How to Copy the Best Google AdWords Campaigns

Source: Neil Patel

Google AdWords can be overwhelming the first time you use it.

It’s like a faucet if you think about it.

The best part about AdWords is that you can instantly turn it on to immediately drive new traffic to your site.

But traffic isn’t the goal, of course.

Driving new revenue is the objective.

And that seemingly simple task becomes difficult if you don’t optimize your campaigns for success.

Everything from your account structure to keyword research will play a huge role in how many clicks you drive and how many of those clicks you convert.

AdWords’ search network converts well because people have high intent.They’re looking at and clicking on resources that promise to solve their problems ASAP.

You just need to present them with a compelling offer!

And what better place to start than by copying the best-performing AdWords campaigns around?

Here’s how to copy the best campaigns to optimize your own.

Start by digging up the best keywords

The backbone of any good PPC campaign revolves around keywords and search terms.

If you target a keyword with no volume, you can expect no clicks or sales.

However, if you bid on keywords with too much competition, you might not get your ads in front of enough people to make them worth your time.

Thankfully, the best Google AdWords campaigns from top industry leaders can already pave the way for us.

All we have to do is conduct some research to steal, or borrow, their ideas.

For example, tools like SEMrush and SpyFu can analyze every keyword your competitors are using on AdWords.

You can see what they’re currently bidding on. And even what they’ve paid for in the past.

Instead of doing keyword research that could take you countless days, just borrow from your competitors to outbid them and rank higher.

Here’s how to do it.

First, let’s start with SEMrush.

Keep in mind that these tools offer a slimmed-down free version. However, you’ll have a daily capped limit.

Enter your website URL into SEMrush.

This will give you a huge overview of your organic and paid search traffic.

Obviously, we want to focus on paid. So scroll down to the “Advertising Research” section and then hit “Competitors.”

This section will let you see how the competition stacks up.

You can use this tool to find new keywords or to simply label the top targets to keep track of your progress.

Then you can click on each and browse their top keywords to see which ones are driving the most traffic for them.

I recommend you start building out a spreadsheet at this point.

It will help you keep track of these top keywords so you can come back later to prioritize new campaigns.

Essentially, without any keyword research of your own, you just tapped into the best keywords for your industry.

Even better, you can sort through these competitors to see how much each one is spending. So you can see which keywords aren’t just popular, but which also drive sales for other high-budget campaigns.

Next up, we can dig even deeper into these keywords with SpyFu.

SpyFu offers many similar features to SEMRush. But it’s designed for stealing ideas from the best AdWords campaigns.

Just read their headline: “Download your competitors’ most profitable keywords and ads for paid and organic search.”

Here’s how to start using it to do just that.

First, type in your competitor’s URL in the search bar:

Here, it’ll present you with tons of AdWords data.

It will include everything from their keywords and monthly clicks to their budget and insights.

You can even travel back through time to see how their current campaign has evolved.

For example, do you see those arrows down below?

Those arrows are pointing to the data that tells you how long this competitor or account has been using AdWords.

This one for Hotels.com has been around for 11 years!

Now you know that this account means business.

They’ve had 11 years to refine their keywords, strategy, and bidding. They’ve been toiling away, doing all of the hard, time-consuming work for you.

Now all you have do is check out what they’re up to.

You can head over to your competitor’s “Top Paid Competition” to put together a quick analysis of the biggest brands in the industry.

You can see trends and performance history for a given keyword in the “Keyword Analysis” section.

This data can help you see why certain keywords are performing better.

You can also look for patterns to determine if there’s an underlying trend that you can capitalize on.

Next, you can see the average Cost Per Click and monthly search volume to judge if it’s worth the price.

SpyFu will even show you the ad position.

Why is that important? You can cross-reference ad position with the CPC to figure out how much you’ll have to overpay to dislodge them from the top spot.

Behind each keyword is in-depth data for visit or click projections, CPC, and even total spend per month.

SpyFu will sort the best-performing keywords for the money and will rank them by priority.

For example, they’ll label one keyword a “Great Buy” to help you pick the top-performing keywords without sifting through thousands of possibilities.

See?

In about ten minutes, you can gather almost everything there is to know about these top-performing campaigns.

Next, let’s see what they’re using for ad copy.

Now let’s hijack their ad copy

The next logical progression on copying the best AdWords campaigns is to copy their copy.

OK, sorry. Dumb joke.

But think about it like this for a second.

That Hotels.com example has been on AdWords for 11 years. It should be safe to assume that they’ve learned what works and what doesn’t by now.

So there’s no point in reinventing the wheel.

Coming up with ad copy is tough. But effective ad copy and headlines have the power to increase your CTR by up to 10%.

Who wouldn’t want to spend a few minutes tweaking words for a 10% lift? Sign me up!

Let’s head back into SEMrush to see what ads your competitors are using.

This ad copy analysis will give you insights into what types…

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