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Top 5 Spy Tool Advantages: Ispionage Review

How to get the top 5 advantages from competitive intelligence tools

What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say "pay per click research"?

I'm not quite sure how to spell my reaction but it's not positive!

How frustrated have you been figuring out the best way to put your PPC campaign together?  Some of the most maddening tasks PPC marketing come before you even launch your campaigns.

How much fun is this?

1. Running and filtering out keyword research
2. Writing your ad creative, then compromising because of the character limits
3. Trying to figure out what your competitors are doing and how they are making money
4. Creating landing pages and writing content for them
5. Working out your overall PPC strategy

Finally, how do you even know that the result of all of this is going to pay for itself and profit?

If you've never used a spy tool or you want to use them more effectively, then you'll need to know the top 5 advantages you can glean from spy tools (more recently coined competitive intelligence software).

In this article, I'm taking a more practical (and educational) approach. I'm going to show you HOW to use competitive intelligence effectively and while I'm at it, you'll also get to see inside one of the best spy tools out there - Ispionage.

I've picked Ispionage because it's the only competitive intelligence tool that gives you information from Google, Yahoo and MSN. The other spy tools on the market offer only Google-related information.

Here are the "top 5 spy tool advantages" that I'm going to demonstrate using Ispionage:

1. Choose the best performing keywords
2. Use the most successful ad copy
3. Protect your profitable keywords including trademarks
4. Find the best landing pages for your keywords
5. Interpret your competitors' strategies, then do it better

1. How to choose the best performing keywords

After you've picked a product, you usually have an idea of some main keywords, even if it's just the product name.

Normally, you'd start the process by typing these into your keyword tool, and it's the same in Ispionage. Just enter the main keywords that you want to mine further.

Start your Ispionage project with a keyword list.

Keyword research tools are not totally accurate and you could miss out on potential winners if you just rely on a straight keyword tool. I've found so many keyword tools to give quantity rather than quality.

One very important benefit you get out of spy tools like Ispionage is that the results are relevant. You don't waste time filtering out the mass of un-usable keywords that you often get with keyword tools.

The results outputted from Ispionage are high quality and I actually prefer the Ispionage layout better than most keyword tools as I can see everything related to that keyword, the ads, the landing pages and other pertinent information.

In the above example, I've set up a project for multi-level marketing (MLM).  So I've typed in a few main search terms and Ispionage gives back data such as:

• Whether there are any direct linking affiliates
• The average CPC and the average daily clicks
• The ad counts for Google, Yahoo and MSN
• The length of time it's been monitoring those words
• Link to view the latest ads on Google, Yahoo and MSN

Ispionage keyword and ad information across search engines.

You can then go to the related keywords tab and mine these further by adding them to your Ispionage project. These will generate a new list of related keywords that you can add as well. You can drill down as deep as you like.

88 related keywords to the original 7 keywords.

Then add competitors' keywords to your keyword list and beat other advertisers at their own game. You can do this with confidence that the keywords you're bidding on are not untried, untested search terms, but keywords that have proven successful for other marketers.

It's unbelievable the amount of money you can throw down testing search terms that don't prove themselves, but then maybe you've found that out for yourself!

2.  Find and use the most successful ad copy

Writing your ads can actually be a bit of fun with Ispionage. It certainly makes it a whole lot easier. You don't have to come up with ads that attract quality traffic off the top of your head. There's no guessing how to fit the best ad in your character limits.

In fact, Ispionage is way ahead and it's already done this in the previous step!

After you enter keywords, Ispionage trawls the net and gives you the advertisers with this keyword in their arsenal. (data is refreshed every 24 hours)

Not only that, immediately you know how many ads they're using on Google, whether they're also running ads on Yahoo and MSN and exactly how many. As of the time of this article, no other tool does this.

View an organized layout of Google, Yahoo and MSN ads through Ispionage.

From the list of advertisers, you can view the keywords of this advertiser so you can add these to your list and identify any gaps. You can also see how many ads they've placed on each search engine.

Advertiser Tracking Summary in Ispionage.

When you click on a particular advertiser, you then see what the average ad position is for each keywords on each search engine. Ispionage provides a competitor score which indicates an advertiser's search engine coverage for that keyword - so in reality it's like an "Opportunity Score".

If you're not sure what bid costs to expect and what daily budget to set, then the average CPC and average clicks per day can also be a starting guide.

Here is the Ispionage view of one advertiser for each of the keywords entered.

Average ad position, search engine, competitive score, average CPC, average clicks/day are all shown.

Underneath, you see a second list of keywords this advertiser is using on each network (besides the ones you entered in Ispionage). As you can see in the top right corner, there are a large number of results that can be added to the original search term list - all used by your competition.

Second, large list of keywords used by the competitor.

If you drill down further and look up a particular keyword used by that advertiser, you'll see the search engine, the number of keywords associated with that ad, the ad text, landing page, the ad's latest position, when it was last seen, the ad's appearances (or frequency), and the affiliate network if applicable.

