Outsmart the competition: How to master competitive PPC analysis

Enter competitive PPC analysis: a powerful technique that unlocks the secrets behind real-world campaigns. By analyzing your competitors' PPC efforts, you can uncover missed opportunities, identify gaps in your own strategy, and ultimately transform your campaigns for maximum success.

What is competitive PPC analysis?

Competitive PPC analysis involves examining and understanding how your competitors are using paid advertising. It's essentially a chance to learn from their strategies and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your own PPC campaigns. This analysis usually focuses on the following key areas:

• Ads: Analyzing headlines, descriptions, and calls to action to see what messaging works well.
• Keywords: Discovering the keywords competitors are using to attract customers, giving you ideas to expand your own keyword list.
• Bids: While you won't see exact figures, you can get insights into how aggressively they're bidding on keywords.
• Landing pages: Seeing where people land after clicking a competitor's ad. This can help you design landing pages that are more likely to convert visitors into customers.

Why is competitive PPC analysis important?

By learning from your competitors' PPC efforts, you can make data-driven decisions to improve your own campaigns and gain a competitive edge. Here are some other benefits of conducting a competitive PPC analysis:

Craft stronger ads and landing pages

By analyzing your competitors' ads and landing pages, you can see what kind of messaging resonates with your target audience. You can learn from their successes (compelling headlines, clear calls to action) and avoid their mistakes (confusing landing pages, weak offers). This can help you create more effective ads that grab attention and landing pages that convert.

For instance, if you sell eco-friendly cleaning products, your analysis might reveal that your competitors’ ads are focusing on generic features like “no plastics” or “natural materials” but not on benefit-driven messaging like “reduce your footprint”.

Improve your PPC strategies

By keeping an eye on your competitors' strategies, you can see what tactics are trending and what's working well in your industry. This helps you stay informed about the latest PPC trends and allows you to adapt your campaigns accordingly.

For example, imagine you run an eCommerce store selling athletic wear. Through competitor analysis, you notice several competitors are having success with video ads showcasing their clothing in action. You might then decide to incorporate video ads into your strategy.

Discover hidden opportunities

Competitor analysis can reveal gaps in the market. Maybe your competitors are focusing on certain keywords but neglecting others. Maybe their landing pages lack a key element that could boost conversions. This gives you the chance to identify these opportunities and tailor your campaigns to fill them.

Let's say you sell fitness watches and you discover that your competitors are all focusing on keywords like "fitness watch" and "running watch", but not "heart rate monitor watch." As your competitor analysis reveals a gap in the market for this long-tail keyword, you can include it in your campaigns and reach a new audience.

Top 5 PPC competitor analysis tools for eCommerce brands

It’s important to equip yourself with the right tools before tackling competitor analysis. Here are 5 tools that every advertiser should use:

Tools for paid search competitor analysis

1. Google Ads Auction Insights

The auction insights report lets you compare your performance with other competitors who are participating in the same Google Ads auctions as you are. This report provides six different statistics: impression share, overlap rate, outranking share, position above rate, top of page rate, and absolute top of the page rate. Here’s a brief description of the most important insights:

• Impression share and top of page rate: Impression share tells you how often your ads are shown, while Top of Page Rate indicates how often they appear at the most prominent spots on the page - in comparison with your competitors.
• Overlap rate: This shows which competitors you regularly encounter in the same auctions. A high overlap rate suggests that you're competing for the same audience.
• Position above rate: This lets you see how often a competitor's ad outranks yours in shared auctions. This might indicate a difference in bidding strategies or the quality score of your ads.

