PPC Tool/Training

One of our main competitors is using PPC to drive close to 100% of their traffic to their website and we are not. They have quickly taken a good chunk of a certain market share that we compete in. While we have a healthy mail order business, the rising costs of catalogs/postage, etc has got us thinking about cheaper ways to generate leads (catalog costs roughly $2.50 to print and mail).

With the tools out there now- it seems like a no brainer to 'spy' on keywords, etc that competitors are using to drive traffic duplicating their success.

The problem? We are completely new to PPC. Never set up a campaign and it is difficult to wade through all the tools out there.

Here's what we want to do: see what keywords they are using, how much they are paying, see the which ones have been around awhile so we can duplicate them.

I have seen a few launches recently that talk about this, but all seem to focus on Clickbank, CPA, etc. Could care less about that, just want to see what 3-4 competitors are doing.

Is there a need to pay monthly for this or are there programs out there that are one time costs that will collect this data for us?

Not sure where to start here. Any suggestions?