7 easy ways to track your competitors

Want to to know what your competitors are up to? Here are 7 simple ways to keep an eye on them!

Competitors play a major role in every business. If you know what your competitors are offering and at what range, it helps you place your products in the market. Understanding your competitors hence plays an important role in your business. Studying the competitor pricing strategy gives you an idea on how you should set the prices of your products. This helps you make your product stand out in the market place.

How can you achieve that? Follow these simple ways

1. KYC:
Well here it does not mean knowing your customer but your competitors. Identify your competitor well.

2. SWOT:

Every business has its own strengths and weakness. An effective SWOT analysis helps you in this case.

So now what is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis, alternatively known as SWOT matrix is an acronym for strengths,weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a company, product, place, industry, or person. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective.

Strengths:- characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others

Weaknesses:- characteristics that place the business or project at a disadvantage relative to others

Opportunities:- elements that the business or project could exploit to its advantage

Threats:- elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project.

SWOT analysis for both your company as well as the competitor must be performed. This gives you a clear idea on to what to be prioritized according to competition.

3. Sign up for Google Alerts:

Google alerts are absolutely free in case you want to get updated on the competitor’s activity. It is easy to perform. You just have to type the name of your competitor in the search query and select the option which you want to be notified about and Google sends you all the updates daily or weekly.

4. Enroll in your competition’s mailings and promotions:
Get to know about your competitors through signing up for their campaigns etc.

5. Become a secret shopper:
Conduct shopping trips to try out your competitors’ customer experience, both on-line and in-store.

6. Connect with competitors on social media:
“Like” and “follow” your competition on social media and track their work. This helps you analyze their popularity on social media which shows whether their presence in social media helps them grow and plan your strategy accordingly.

7. Monitor your competitors’ websites:
You can learn a lot about your competition by keeping an eye on their website.

Why track?

The main aim is to learn and utilize the learning to grow. It gives a deeper understanding of your work and how you can grow using some tactics of the competitors which has helped them or neglect those which has a negative impact. It helps determine the most effective ways to engage your customers.
The goal here is to make sure all the marketing elements that form your brand experience are better than those of your competitors. If you see something that doesn’t seem to be working, could the same be said of your marketing? Adjust accordingly. Determine the most effective ways to engage your customers.
Observing and learning more about your competition will help you understand all the marketing messages directed at your customers. Only then can you stay in a better or maybe in the top position in the market.

So keep a close eye on what everyone is doing around you.. after all, good observation and execution makes you an achiever!