It happens all the time… you just came up with a great idea for a new site or ad campaign, and can’t wait to get started. You register a domain, throw a site together and are working like crazy. The only problem is, you didn’t do your research first. I’m sure we are all guilty of doing this at some point, and I still even find myself getting excited over a new project prematurely. In the end, it always comes down to doing the necessary market research and finding what works in your niche.

Search any generic phrase on Google and you will likely see a ton of advertisers. The difference between having a successful and failing campaign may be seen in how many advertisers are bidding on that keyword, along with which advertisers are listed. Big name sites like eBay and Amazon can afford to bid on very generic terms because of their massive size, bank roll and user value over time. If you see only these two advertisers bidding on a search term, the “paid” competition may be tough, but if you find your search results coming up with a much diverse set of advertisers, you are more likely to find and create a successful ad campaign.

Using a keyword research tool called iSpionage, let’s choose a broad marker and take a look at the “as seen on tv” niche and see what stands outs.

Once you perform a search on your desired keyword phrase, you are given a full breakdown of top advertisers, ad spend, related keywords and ad copy used. From the results shown above, you can see almost all of the advertisers are from large well branded sites like QVC, HSN, AsSeenOnTV.com and Half.com. With this type of competition and high ppc costs (in the $4 range), it would be tough to break in and make a profit. The summary also shows 1968 related keywords and 224 PPC competitors.

The “As Seen on TV” market is so diverse, it is not a good investment for an affiliate to bid on such a generic word. Instead, you should focus your efforts on an individual product and see what results can be found. Next we will take a look at “patch perfect”, one of the better performing and well branded products in the “As Seen on TV” group.

Now that we are focused in on a tighter keyword we can see better results. Comparing advertiser search results on Google, “as seen on tv” vs. “patch perfect”, you will immediately see a difference in ads. Not only are ad listings now more direct and towards the purchase of one product, but the advertisers are more varied. Smaller independent advertisers are now listed, and you see less of the big name companies. You are targeting a much smaller niche, will less search traffic, but you also have less competition with 44 PPC Competitors listed, vs. the 224 in the first chart. Advertising on the term “patch perfect” will not only cost you less (“perfect patch”  average cpc is in the $2.50 range), but it will also increase your chances on a conversion, vs. advertising on a generic keyword phrase like “as seen on tv”.

This is just an example, but you should now have a basic understanding of how to research, select a niche and break it down to find new keywords and less saturated markets to target.

Using this same thinking process, you can “spy” on an advertiser domain directly to see how they are managing their ad campaigns. Keeping with the same niche, let’s take a look at “asseenontv.com”.

It’s a lot of fun to look at charts from a direct advertiser perspective. While most of the numbers aren’t exact, you can get a good feel with how advertisers are spending their money and trends in search volume/spending. From the keyword list, you can see the advertiser is bidding on “stomach workouts”, then advertising their Ab Circle Pro product/landing pages on Google. A quick breakdown on the top keywords being bid on include cpc rates, search volume and how long the ads have actively been running.

Once you finally decide on your niche market and study the competition, your next focus would be on creating a keyword monitor list and setting up a ppc campaign.

Keyword Monitoring & Advertiser Competition
Using the keyword monitoring services from iSpionage, you can compare your ad campaigns against others in the industry. It’s not enough to know which keywords are bringing in the most search traffic or ROI… but instead, how much of a maximum potential each of these keywords has to offer.

Building a Campaign with What You’ve Learned
With everything now at hand, your collective data and research can be put to work. Create your new PPC campaign within minutes using the custom iSpionage PPC builder. If you’ve done manual campaign building in the past, you know how long this can take. Save time by building your campaign in 4 easy steps; Keyword Research, Clean Up, Grouping then simply creating and uploading the specific campaign for Google, Yahoo or Bing.

This is an overview of how to perform research and see what others are doing to bring in new customers through search marketing. The last thing you should be thinking about, is logging into your account, grabbing a ton of keywords, copying other advertiser’s ad copy and thinking you will make a profit. That simply isn’t the case. The keyword research is available, but you need to put the effort in to create a winning combination of terms, ad copy and landing pages.

To simplify creation of your PPC campaigns, try iSpionage and take advantage of their 7 day trial for only $1.