How To Discover Your Competitors CPC Ad Spend

This is a battle-tested growth hack.

First off – let me just say that doing this these days is so much easier than it was back in the day

The reason for this was the Facebook scandal and Cambridge Analytica.

Long story short, the outcome of this is the social media platforms have to be a lot more transparent about their advertising reach, and that’s great for us growth hackers and SEO gurus.

Today you simply just have to hit up the Facebook Ads Library to see what ads your competitors are pushing out on their pages, but that doesn’t give you the financial picture, and that’s where SpyFu comes into play.

What Is SpyFu?

SpyFu’s original name gives away the product right away; it was previously known as GoogSpy, and it works by collecting data on how much a company pays for search traffic using proprietary software.

SpyFu displays the keywords that websites pay for on Google Ads as well as the keywords that websites appear for in search results. The firm also provides cost per click and search volume figures for its keywords, and it uses that level of detail to estimate how much money websites spend on advertising.

The usefulness of this tool is evident; it forecasts your competitors’ CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), providing you with relevant information on which to base decisions, particularly when competing for the same keywords.

I use SpyFu to act as a benchmark and a comparison to know what to charge my clients.

In other words, I’ll pitch my clients in Hong Kong or London and tell them that “I know that you are probably spending X for these keywords, and I’ll beat that!”

This pitch, and this data, works pretty well and I’ve closed a bunch of clients with this pitch and methodology.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of growth hacking tools as well as SEO hacks out there, and this is one that I certainly recommend, especially when it comes to getting clients for your agency.