Keyword-specific view in Ispionage.

Use Ispionage to extract all the ads for particular keywords, certain advertisers and search engines. You can then export these ads to text or Excel so you can adjust them for your own campaigns.

3.  Protect your profitable keywords including trademarks

What if the majority of your profits flow in from specific keywords. You'd want to protect those keywords wouldn't you?

If you've got a trademark, then you also want to defend that against inappropriate use.

I found a clever feature with Ispionage which gives you the ability to "watch" particular keywords - be it your breadwinners or trademark search terms.

If any advertiser starts encroaching into your PPC space, you are the first to know and you can take action accordingly.

So what do you do if another advertiser uncovers your money-making keywords?

Using Ispionage, you would then add this advertiser to your watch list and keep an eye on what they do. Maybe you need to step things up, maybe you need to just hold your ground and keep doing what you're doing.

Adding an advertiser to the Ispionage "Watch List".

You can also set up alerts so Ispionage will email you when someone else starts using your keywords. 

Set up email alerts for specific projects, keywords and advertisers.

By watching advertisers and keywords through Ispionage, you'll gather new intelligence that you can put to use making your campaigns even stronger!

4.   Create landing pages and make copy for them

Once your ad has done its work and the visitor has clicked through, you need to convert them with your landing page. Unlike ads, there's a lot more to consider with your landing page, so how do other advertisers do it?

You can look over the landing pages for all the advertisers for your keyword. Then use this knowledge to replicate a similar page for yourself, or to distinguish yourself completely from your competitors. For either strategy, you've got the information you need.

Large landing page thumbnail in Ispionage, you can also visit the page.

Ispionage can keep you informed through the entire PPC process - from keywords to ads to landing pages.

5. Interpreting competitor strategies, then doing it better

Scanning what your competitors are doing is all about seeing what works for them and identifying any gaps, to ultimately do it better yourself.

I've given you a detailed checklist for this one:

1. Drill down into keyword results and keep going into related keywords until you've built up a significant list of competitor keywords. You'll see what keywords are being used for the top ranking ads and you can use these to come up with even more keywords.
2. Look at each keyword to see whether there are direct linking affiliates or not - there may be opportunities to direct link or you might choose to set up your own site.
3. See how many ads they're running. If they're split testing a few, then you'll be able to see the frequency of each one and when it was last seen. If an ad hasn't been shown for a while, then perhaps it's a poor performer. Go with ads that have been running for a while with higher frequency. 
4. Check out which search engines they're advertising on - perhaps there's a gap with fewer advertisers for a particular keyword.
5. Also look at how their ads differ across each search engine and tailor your ads accordingly.
6. Particularly for ads that rank well, have been recently seen and are frequently shown - look at them more closely and see what you can use for your own campaigns.
7. Pay attention to affiliate networks that competitors are using, could you do this too?
8. Look at competitors' landing pages - see what elements they include on their pages that you can implement on your own. These may save you a heap of time testing.
9. While you're there, check out what you can on their linking strategies, particularly if they are linking to other products that have been profitable for them. Maybe you can market that product as well.
10. Set alerts so you can see when the competitor landscape changes. There could be new opportunities or ideas you can try and you can stay on top of things.

As you can see, there's a considerable amount of information in Ispionage to make your campaign a heavy-hitter. Follow this list and your PPC marketing will be streets ahead, without the wasted money and frustration of your own trial and error. Learn from someone else's.

Ispionage Final Credits

I've used Ispionage to give you this information because of its scope. The added advantage of seeing beyond Google, to Yahoo and MSN campaigns also gives you a more complete picture. You're seeing more of your competitors' portfolios.

Also, because strategies for Yahoo and MSN can vary a lot from Google AdWords, you need to know specifically what works best for them so you can tailor your campaign precisely.
 
Because Ispionage is a web-based application, you can monitor from any location with an internet connection, so there's no need for any installation - just log-in.

Ispionage's proprietary technology uses a combination of web crawling, ISP logs, manual and automated data to divulge insider information that can set you up with a huge competitive lead.

The tutorial videos are excellent - 100% practical with plenty of detail to get anyone started. They clearly demonstrate how to use Ispionage effectively to get all of the top 5 advantages.

Ispionage is also very flexible with the packages they offer - you can choose from 3 depending on your usage - iSpy Prowler, iSpy Ranger, iSpy Pro.

You would have seen from the screenshots, the interface is very well laid out and intuitive to use. It's a simple and quick process to extract the information you need. As I previously mentioned, it's quality information so you're not frustrated having to filter out trash.

I've been using Ispionage for my last few campaigns and I'm definitely keeping it in my arsenal. Researching PPC campaigns has never been easier and if there's any fun to be had in the process, then it was using Ispionage. Aside from that, it completes the PPC picture so you've got the best, most-informed campaign you can possibly have before you launch it.

You can spy out more info on Ispionage here.