How to Decipher Your Competitors Digital Marketing Strategy

By understanding the keywords your competitors are bidding on, their account structure as well as the advertising partners they are utilizing, you can utilize this information to improve your own strategy.

Dissect URLs to Understand Competitor’s Account Structure

This is one of my favorite tactics. Many paid search management tools carry information within URL parameters just as a tool like Google Analytics does. 


This URL can tell you quite a bit about the account structure your competitor is using. For example, you can see that your competitor has split up campaigns by geo-locations. If a competitor is breaking down campaigns by geo-location, why should you?

Performance: Brand awareness in one location may be deeper than others
Regulations: Prices for products/services as well as advertising messaging may be highly regulated
Service Area: Companies may only be looking to serve specific location due to demographics
Messaging: An advertiser may want to deliver geo-specific messaging in text ads
If there is enough volume, splitting up your campaigns by geo-location can help boost campaign performance. By setting up more granular bidding strategy and rules, you’ll be able to boost results. Simple findings like this can really help you evolve your paid search strategy.

An optimized campaign structure is the basis for any top performing account. This information is not something SEM managers tend to boast about, so utilizing this method can help you understand if there are any changes you could make to your account to get ahead of the competition.