It goes without saying that part of the success advertisers may get from PPC depends on how well they analyse their competition and the market their PPC campaign is entering into. If you do not analyse your market, you will struggle to match them in terms of CPC, CTR and will ultimately have a poor and inefficient campaign running. Therefore, here are some points to take into consideration to help advertisers of pay per click advertising analyse the competition they are facing in PPC.

 

#1 Is Your PPC Campaign Set Up Right?

The first step before you analyse the competition is to make sure your campaign is done right. For most advertisers, they will simply create a campaign without having a plan set out before. However, there are a lot of similarities between PPC campaigns and a business. Therefore, it can be seen that PPC campaigns should have a business plan laid out much like a business does. This will help clear elements of the campaign up before creating it such as objectives, aims and targets, what exactly you are trying to advertise and why, USPs you may have, the life span of your campaign and the budget you are working with. Once you have clarified these points, only then can you look at the competition for analysis.
 
 

#2 Analyse Competition in a Spreadsheet

In a recent article, I go into detail about some extra points on how to analyse PPC competitors. However, I did not mention how to take that information and store it. I tend to find it is extremely useful to analyse competition in a spreadsheet so you can see and compare competitor’s campaigns to your own in an easy-to-read format. This will involve using headings of a table such as:

• Competitor’s name
• Ranking
• Estimated CPC
• Info of search advert
• Ad extensions used
• Number of call to actions
• Landing page used

And so on. From this, you can do the same to your own campaign and then compare and contrast to find out what are the weak points and strengths of your PPC campaign as compared to the competition’s main attributes.
 
 

#3 Competition Spreadsheet is a Live Document

Once you have analysed the competition in a spreadsheet, the work does not end there like most advertisers might think. Competition analysis in PPC is a live process – by this, it is a document which should be constantly updated. Why would the competition spreadsheet need constantly updating?

• Competitor’s PPC campaigns will change over time – the spreadsheet needs to reflect this as this may produce new pros and cons to your campaign. Therefore, it might encourage you to change something about your campaign to increase the performance of it.
• Encourage you to update your campaign – If you get into the habit of updating the spreadsheet, it will also help you to get into the habit to make tweaks to your campaign, on a regular basis, too. As we all know, a PPC campaign is not just created and left to run for ‘X’ amount of time. Things change and factors will affect how successful the campaign is: hence, why campaigns need to also be updated regularly too.