Optimize Paid Campaign Results

Struggling to make your paid marketing campaigns generate good ROI? Knowing what to promote—and when—is crucial for aligning your strategy with market demand. It starts with identifying the right products, pages, and untapped opportunities in your market.

With the Semrush Traffic & Market toolkit, you can stay in tune with real-time market demands, track competitor paid marketing activities, and identify top traffic-driving channels that impact your strategy.

Let’s get started!

Start optimizing your paid marketing by setting up competitor tracking in EyeOn. Enter up to 20 competitors to receive 24/7 tracking and automated alerts, showing which products or pages they’re actively promoting. Be sure also to enter their social media accounts using the tab in the settings menu.

EyeOn doesn’t just track Google Ad trends; it also provides the Timeline of ad texts, offering insights into what competitors are actually promoting and how.

Understanding the timing and focus of competitors' promotional strategies helps you capture audience interest and stay aligned with market trends.

In this example, expedia.com is running Facebook and Google Search ads promoting trips to national parks. Also, notice that several of the ads include the word “refundable,” suggesting consumers are seeking flexibility.

Here are some tips based on this example that you can adapt to fit your strategy:

• Capitalize on Demand: There’s a clear demand for National Parks. By aligning your promotions with competitor activity, you can tap into a warm audience and maximize your ad spend.
• Differentiate Your Offerings: Since Expedia focuses on Instagram and Google Search ads, consider standing out by using video platforms like YouTube or focusing on location-based ads.
• Tweak Your Positioning: Analyze competitor data to spot gaps or complementary angles. If Expedia.com promotes trips to National Parks, consider advertising unique lodging options, specialized tours, or packages that combine multiple attractions in the area.
• Optimize Budget Allocation: If competitor data shows heavy focus and strong engagement on a specific platform, consider dedicating more resources there to compete directly or target other underutilized platforms to reach new audiences.

Staying on top of competitor promos keeps you agile, allowing you to quickly adjust your strategy and capture new opportunities.

How impactful are the campaigns you just saw in EyeOn? Go to Traffic Overview dashboard to find out.

In the Traffic Trend graph, analyze daily traffic data to identify spikes linked to specific promotions. If you see a significant traffic boost after a promo or ad campaign, consider promoting similar content.

The Traffic Channel Trend chart provides a channel-by-channel breakdown, helping you see if a competitor’s paid promotions led to increased traffic. Select the channel using the tab at the top of the chart and compare dates in each channel for traffic spikes you discovered to understand which channels drove the increase.

In the Subfolders dashboard examine competitive traffic trends to identify popular categories. Prioritize similar product categories in your ads. In the example below, flights—especially to Boston and Chicago—are popular. The popularity of the Spanish-language subfolder also suggests that ads in Spanish may perform well.

Like the Subfolders dashboard, the Top Pages dashboard lets you discover the best-performing content. Filter for paid search, paid social, and display ads to see the most effective promotions.

Inside the Top Pages dashboard, go to the Insights section to identify pages with notable growth. Select the “Newly Detected” tab to uncover rapidly growing pages, then review their stats in the table to see how Paid Traffic contributed to their success.

Take inspiration from these trends to gauge what’s popular at the moment.

To look for emerging market trends, you can check the trending keywords section of the Paid Search dashboards, as well as the Display Ad and Paid Social dashboards.

To begin, use the date and location selection options at the top of the dashboard to make sure you’re looking at your desired geo-location and timeframe. In this case, we chose the travel industry and selected the United States.

Next, scroll down to the Top Sources and Top Keywords section of the dashboard to see what search engines and what keywords your competitors are using to attract traffic.

For example, “Punta Cana” appears as a popular keyword in the travel market, and we also saw this Caribbean destination trending in the Top Pages list. This signals a prime opportunity for travel businesses to promote their Punta Cana offerings.

By incorporating trending keywords as targets in your paid ads, you can connect with an engaged audience with existing interest, maximizing ad relevance and click-through rates.

Additionally, take advantage of language-specific keywords. For instance, “Cheap hotels” appears in both English and Spanish. To reach a broader audience, ensure your ads targeting specific keywords are available in different languages, increasing the likelihood of engagement across different segments.

By leveraging EyeOn, as well as the Traffic Overview, Subfolders, Top Pages, and Paid Search dashboards, marketers can capture up-to-date competitive trends and effectively use these insights to refine their paid advertising strategy, ensuring they meet market demand and enhance ad performance.