2. Google’s Keyword Planner

Although this free tool by Google is not specifically designed for competitor analysis, it can still be a valuable asset. For instance, if you enter a competitor's website URL in Keyword Planner, you can see a list of relevant keywords they might be targeting. This helps you to:

• Identify potential gaps: Keyword Planner helps you discover keywords that you or your competitors might be missing. You can also filter by competition level, allowing you to uncover keywords with lower competition.
• Refine your targeting: You can also discover long-tail keywords with high intent that your competitors might not be focusing on, allowing you to attract users further along in the buying journey.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs goes beyond basic keyword research, providing a powerful suite of features for in-depth PPC competitor analysis, such as:

• Paid keywords report: This report allows you to enter a competitor’s URL and see what keywords they’re bidding on, the estimated cost-per-click (CPC) per keyword, and which keywords send the most paid traffic to your competitor’s website.
• Ad position history: This chart allows you to see your competitors ad copy, giving you inspiration for headlines, unique selling propositions, and calls to action.
• Low-cost keywords: Ahrefs paid keywords report also enables you to find relevant, low-cost keywords to add to your PPC campaigns.

4. Google Ads Transparency Center

This free resource allows advertisers to search for specific businesses or browse by category to see the Search and Display ads they're running across Google Search, YouTube, and Discover, allowing you to:

• Explore ad details: Dive deeper into individual ads to see the format (text, image, video), timeframe it ran, and estimated impressions.
• Learn targeting strategies: Discover the criteria advertisers use to reach their target audience, including demographics and interests.

Tools for paid social competitor analysis

5. Meta Ad Library

The Meta Ad Library is a free tool that lets you see the ads other businesses are running on Facebook and Instagram. It's a goldmine of information for advertisers, helping you stay on top of industry trends and get inspiration for your own campaigns. This comprehensive tool allows you to:

• See all of your competitors’ ads: Simply enter your competitor’s brand name in the search bar and get a list of all the ads they’re running.
• Filter by location: Allowing you to get insights on your competitor’s global marketing strategy, such as the specific messaging or creative they use per country.
• Get specific ad details: Besides an ad’s start date and end date (if applicable), you can also see the different variations of a particular ad.
• Understand targeting strategies: You can see details about who sees each ad, such as age ranges, gender, and how many people they might reach.

How to conduct a competitive PPC analysis in 5 steps

Staying ahead in the PPC game requires knowing your competition. A competitive PPC analysis helps you understand their strategies, identify potential gaps, and ultimately, refine your own campaigns for maximum impact. Here's a breakdown of the process in five easy-to-follow steps:

1. Identify your main PPC competitors

It might sound obvious, but it’s important to know who you’re up against. Start by brainstorming your main competitors. Then, take your top keywords and search them on Google to see which companies consistently appear in the results. Finally, use tools like Ahrefs or Google Ads Auction Insights to reveal the full list of competitors targeting the same keywords as you.

2. Analyze competitor ads

Now that you’ve identified your main competitors, the next step is to analyze the ads they’re running. What keywords are they bidding on? What messaging are they using in their ad copy? What offers are they promoting? If you notice “free shipping” or “free returns” featuring prominently, it could suggest that these offers are resonating with the target audience.

3. Assess competitor keyword strategy

Understanding your competitors' keyword strategy is crucial. Look at the types of keywords they're targeting (broad, long-tail, etc.) and analyze their keyword mix. Make sure to note down any relevant keywords that you’ve not included in your own campaigns. Once you have a list of new keywords, start to test them in your campaigns and regularly monitor the results.

4. Review competitor landing pages

The next step is examining how competitors craft their landing pages for conversions. By dissecting their landing page strategies, you can identify best practices to implement on your own landing pages. Here are few things to keep an eye on:

• Headline and value proposition
• Visuals and overall layout
• Call to action
• Social proof (customer testimonials or reviews)

5. Monitor bidding strategies and estimated costs

Google Ads' Auction Insights can reveal if competitors consistently appear in the top ad slots. If you’re constantly being outranked, it could suggest that your bids are too low, or that your ad quality score is low. Ahrefs can take your analysis one step further by providing you with estimated cost-per-click per keyword. This data can be used to inform your bidding strategies going forward.