The poor man's adwords competition research

Since it isn't under everyones power to spend 2000 bucks a month to monitor 500 keywords, I offer this simple advice:

1. Pick the keywords you want through your usual process
2. Run them all through wordtracker
3. Pick the keywords you think you can kick some butt in. This strategey is different depending on what you are selling of course. People doing affiliate marketing have to find cheap clicks at any cost, and these days that means moving to keywords with a lot less search volume. But if your business can handle it and you need more clicks you are going to pick the terms that get a decent amount of traffic AND ARE HIGHLY TARGETED for you.
4. Clear your cookies and go hit Google on a few of these key search terms and look who is out there. Refresh your browser a couple times and you will see who is testing different copy because you will see the ads change before your eyes when you do this.
5. Take any notes you need to, copy and paste the ads somewhere if you want, but then clear your cookies again and come back in 2-3 hours and do the same thing. Each session you can hit a few of the key search terms you want to compete in
6. Sometimes after even just a few days of doing this, you can already tell who you have to beat. But do this for at least a week. Many marketers do this for at least 3 weeks before they enter a new market.
7. You are looking for people who show up almost ALL the time, especially around position 6, 7, 8. This means they are showing their ads the maximum amount possible and getting the cheapest clicks possible, and you can bet if they are doing that every day, day in and day out over a 30 day period they are making profit. Either that or they are really, really crazy. Sometimes the people who always show up number 1 should be watched too, but only if they always show up every time you search. If they show up number 1 for only half the time that's really inefficient advertising, and eventually you are going to wipe the floor with them.
8. During this time, note the ads that are consistently winning, visit the sites to see the sales process, sign up for the newsletter or whatever, and learn what you can. Now with the knowledge of the winning ads, and who the top competitors really are, you can vastly increase the speed of progress of your marketing efforts.

-Steve

Steve Blom
Certified Google Adwords Professional

Adwords Training Video Author:

Blog:
http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Free Adwords video:
http://www.adwordstraining.org/video/free_adwords_tutorial_video.htm

Contact: steve@adwordstraining.org