How to incorporate iSpionage intelligence data into your sales pitch

How To's and Tutorials, PPC, iSpionage.com

In this post I will show you how iSpionage intelligence data can help you win new clients. You will learn about how our clients, both SEM agencies and independent PPC consultants, integrate data from iSpionage into their sales presentations.

To better illustrate the process, I will use a real case study from one of our clients. To protect our client, I have modified the name of the company. The strategies I describe are applicable to any PPC consultants or SEM agencies.

The Scenario:

• ConsumerCellular.com is a service provider in the communication industry that has an in-house Pay-Per-Click campaign that is not effective.
• Their main competitors are AT&T and Verizon wireless.
• You are an independent PPC consultant/SEM agency, have established the initial contact with ConsumerCellular.com and they’re interested to hear your proposal.
• You have identified 51 keywords that ConsumerCellular.com should consider using in their PPC campaigns. Among the keywords with great potential for your (hopefully) new client are: phones, cell phones, wireless internet service, wireless internet providers, etc.
• You been monitoring this niche using iSpionage for 20 days and have sufficient data to build your case.

Objective:

To convince ConsumerCellular.com that you should run their Pay-Per-Click campaign.

Strategy:

Show ConsumerCellular.com:

1. What’s happening in their niche.
2. How their main competitors have achieved success.
3. Where ConsumerCellular.com is in the PPC world relative to their competitors.
4. How you can help improve ConsumerCellular.com’s their Pay-Per-Click campaigns.
5. Why they should let you run the PPC campaign instead of doing it themselves, or engaging a different SEM agency.

NOTE: In this tutorial, I’m only going to show you how you can integrate iSpionage data to do #1-3.

Let’s begin…

1. What’s Happening In This Niche

In the picture below, you can see that ConsumerCellular.com did not appear as the top advertiser among the 51 keywords where they should be a dominant player. AT&T and Verizon wireless are the top players in the niche. It is possible to unseat them—with the right approach!

This iSpionage report shows all advertisers that use the targeted keyword list from the project.
AT&T advertises with 50 keywords in Google (out of the 51 you specified in the project), 45 in Yahoo and 48 in MSN
Verizonwireless.com advertises in 36 keywords in Google, 35 in Yahoo and 14 in MSN.

2. How Main Competitors Achieve their PPC Campaigns Success

Let’s zoom in on AT&T and view which keywords, ad-copy and landing pages they’re using. We will also see if their campaign is optimized.

AT&T is the dominant advertiser for this niche:

• They have 4604 keywords.
• 205 ad copy variations (see picture below)
• Are dominant on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Att.com

They also have multiple landing pages for their PPC campaigns (see picture below).

Now, take a closer look at a high traffic keyword “prepaid phone.”

From the picture:

• Box #1. AT&T has great coverage. They advertise on Google, Yahoo and MSN, and are highly ranked.
• Box #2. They’re conducting A/B split tests for the keyword “prepaid phone.” Which means, the winning ad copy will eventually be revealed.

It seems that AT&T has optimized their campaign well. With this invaluable insight ConsumerCellular.com can “steal” AT&T’s keywords, ad copy and landing pages. Why reinvent the wheel?

Let’s do one more quick analysis on the top player in this niche.

Verizonwireless.com

The next major competitor is Verizonwireless.com.

• Verizonwireless.com has 665 keywords. 40 of them are among the 51 top keywords we identified as important for prospective client ConsumerCellular.com.
• They use 102 unique ad copy combinations.
• Verizonwireless.com has a presence in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

You can then do landing page analysis for Verizon Wireless as we did with AT&T.

From all of our agency clients that I spoke with, showing this level of competitive intelligence to their prospects usually blown them away.

You should integrate screen shots from iSpionage reports into your presentation.

3. Where ConsumerCellular.com is in their Niche

The ConsumerCellular.com internet presence definitely needs work.

From the picture:

• Box #1: ConsumerCellular has only 187 keywords. 25 of them are among the 51 important keywords in this niche.
• Box #2: ConsumerCellular.com doesn’t have a Google Presence, and barely has a presence on MSN.
• ConsumerCellular.com is missing a huge amount of traffic and potential revenue by not having a strong presence on Google and MSN and using only a fraction of the keywords AT&T and VerizonWireless use.

After identifying ConsumerCellular.com’s main competitors, showing how they run their campaigns, and the available opportunities for ConsumerCellular.com, you can demonstrate how you would use this information to run ConsumerCellular.com’s PPC campaign, and lay out your plan.

Summary

Convincing potential client that already has “some” internet presence is often more difficult than convincing those that have no internet presence at all. That is because they feel that they already know how to run PPC campaign, and will be able to just crank up their performance at will.

By showing to your potential clients the reality of competition in their niches and the tools and technology you have available to you can convince them about your service.

Using this data will show potential clients that you have an edge over other agencies, consultants and their in-house resources.

The strategy I have outlined above proven to help close the deal for many of our clients (PPC consultants and SEM agencies).

You can gather the intelligence data and put together the report manually without using iSpionage. It is a tedious and time consuming, yet necessary process.

Using iSpionage to automate the process saves you a lot of time which will free up your time to focus on finding more potential customers.

No matter what way you choose, it is important for you to include competitive analysis in your presentation if you want to win the deal.

I hope this tutorial helps you get the most out of your iSpionage data. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please do let me know. I look forward to hearing from you!

Leon @ December 17, 2008