When carrying out competitor analysis with Google Ads, it’s important to find gaps in your competitors’ advertising and not just focus on the ‘obvious’ areas you see. For example, a strong call to action, unique selling points, or problem-solution messaging can be powerful, but if every competitor uses them, it’s hard for you to stand out on the already overcrowded SERP.
Instead, it’s valuable to find gaps in that messaging. Positioning gaps help you elevate your brand’s message above competitors on the already overcrowded SERP, for example, with stronger guarantees, better solutions, or better offers.
In this blog, we’ll look at how you can analyse competitors differently when using Google Ads, identifying opportunities and using those insights to build a structure and strategy that is more relevant to the users searching for your service.
What is everyone saying?
Adspeak is defined as the ‘special or distinctive language that is used in advertisements’ and is written to persuade consumers to take action through buying a product, changing their opinion or signing up for a service. However, whilst adspeak is designed to persuade and influence, our brains are flooded with thousands of ads everywhere we go, from social media to search engines through to billboards or posters, and I guarantee you won’t remember 99% of what they said.
Furthermore, the emergence of AI has allowed advertisers to create advertisements that lack any authentic thought or human emotion, with posts all rooted in similar prompts.
Recently, LinkedIn launched a ‘seems like AI slop’ button to reduce the volume of low-effort posts and to increase authentic posts and genuine conversations on the platform. The results have seen more than 1 million LinkedIn users use the button since it was rolled out, with a 40% reduction in ‘AI slop’ posts.
Adspeak is argued to be the death of creativity and real human interaction, the things that actually drive results in advertising, with 72% of UK copywriters saying they felt ‘much of the copy that goes live does not represent their best work’.
This presents a great opportunity for advertisers to find gaps in competitors’ advertising and provide real value and human interaction that resonate with their ideal customer, improving the ads’ efficiency and performance.
Be truthful in your copy
Consumers read copy that interests them, so as an advertiser, it’s important to understand your customers and their needs by writing adverts that resonate with them instead of applying a ‘blanket’ approach across all of your ads.
It can be easy to fall into the trap of using the same generic copy across multiple ads, but this doesn’t move the needle or engage your users. The majority of brands would want to position themselves as high quality, professional, reliable, luxury, etc., but how much of this is actually true?
Instead, good advertisements will provide factual information and evidence to back these claims up; for example, instead of saying ‘High Quality’, mention the products and the production in place that make your products high quality. This helps your advertisement stand out in a crowded market and helps it resonate better with your target audience, resulting in better engagement and performance.
How can you find the gaps?
Advertisers can find gaps by searching their main keywords or putting in their competitors’ URLs in the Google Ads Transparency Centre – a tool which shows you the full range of adverts competitors are running. Pairing this with in-platform auction insights, you can see who you are competing with, allowing you to focus on direct competition first. You can then compare the ads and find copy that could be improved; for example, repeated wording, such as ‘fast’, ‘trusted’ or ‘high quality’.
From there, analyse what your customers are looking for in search terms, sales calls or reviews to find the gaps and amend your copy accordingly.
How can you test it?
From a Google Ads point of view, the platform offers advertisers multiple ways to test their copy, ensuring ads are engaging with the right audience and not just becoming another impression.
One of the main ways you can test in-platform with Google is through experiments. Experiments are built-in A/B testing tools that allow you to test changes to campaigns by splitting budget between your main campaign and a trial campaign. Whilst your experiment is running, you can compare its performance against your original campaign.
With your copy, you’ll need to decide what you want to test, with three main variables: headlines, descriptions and assets.
Headlines are the first text a user will read; they do most of the work and can be up to 30 characters each, with good headlines including keyword relevance, benefits, offers and calls to action.
Next are descriptions; they support your headlines and can be up to 90 characters each. While the headline grabs attention, the description is there to expand on what’s been said.
Finally, there are assets. Assets add extra information around your ad and help it look larger on the SERP. Strong assets tend to improve engagement and click-through rates by making ads look more appealing.
Conclusion
Standing out with your advertising is about saying something your competitors aren’t. When every ad uses the same calls to action, USPs and claims, advertisements turn into impressions with no clicks. By reviewing what your competitors are really saying, you can spot gaps in their messaging and fill them with something more valuable, such as evidence and wording that actually resonates with your target audience.
Whilst finding gaps is effective, using experiments to keep testing new headlines, descriptions and assets lets you stay agile as competitors and the market shift, helping your brand stay ahead.
