Key Takeaways:
- Auction insightsp
- SEMRush
- Meta Ads library
- Site performance
- Reviews
Ads auctions whether it’s Google, Meta, Linkedin or others all work on an auction basis.
This means that you are directly competing , every time you show an ad and try to win a customer.
More than that, on social platforms, you’re also competing with all of the organic content that the user is seeing and the ads which might not be in your specific auction but are fighting for the users attention.
Being aware of competitive analysis and seeing what your competitors are doing well and what potentially they aren’t is a good way to keep your finger on the pulse, outside of your own campaign stats.
There are a number of ways to analyse competitor activity both in the ads platform and outside of it.
We're going to explore the most useful competitor PPC analysis tools that we use in the ProfitSpring team, how we use them, and the key insights that we can take away as a result.
Auction insights
Competition directly affects your performance in paid search via Google or Microsoft Ads.
You and others are bidding for the same keywords and as such, bids, along with ad rank factors will determine where you show and how much you pay.
Analysing competitors here is the best place to start.
Use the auction insights report in a search or pMax campaign to directly see the other websites who are showing at the same time as you.
Impression share - This is how much you’ve shown vs how much you could have potentially shown. Budget, ROAS target and CPA target are factors here so don’t expect to ever see 100%. Anything 60% or higher means that you have very strong coverage. See how much you are showing as a percentage vs how much your competitors are.
Overlap rate - Another useful metric from this report is overlap rate. This is the percent that the other advertiser showed at the same time as you. Using this information you can conclude these are the most likely brands that someone will also be clicking and having in additional tabs when comparing where to enquire or buy.
Using both of these metrics, you can identify the strong players in the auction and look at their websites.
What are they doing well?
How does their messaging compare?
Is their pricing more competitive?
Is the user experience on their site more streamlined?
Make a list of what you think you need to change and implement to see your performance improve.
Your auction insights report will be different on your brand campaigns vs your non-brand campaigns (product or service terms).
You can see who is intentionally trying to take your brand traffic for an easy win of stealing sales.
It’s likely you will have different businesses advertising in your Microsoft ads report so check both channels for the most comprehensive overview and adjust your strategy accordingly.
SEMRush
Using the domain names from the auction insights report, marketers can see broader information in a 3rd party tool such as SEMRush.
We use this to see how long the competitor has been advertising, how strong their organic presence is and then to review the keywords that they rank for both organically and via ads.
This is useful information.
Many businesses see Google Ads as a ‘quick win’ so demonstrate smash and grab behaviour. They come into the auction and spend aggressively, then after 90 days drop out completely as they haven’t achieved a return on investment.
Being able to review this data is helpful to stay calm and consistent when this sort of competitor activity is in play.
Keeping steady and taking a short-term performance hit where CPCs increase is much better than being overly reactive and losing your performance baseline.
You may find new keyword ideas either from the organic keyword report or ads research, you can start to bid on those terms you have found if they are relevant.
Meta Ads library
On the paid social side, Meta ads library has given us a lot more transparency as we can see the ads that any business is running, should we want to.
We use the domains from the auction insights report as a starting point.
Not all businesses run paid social activity so if you find that’s the case, you may want to ramp up activity there.
If they are, what are they doing well?
What sort of creative are they running?
How much social proof is there on the ads?
What’s the feedback like?
You can take all of the learnings and bring them back into your business.
Searching is easy, you just need to know the name of the business on Meta.
Site performance
Using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom website speed test, you can see how a competitor’s site is performing from a technical perspective.
If they have all of their ducks in a row with a fast load time and minimal technical issues, it’s likely that they have a good user experience and strong conversion rate.
You can run a test on your own site to see how you compare to the key competitors identified.
This could highlight that you need to fast track development projects or site migrations. If you’re falling behind on the ads side, it can very often be the post-click experience which is the issue.
Reviews
A hugely valuable source of analysis for messaging, both in ad copy and for landing pages are reviews platforms.
From finding the domains in the auction insights report, you can see on their website which reviews provider they use.
Going through their reviews (both the positive and negative) will help you to identify themes of where the competitor is strong and where they are potentially underperforming.
As it’s common now for users to open multiple tabs when they have performed a search and directly compare options, these themes from reviews can be gold dust for pushing why you are the best choice.
Some of the challenges users have had with other suppliers can directly become your unique selling points - provided that it’s true of course.
Sometimes a competitor is just totally smashing it and whilst that can be frustrating, if all the data is there that they’re offering the best to the customer, at least you have credible data to come back to your own offering and start to make strategic changes to grow.
Summary
Effective PPC competitor analysis is something that's ongoing and essential for any PPC activity!
You need to know who you’re competing against and what they’re doing well and what they aren’t.
There’s so much data and information available online now that all you need is the domain and you can get as many insights as you’d need.
That being said, we always take the approach of have an awareness of competitor activity but don’t directly follow it.
The thing you will never know is the results and the return on investment.
They may well have a higher impression share, more reviews or a shinier website, you don’t know that they’re generating profit though so reacting and directly following suit isn’t advisable.
Stay customer-first. Focus on your customers, what you’re doing well and take constructive feedback to improve what you’re doing whilst keeping a subtle eye on the competition.
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