Why Search Campaign Competitor Assessment Matters
One of the first steps we take before designing search ad campaigns is to conduct a paid search competitor assessment:
- Identify the significant direct and indirect competitors.
- Become familiar with their products, services, and positioning in the market.
- Review advertising history, ad copy, and ad spend.
- Identify significant competitive trends.
This provides us with an understanding of how the campaign will be positioned in the competitive environment. We are not out to copy or mimic competitors. We need to understand how your product is positioned and your unique selling proposition, including the most significant benefits, features, and differentiation.
We use tools to identify average click costs and conversion rates in the sector, vertical, and geo-target where the campaign will run, along with other key performance indicators, or KPIs. While spidering competitor websites, we harvest keywords and gain a level of understanding that is uniquely useful in structuring and configuring a search campaign.
Some search campaigns need to rely upon keywords that either overlap with other business sectors, have too low of click volume to serve in a campaign, or have clicks that are prohibitively expensive versus the ad spend available. These issues are uncovered during competitor analysis and keyword discovery. Keyword overlap influences how we structure new search campaigns and informs broader PPC campaign management.
Competitor Awareness Is Essential for Campaign Designers
What we learn in competitive analysis informs our strategy in developing your campaign. It is also important when optimizing campaigns. If a PPC manager does not have a baseline product marketing understanding of the environment, the campaign is unlikely to benefit from refined adjustments informed by marketing considerations.
Our competitor analysis process equips us with the information needed to begin the keyword discovery process. Keyword discovery helps with many aspects of our process, including identifying, expanding, and prioritizing the most important keywords.
For related campaign strategy topics, see our articles on developing high-performance search ad campaigns, ad copy for search campaigns, and adaptive optimization.
A quick overview of the topics covered in this article.
