how much are my competitors spending on ppc advertising
Have you been asking yourself. . .”How much are my competitors spending on PPC advertising?” While it may be hard to get an exact answer about that unless you ask your competitor directly, there are some things you can find out about the strategies of your competitors.
It’s easy to get lost in all the technical aspects of running a ppc campaign. You spend your time surrounded by keywords, keywords and more keywords in addition to other data. As you are monitoring your bids, positions, budget, and ad copy, you can easily lose track of the bigger picture and changes that are going on within the industry or among the competition.
There are three steps that you can take to consistently keep an eye on your competitors and keep up with what’s going on in the industry.
Identify what the most important keywords are for all of your major competitors. Pay attention to the average position that your competitors rank for under these keywords, some common elements they have in their ad versions and what common elements they have on their landing pages.
Take note if huge corporations with who have lots more money to spend on PPC don’t appear on the top spot or even in the first page. There must be a reason for this.
You can really get a lot of information by observing what goes on in the marketplace, but you do have to take the time to dig in and analyze it. For instance, if everyone in a particular sector is offering problem-solving e-books, free trials, and demos, you should probably have some sort of interactive media on your site because your target audience is probably more likely to convert to these types of actions.
Take regular screen shots of the top 10 or 20 ads for your major keywords.
The biggest reason for doing this is to identify the newer competitors that are moving in to the area. By doing this, you may see that a competitor has copied one of your ad versions very closely, causing your click-through ratio to go down the tubes. This way, you can also track when competitors are scheduling their ads and when they change ad position.
Use the Google free keyword based search tool on your competitors pages. Type in your competitor url and Google will automatically inform you of appropriate search phrases, content, and keywords. You may get ideas for additional keywords, or see areas where your competitors have excellent content. This also keeps you familiar with competitor’s websites as they add or change content.
Certain tools or memberships sites like Spyfu.com allow you to do some detailed analysis when it comes to your competition. These solutions are not exactly the answer to your question of “How much are my competitors spending on PPC advertising?”. . .but they can help you beat out your competition.
