Knowing The Competition

When managing your PPC advertising campaigns it is very important to know what your competition is doing. This will give you an indication as to what keywords are being used and how your competition is bidding. You can also build on your competitors’ successes and learn from their mistakes.

You can learn from competitors in a number of ways. Firstly you can check on the keywords they are using. There are software programs that can tell you this. If you run a number of campaigns, or are selling a popular item, you may want to invest in this software. Once you are aware of the keywords competitors are using you can try them out and add variants.

Secondly you can also see what sort of bids they are doing on important keywords. Once you know this you can have an idea of what to bid on these keywords yourself in order to get a good position for your ad. It is important to bid competitively but not to indulge in price wars. You should always bid within your budget. If you are getting out bid on certain keywords use variants that are not so expensive but will still bring in sales.

Examining your competitors’ ads can be quite an eye opener. Google ads allow you to do this with their preview tool. You can also take a look at the little Google ads on the search pages that your main keywords bring up. Areas to look for are; headlines, benefits and of course the call for action. You should never copy and paste your competitors’ ads, just use them to get ideas and a feel of how to create a pulling ad. When you look through a number of them through the eyes of a buyer you will soon see which ones would make you buy the product.

The final thing I recommend looking at is the competition’s landing pages. By following the links in their ads, you can get a good sense of quality layouts and presentation as well as the benefits and bonuses being offered.

Looking at what your competitors are doing with their campaigns should help to inspire you with ideas for your own. With these new ideas combined with your own original ideas in your arsenal, your PPC advertising campaign can be reborn as a much stronger incarnation of itself. A successful manager knows the importance of keeping up with their competitors and making improvements accordingly. No matter how great your campaign is, there is always room for improvement.

For those of you who may be feeling a bit skeptical about this, thinking it is a bit underhanded, I give you this. If you think your competition isn’t out there doing the same things we discussed here, you are wrong. Anyone who runs a successful PPC advertising campaign knows the importance of keeping tabs on the competition. There is no better way to learn a campaigns strengths and weaknesses.