Competitor analysis is an important tactic that can help to reveal valuable insights and improve your ads’ performance.
By identifying competitors and researching their ads and landing pages, digital marketers can identify untapped opportunities. This is true for Ecommerce brands, as well as service-based ones.
In this article, I’ll show you the basics of this tactic and bring some examples.
Why You Should Do Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis plays a central role in brand strategy. Brand managers map their competitors based on price, location, offering, target audience, and value propositions.
This practice helps the brand to better define and position itself against the competition and own a specific, hopefully, ‘free’ market niche.
For example, different grocery chains position their brands specifically to target young vs. more mature audiences, value-for-money shoppers vs. shoppers of well-known brands, and general shoppers vs. organic food lovers.
A brand’s positioning will affect its look and feel (logo, font, color, creative style), messaging (e.g. discount promotions vs. a wide offering), price strategy, and more.
All this is to differentiate itself from the rest and create the best match between the brand and its target customers.
Identifying PPC Competitors
Usually, the brand manager briefs PPC marketers on competitors when they take on a new project. But new competitors may appear now and then.
Here are a few ways to identify competitors:
- Search Google for your main keywords – you’ll see competitor ads (Search, Shopping) as well as organic results
- In Google Ads, under Insights & Reports > Auction Insights – here you’ll see what other domains are bidding against you on your keywords
- Use Similar Web to identify websites that are similar to yours (they also have a great Chrome extension)
- Tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or SERanking – marketers can use any of these popular tools to discover competitors on a domain or a keyword level
Here’s an example: Simply by typing in ‘alo yoga’ in Google, I already got some ideas for competitors:
Revealing Competitors’ PPC Tactics
Once you’ve identified your main competitors, you can research the following:
- What keywords they’re bidding on
- Their text ads – in what style do they write? What are their headlines? What attributes and USPs do they highlight?
- What do their landing pages look like?
- Do they run any promotions or offers?
- What assets do they use on display banners and YouTube?
Identify Competitor Keywords
To identify keywords your competitors bid on, you can use SEMRush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu. These tools are great for identifying keyword gaps and revealing opportunities. They also include estimates of traffic volumes and CPCs which can be useful for prioritizing your actions.
Below is an example from SEMRush, showing the top paid keywords for Mary Ruth’s vitamins.
Competitor Ads Analysis
There are several tools you can use for that purpose. Some tools are free, while others are paid.
Among the free tools, marketers can use the Google Ads Transparency Center. This tool was only launched in 2023, but it’s great for Google Ads competitor analysis. Paid Search marketers can use it to get an overview of all Google Ads run by competitors.
Google Ads managers only have to type in the domain, timeframe, and relevant geography, and they’ll get all the ads run by the competitor – text, display, and video.
Here’s what it looks like when you search for Alo Yoga’s Google Ads:
Similarly, advertisers can use Facebook’s Ad Library to spy on the competition. Even if your main focus is Search and Shopping ads on Google, social ads can be great for taking notes of a competitor brand’s main USPs and tone of voice.
Maybe you’d want to include these benefits in your ads too, or maybe you’d actually want to differentiate your ads and offer a benefit others missed out on.
If you’re also running display and YouTube ads in your account, this can also be a source of inspiration for new creative tests.
Here’s an example of Hello Fresh’s Meta ads, as shown in Facebook’s Ad Library:
Spy On Competitor Landing Pages
Go on your competitor’s website and landing pages, and study them. Then implement your insights into your landing pages (UX/UI, USPs, keywords, etc.).
Here are a few examples:
- How’s their pricing compared to yours? More expensive, cheaper, maybe the same? Do they show full-priced items, or use heavy discounts often?
- How do they describe the product or service? What USPs do they highlight?
- Do they use urgency, e.g. ‘only 2 left’, or ‘sale ends tomorrow’?
- How is their UX/UI? What text do they use on the add-to-cart button?
- Do they use social proof – reviews, stars, UGC (User-Generated Content)?
- Do they have any newsletter sign-up offer, e.g. 10% off your first order?
Use these learnings to inspire your next tests on Google Ads, other platforms, and your landing pages.
Note: Whenever you analyze a website’s UX/UI, don’t forget to look at the mobile version too. Most online traffic today comes from mobile devices, so online marketers need to think ‘mobile first’.
Conclusion
Analyzing your brand’s competitors is essential to optimize and grow your PPC ads over time.
There are many tools to collect valuable insights and reveal growth opportunities.
PPC marketers should implement these insights in their ad campaigns, either directly (e.g. add new keywords) or in the form of tests.
Further Reading:
- Performance Max Best Practices
- 13 Ways To Optimize Google Shopping Ads (In A Profitable Way)
- How to Create a Google Ads Search Campaign for Ecommerce: A Step-by-step Guide
- Google Ads vs. Facebook Ads For Ecommerce: Which Advertising Platform Is Better For Your Business?
- Google Ads Bidding Strategies: The Ultimate Guide (And Which One To Use)
- How to Craft a Powerful Value Proposition on Google Display Ads
