using more specific techniques.
2. Get to know the landscape
It is not probable that all of your opponents are going after your key terms. If you don’t know who your competitors are, find out before you launch a campaign against them. Seriously, stop reading this blog post and do that instead. Make a list of your competitors by doing keyword research to get an idea of who your competition is.
3. Use auction insights
Did you know that you can use Google Ads to collect valuable information about your competitors’ campaigns?
Auction Insights can be very useful, especially when considering bids.
You can choose to see reports at the ad group, campaign, or even the individual keyword level.
Understanding your competitor’s ranking can give you important insights into why they are ranking where they are and what you can do to improve your own ranking. For example, a low Position-Above Rate compared to a competitor may be seen. This indicates that the advertiser is using a technique that the reader is not using. After you create your ad, you can look at it to see the words it uses and the page it leads to.
Auction Insights is a tool that allows you to see what the competition is doing in terms of their bidding strategy. You don’t need to use third-party tools to do this.
This information can help you get ahead of your competitors.
Powerful stuff.
4. Use SpyFu to find your competitors’ keywords
SpyFu is an excellent tool for investigating your competitor’s keywords. It speeds up the process and provides in-depth information about your competitor’s campaigns. It’s a dedicated competitor research tool. This means that you can save time by not having to read through information that is not important. This tool provides you with the insights you need immediately.
Here’s how it works.
To use this tool, enter the domain name of your competitor in the search box. It is important to take the first step earlier in this article. SpyFu allows you to see what your competitors are doing in order to get a better idea of how to improve your own marketing strategy.
The most useful feature you’ll see is the History feature. This is where you can see what tactics have been successful for your competitors. This source will provide you with information about how well their ads have done in the past, as well as what keywords have been most effective and profitable. This decreases the likelihood of your keywords being ineffective, as you will know ahead of time which ones to incorporate into your campaign.
This little feature can save you a lot of time and money!
Paid keywords are words or phrases that your competitors have paid to have associated with their website. These keywords can be helpful in determining what terms to target with your own marketing efforts. If you look more carefully at the reports, you will find a lot of useful information.
This is much easier than other solutions. That’s because there’s no manual keyword research.
You can get almost all the information you need to adjust your campaign very quickly. This is information that is extracted from actual campaigns that your competition has invested in.
5. Whatever you do, follow Google’s rules
One of the trickiest things about AdWords competitor targeting is Google’s policy around the use of Trademarks . The reason the KAYAK ad doesn’t mention Trivago anywhere in the copy is because, if you use someone else’s trademarked terms in your ad, it will probably be disapproved or, even worse, the trademark owner could report it.
There are two exceptions to the rule where Google does not allow businesses to use trademarks in their ad campaigns. The first exception is for what Google calls “information sites.” The second exception is for resellers using the brand name or terms to “describe products.” This allows businesses like department stores to advertise Nike shoes even though they’re not Nike. You are likely not exceptions if you are reading this.
Remember when your mom told you to be kind and to always think of others? The same thing applies in advertising. Even if there are no rules, it is still a good idea to be friendly with your competitors.
6. Protect your brand
Not all marketers are considerate. If you notice a trademarked term of yours appear in the search results, you can always file a complaint. And don’t forget to take a screenshot! If you want to protect your brand from copycats, you might want to trademark your branded term. This will give you exclusive rights to use the term in association with your products or services in the countries where you have trademarked it.
7. Defend your position
It is unlikely that you will be able to get Position One for your branded terms. If you have not been careful with your copy and landing page experience, and your bids are low, a competitor could outbid you. If you’re anxious about this happening, one option is to use the Target Outranking Share automated bid strategy.
You can choose to have your bids automatically increased when your keywords are being bid on by another advertiser in the AdWords auction. This means that you will have to pay more for the product.
If both you and your competitor are using Target Outranking Share on the same keyword, then the keyword will be split evenly between the two of you. ” If you increase your bid, Google will continue to increase your bid until you reach your maximum bid limit. The advert with the best bid and Quality Score will be positioned higher. In other words, be prepared to pay!
8. Get subtle with display
If your competitors are not yet bidding on your keywords and you are not comfortable starting a keyword battle, you can still target your competitors indirectly. Custom Intent Audiences were introduced last year and allow you to create custom audiences for Display campaigns based on a variety of factors, including keywords and URLs related to products and services this audience is actively researching.
Google has not said that this will target people who visit specific websites or that it will target key terms, but it would be worth testing a custom list that includes your competitor’s websites. This means that your competitors won’t be aware that you’ve added their URL to a list.
9. Watch your CPC – the downside to AdWords competitor targeting
One of the biggest disadvantages of targeting your competitors on Search is that it can make your costs-per-click go up because you will be in a bidding war. Competitors bidding on your branded terms will increase the competition for your keywords and drive up your cost.
Searching for your brand name is probably a way to get cheap clicks on your ads. Traffic from branded terms is more likely to result in a higher volume of traffic than competitor traffic, and at a lower cost. If your branded keywords match the branded experience on your ad and landing page, you’re more likely to have a higher ad relevance and landing page experience (and thus a higher ad rank and Quality Score). If you have been noticing that the cost of your branded search terms has been increasing, it is probably because your competitors are targeting you. If your goal is to grow your business, then go ahead and target!
10. Consider a truce
You may have just found out that your competition has been doing better than you. Or, maybe you started a battle on the first page without knowing it and are hoping this blog post has some advice to help you lower your CPC. There may be an option that could help you end your situation, but it is not guaranteed to work.
If you are not already friends with the competitor, it would be beneficial to try and reach a agreement that would stop either of you from placing a bid on the other person’s branded terms. If you feel unhappy about your CPC increasing, it’s likely that other people are feeling the same way.
11. Compare the competition with SEMrush
If you want to get more data, SEMrush is the way to go.
The collection of tools provides valuable insights into your competition. Amongst dozens of features you get:
- Learn about new organic competitors
- Distinguish the keywords that have worked for them
- Uncover the keywords that didn’t
And more…
The detail analysis offered covers most, if not all, aspects of the competitor’s keyword usage. You can keep up to date with the organic search results for any keywords you are interested in.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Another extremely useful feature is the Topic Research button. If you want to create new content for your website, this is a great time saver.
SEMrush provides content that your competitors have already created on a given topic after you enter a search term.
It helps you understand the questions your customers want answers to. This makes it easy to determine what content to write in order to increase traffic.
To find out what your competitors are doing, you would normally have to go through their content yourself. The Topic Research tool eliminates the need to do this manually.
Conclusion
In summary, the tools you saw here can help you:
- Identify your competitors
- Learn about their previous campaigns and results
- Get all the information you need on the keywords that they’re using
- Use the data you collect to create a superior strategy
You have more than enough ability to stay in the game and become one of the best players.
Tools that are combined can help you be successful and remain successful.
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