Researching Your Competition

Digital marketing and e-commerce have entirely changed the way businesses are now run. While the internet has given us numerous options for increasing brand exposure and expanding our customer base, it has also exposed us to greater competition.

Hence, to stay ahead of the curve, you need to analyze your competitors and borrow successful strategies from them. This approach requires regular competitor research. Competitor research yields valuable information regarding new developments and digital trends.

In my latest book Think-Engage-Thrive: Marketing Actions To Skyrocket Your Brand In The Digital Age, I define a new process for researching your competitors and your customers.

The First Step Is To THINK About Your Competitor

There are amazing tools to analyze your competitor’s online actions. But you have to view them deeper and Think about your competitor’s strategy. Don’t just take things at face value. Dig deeper and learn all you can about them.

If your competitor can say the same thing about their business, that you can say about yours, then you have no difference. Then you are just competing on price, and that is the black hole of business.

Keywords Are The Beginning

For any given search term or keyword, there are hundreds upon thousands of competitors from all across the world ready to capitalize on the opportunity to drive more sales. This makes it more difficult for businesses to find ways of beating the competition.

You need to know which keywords your competitors are targeting. But more important, search for the ones they are not. Just because a competitor may be larger than you or more well-known does not mean they are good at marketing.

Look at how those keywords relate to their site. Are the Quality scores high for the landing pages they are driving to? Can you overtake them on some critical keywords or phrases?

This is an ongoing process. You should look at these things daily. You may find that your competitors are not and that is an advantage.

Online Competitor Research Tools

In this digital age, heaps of data is generated on a regular basis which includes online searches conducted by users, the personal information that they upload and digital remnants of every activity that occurs online. Millions of dollars are spent to extract and analyze this data with the help of various tools. You don’t need to sneak into your competitor’s facility or hire a spy to find out what they are doing to retain their edge. There are some competitor research tools that can provide you a clear view of their strategy.

The importance of competitor analysis tools is rising at a significant rate as they can help businesses in identifying relevant keywords which can generate a competitive edge. Some of the tools I use are SEMRush, SpyFu, Ispionage, and KeywordSpy. Keep in mind that the tool you are using has to be relevant to your business and target market.

These tools will show you the ads your competitors have run in the past and the effectiveness of those ads. The amount they are spending on pay per click. You can also see the organic keywords they are targeting and where they rank compared to you.

All of this is valuable information enables you to Think about and understand your competitors better than they know you.

Compete Intelligently

With the availability of all this information and transparent competition; it is imperative that you as a business owner should evolve and opt for new strategies.

You need to come up with innovative and creative ways to use the information and data you have extracted to Engage with your customers and overtake your competitors. To compete intelligently in today market, every business should embrace the use of these tools and incorporate them into their business model.

‘Brand-Monitoring’, ‘Video Advertising Competitor Research,’ ‘Display Advertising Research,’ ‘Social Media Monitoring & Analysis’ and ‘PLA Competitive Research’ are just some of the elements that can help you understand and benefit from your competitors’ strategies.

Brand Monitoring

This subsection of the research tools can allow you to monitor a brand’s reputation by tracking the traffic generated through the backlinks. Active brand monitoring can also enable you to identify various opportunities. For example, you could obtain information regarding a certain web page that would increase traffic generation to your website through affiliation.

Video Advertising Competitor Research

This is how a competitor’s video ad strategies can be observed, thereby allowing you to discover top advertisers. Having this information allows you to increase the profitability of your video advertisements. Backlinks in video ads are also listed so that an exact bounce rate/exit rate can be determined from different sources.

Display Advertising Research

This can help you analyze competitors’ ads while highlighting the most profitable advertisers and publishers. The effectiveness and efficiency of the display ads can also be measured so that you know which channels are generating the highest amount of traffic. You can also discover new publishers and advertisers for the increased number of options and opportunities.

Social Media Monitoring & Analysis

Social media marketing has become increasingly important for engaging with customers and increasing brand awareness. Online research tools can keep track of all your social media campaigns while also researching and analyzing your competitor’s social media presence. Therefore, you can effectively monitor your campaigns in real time and view the results and the demographics of who clicked on your ads.

Social has become one of the most cost effective awareness builders for brands. And the ability to see the engagement of your competitor’s ads gives you an idea of what is engaging with your competitions customers.

PLA Competitive Research

Direct competitors for your Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaign are identified through these tools. You can also Google your product and see what competitors show up in the PLA. Take a look at how their ads are set up and what you can learn from them.

You also get to find the best performing PLAs and gain valuable insight into your competitor’s product feeds. Understanding how your competitor is obtaining customers is vital information which can allow you to level the playing field.

Success comes down to how you decide to use the information available to you. The best way to realize your competitive advantage is through the integration of all the techniques mentioned above.

However, the best tools for your business depends on how your brand engages with customers. The best brands reach their customers on an emotional level. When you achieve this connection with your customers, competitors will be trying to unseat you.