When times are tough you must INCREASE your promotion and advertising. This includes, of course, the Internet. People look up businesses on the Internet like they used to use the Yellow Pages. And if you are not there when they are looking you will not be found. And that is business you could have had that went somewhere else. If your competitors are smart they get that business that should have been yours.



You do, however, want to be extremely smart about your promotion. You obviously don't want to waste any money. This is why research is so important. If you could get in and find out what your competitors are doing, what is working for them, you would be way ahead of the game. You could take their successes and strong points and capitalize on them.

This kind of research reminds me something I heard about as a kid. Apparently, years ago, when McDonald's corporation was going to open a new franchise they would do a huge about of market research. This research cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. As a result of all this work McDonald's discovered exactly what part of town down to what intersection would be the best, most lucrative placement for their next franchise. Enter Jack in the Box. As soon as McDonald's started construction on the building for their newest location Jack in the Box would buy the property across the street. Since a very similar public ate at Jack in the Box McDonald's had already done their market research for them. I have no idea of this was true. But, if so, it was one of the smartest ways of saving money on research that I've ever heard of.

If you could use similar marketing “espionage” to find out how you competitors are handling their Pay Per Click marketing campaigns you could save a great deal of money and time using their research to your benefit.

And you can do this before setting up a pay per click marketing campaign in Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. Find out what your competitors are doing and then do it better.

Four of the most important factors of any pay per click campaign are the search term or keyword itself, the ad copy, the cost per click and the position or ranking of your ad within the page results.

With real in depth competitor research you can discover as all those factors of your competition's pay per click campaigns. There are even ways to analyze the campaigns of several of your competitors at once and see where and how they overlap. By working with all the many aspects of the data you collect you can build a your pay per click campaigns with more and better terms, better ads and more powerful ad placements than any of your competitors.

It's worth it to take the time for research or hire the right company to do it for you. The right research will make your promotion stand out and you'll be the one who is succeeding in these uncertain economic times.