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What are Your Competitors Doing?

By Brian Basch

When you are managing a PPC advertising campaign, knowing your competition is very important. It can help give you an idea of what keywords are hot and how you should bid. Also, it will help you understand what works and what doesn't and plan accordingly.

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.

Next, you can look into how your competitors are bidding on popular keywords. With this knowledge you will be able to make a competitive bid yourself on the same keywords and allow you to receive good positioning for your own ad. However, it is important to remember to bid within your own budget, no matter how lucrative a keyword may seem. Remember that you can always use a variant of popular keywords. These variants are usually less expensive and can often bring in decent 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.

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