Using competitive intelligence technology for keyword research, competitor analysis, and daily monitoring is a huge time saver because manually attempting to evaluate competitors, monitor keywords, and keep up with ads can be very time consuming. Competitive PPC intelligence tools save you time, but sometimes they leave you wondering, “How accurate is the data?”
Here’s the answer. The data for competitor keywords and ads is usually pretty good, but most tools fail when trying to accurately estimate traffic and the monthly PPC spend. This is due to Google being an auction platform which makes it impossible to get a 100% accurate estimate.
With that in mind, we’re excited to announce budget calibration for iSpionage which enables you to adjust the spend to fit what you know is happening on your site or in your industry. Once you calibrate the PPC spend on your account, the setting will be saved so future competitor analysis will match the adjustments you’ve made.
Here’s what it looks like:
In the example below, we see the estimated budget for eHeathInsurance.com’s PPC spend for April is $1.5M. This ends up being $1M more than the estimated spend for October which is $439,153.
So how do you use this data to make the estimated monthly spend more accurate?
Well, if you’re managing this AdWords account and know it’s spending over $3,000,000 per month, you can adjust the lever next to PPC Budget to match the actual spend. Then, whenever you research your competitors, you’ll be able to see who has the most amount of overlap with your keywords and you’ll have more confidence that you know approximately how much you’re competition is spending on AdWords.
You can also click a competitor’s URL to quickly evaluate their keywords and ads. We’re going to click on HealthCare.com since they have a similar budget to eHealthInsurance.com. As you can see below, the budget calibration from earlier stayed the same as the previous 8X adjustment.
When you click through even more, you can see the ads, keywords, landing pages and recent social media mentions for HealthCare.com. This is all extremely valuable data for PPC advertisers looking to get a leg up on their competition. And now it comes with even more accurate PPC budget estimates that you can adjust based on your knowledge of the industry you’re in.
Go ahead, give the budget adjuster a try, and let us know what you think. The goal of this new feature is to improve our algorithm so you have more accurate competitive data in order to make better decisions.
