Getting the maximum benefit from your medical practice pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns involves ongoing improvements. One powerful way to enhance digital advertising strategy is sometimes forgotten—paid search competitor analysis. There is much to learn from what your competitors are doing, and it’s okay to spy on their activity. In this blog, you will learn the basics of how to inform your ad campaign strategy based on competitor analysis.
The Role of Competitor Analysis in PPC Campaigns
Competitor analysis takes into account your competitors’ ads, landing pages, and ad campaigns to glean helpful insights. The data can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s campaigns, which keywords and ad copies they are targeting, and how much of the market share they are capturing. What you learn can help you refine your own PPC strategy, bid more effectively, and create better ad campaigns.
How to Perform a Competitor Paid Search Analysis in 5 Steps
By studying your competitors, you can find out what is working in your industry and identify new opportunities, which will help you adjust your marketing plans for better results. These steps outline the core components of a paid search competitor analysis.
Step 1: Identify and Analyze Your PPC Competitors
Before you skip this step, be aware that the competitors you are currently aware of in the physical world won’t necessarily match those in the digital world. This step will reveal who competes with you for engagement in a Google search. Your top competitors online may look a bit different from who you consider to be your biggest competitors.
Tools like SEMRush and Google Ads Auction Insights will identify your primary competitors in the PPC space. Once you have a list of competitors, you can look into their PPC strategies to understand their approach and gain insights for your own campaigns.
Step 2: Assess Keywords and Competitor’s Ad Spend
Evaluate your competitors’ keyword strategies and ad spend to determine which keywords are being targeted and the budget allocation. This analysis can help you identify valuable keywords to pursue and areas where you can allocate your budget for an optimal return on investment.
Step 3: Evaluating Competitors’ Paid Ad Copy and Landing Pages
Take a closer look at your competitors’ websites, ad copy, and landing pages. Analyze their messaging tone, quality, and effectiveness. By understanding what works well for your competitors, you can refine your messaging to better connect with your target audience. The key is to emulate the strategies but not copy your competitors. Brands that remain true to their brand voice are the strongest.
Step 4: Budget Analysis in PPC Competitor Research
Monitor and compare your competitors’ budgets and spending patterns. This analysis can reveal seasonal differences and trends that may better direct your own budgeting decisions. Adjusting your budget based on your competitors’ strategies can help you adjust spending for better cost control.
Step 5: Key Metrics for Paid Search Competitor Analysis
Pay attention to key metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), cost per acquisition (CPA), and conversion rate. Such key performance indicators (KPIs) help measure the success of your PPC campaigns and provide insights into the effectiveness of your strategies. Use these metrics to evaluate your performance and make data-driven decisions for continuous improvement.
Strategic Implications of PPC Competitor Analysis
The ultimate goal of competitor analysis is to find opportunities to optimize your paid search strategy. Here are some strategic implications of PPC competitor analysis:
- Ad spending optimization – By analyzing your competitors’ ad spend, you can identify opportunities to optimize your own budget allocation. For example, if you find that a competitor is consistently outperforming you despite similar spending levels, you may need to adjust your budget to stay competitive.
- Keyword targeting – Analyzing competitors’ keyword strategies helps you identify valuable keywords that you may have overlooked. It allows you to refine your keyword targeting and expand your reach.
- Content creation and messaging – Analyzing competitors’ ad copy and landing pages helps you understand what your target audience is most likely to engage with.
- Identifying industry trends – Regular competitor analysis can inform you about industry trends and shifts in consumer behavior.
- Benchmarking performance – Comparing your key metrics (CTR, CPA, and conversion rate) against your competitors’ provides insights into how well your campaigns are performing in your market .
- Staying ahead of the competition – Regular check-ins enable you to stay ahead of your competitors by identifying new tactics, innovative approaches, and potential areas for improvement to ultimately get your share of the market.
Essential PPC Competitor Analysis Tools
Access to data resources is what makes paid search competitor analysis possible. Tools that can provide these data insights are listed below:
- SEMRush – SEMRush offers a range of features for competitor analysis. It allows you to identify your competitors, analyze their PPC strategies, and assess their keyword rankings. You can also track their ad copies, landing pages, and budget allocation. SEMRush provides valuable data on organic and paid search performance, backlinks, and more.
- Google Ads Auction Insights – Google Ads Auction Insights is a built-in tool within Google Ads that provides insights into your auction performance compared to your competitors. It shows metrics like impression share, outranking share, PPC competition, average position, overlap rate, and top of page rate.
- SpyFu – SpyFu allows you to spy on your competitors’ PPC campaigns and uncover their strategies. It provides data on their keywords, ad copies, ad spend, and estimated clicks. You can also track changes in their campaigns over time.
- AdGooroo – AdGooroo is a competitive intelligence tool that provides insights into your competitors’ PPC campaigns. It offers detailed information on their ad creatives, keywords, ad spend, and performance metrics.
Note: While these tools can be helpful, it’s important to explore and evaluate them based on your specific needs and budget. There may be other tools available in the market that offer similar functionalities and better suit your requirements.
Summary: Paid Search Competitor Analysis
By continuously monitoring and analyzing your competitors, you can adapt your strategies to achieve better results in the ever-evolving digital landscape. One of the ways to better direct your digital marketing is to conduct a routine paid search competitor analysis. Five basic steps to help you structure your competitor analysis include:
- Identify your PPC competitors – Who you assume to be your competitors may not be the same as your online marketing competitors. Find out who is competing with you for paid search reach by using top digital marketing tools.
- Assess keywords and ad spend – Knowing what keywords your competitors use and what they spend to get results can help you discern strategy adjustments.
- Evaluate competitors’ ad copy and landing pages – Sometimes clues for what works best with your target audience can be found in the ad copy and landing pages of top-performing competitors. Use these insights to improve your messaging but be careful not to “parrot” their ad copy or landing page content.
- Budget analysis – Are your top competitors’ spending patterns in cycles? By seeing patterns of increase and decrease in ad spending, you may find where it makes sense to adjust your own spending.
- Gather the KPIs of your competitors – Sometimes using your competitors to benchmark performance gives you a helpful perspective on where your numbers are and where they could be.These five steps serve as a template for building your own competitor analysis system. However, many medical practices are without the tools and resources needed to best track competitor activity online. Healthcare PPC experts can do this work for you so that you can instead focus on the more critical aspects of healthcare operations.
Gain Valuable Insights with Paid Search Competitor Analysis from iHealthSpot
Paid search advertising provides a direct and efficient means to attract and engage patients who need your services. To respond to a market that is becoming increasingly competitive and digitally driven, we provide a robust digital advertising strategy that includes competitor analysis. Our team of PPC experts has access to all the tools needed to carry out our robust paid search strategy.
iHealthSpot is committed to digital marketing performance. Our agency is a Google Certified Partner, with experts who use strategic data insights to create impactful campaigns that maximize ROI. Contact us to learn more.
