Spying on Your Competitors - 10 Different Ways

With the increasing number of options that are available to people on a product, competition has been on the rise since the last century. To gain an upper hand in the tussle between demand and supply, every company tries to understand the strategies of their competitors to prepare ahead of them and get a lead in the market.

This kind of spying has become a very common part of any company that today there are people assigned to analyse the activities of their competitors. Spying over a company is easier said than done.

It requires a collation of a lot of small but important things. In this article a few very important methods and spy tools that anybody who wants to understand what your competitor is doing are discussed.

Let's look at the 10 ways on how you can Spy on your Competition.

Keeping Up With Their Literature
Following on Social Media
Look Out for Keywords
Focus On SEO
Follow the Ads
Check Up on the Products They Promote
Tracking Indexed Websites
Checking Google Ranks
Finding Backlinks
Going Through the Reviews

Keeping Up With Their Literature

Here literature means any kind of text that they release on their behalf. These can be blogs, articles on papers, newsletters, surveys etc. It is obvious that they won’t share any information with their competitors, but following the above-mentioned one will help. You will get to know their ventures and campaigns before they actually happen. It is important to follow them judiciously and more important to analyse and elucidate the inner meanings if any.

Following on Social Media

There is no better campaigning alternative for a brand other than popular social media platforms to connect with customers and share their plans efficiently. The activities and engagements of your competitors on social media platforms tells a lot about the future plans.

Not only that, it also tells a great deal about their digital marketing strategy as well. It is a great way to understand a significant part of your competitors' ways of doing business.

Look Out for Keywords

As mentioned earlier, one of the most popular ways of setting a brand's name is through social media campaigns. And here the importance of choosing the right keywords cannot be stressed enough. Hence, one of the best ways to check on your competitor is by trying to understand the keywords that they use to increase the traffic into their website. You can use various tools available online like SEMrush, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, and Google Keyword Planner etc. to see the keywords used by your competitors rather than trying to understand each keyword.

Focus On SEO

Finding the keywords brings us to another important thing to be done. That is, checking their SEO tools. You might wonder what it is that makes your competitor have an edge over you despite selling the same kind of products, the answer might be in their SEO techniques. You can also understand the techniques that will bring organic traffic. There are tools like Positionly (now Unamo) which will really help in getting real time comparative data on website traffic.

Follow the Ads

Advertisements are a great way to entice customers and increase business. Ads will play a big role if they are formed correctly and placed rightly. The websites and platforms on which these ads come up is also very important. It tells a lot about their campaigns. You can track and spy on the websites and platforms on which their ads are displayed and plan accordingly.

There are Ad Spying tools that give an insight into your competitor's ads. One of the tools that can be used is AdSpyder. AdSpyder gives you an insight into the SEO strategy used by your competitors on different platforms. With the help of this tool, you can understand the secrets of your competitors and make them useful for your own ads.

Check Up on the Products They Promote

Promotion is a very important part of any marketing campaign. The nature of products and the way of promotion will tell you a lot of their strategies. It can be a great way to adapt better things and reject things that are unnecessary.

Tracking Indexed Websites

Indexing in Google is one of the most important things that any brands would do to increase their reach. Rather than going after all the websites of your competitor, track the websites that are indexed in Google. It will help you organise the work in a more efficient manner. Google in itself is a good tool to do it.

Checking Google Ranks

Checking Google ranks is a great way to know where you and your competitor stands as far as traffic is concerned. You should understand where your competitor is ranked for every relevant keyword that will be searched. Finding a competitor's ranking alone is not enough. You should also analyse their growth over a period of time. It will help you get an idea of their pattern of growth.

Finding Backlinks

Backlinks are very important to maintain good rankings for your website. That makes it clear how important it is to find the backlink strategy of your competitor. It will help you get a better clarity on their marketing strategy. You will also have an idea on how to effectively use your backlinks to reap the best outcomes.

Going Through the Reviews

All the campaigns that brands do, boils down to one thing - customer satisfaction. It is the key to increasing business. Analysing the customer reviews is a great way to spy on your competitor although it might sound direct. While the review of the customer gives an idea about their reception of the campaign, the reply of the competitor tells a lot about their strategies. If the reviews are negative, it will be an insight to correct your mistakes before it gets out.

Conclusion

It is true that competition has increased significantly in recent times. But it also means that there is more scope for improvement and learning from mistakes without actually making mistakes now than ever before. Understanding your competitors' marketing will really help you in getting an idea about consumer requirements and expectations.

The above-mentioned steps are an integral part of this understanding and it is not an exhaustive list. These pointers are not to spy on your competitor but to serve as an opportunity to reflect upon your strategies and initiatives.

FAQs

Is spying on competitors illegal?

It is not illegal to spy on your competitors unless you break laws, like hacking into the security of your competitor's database.

How can I see what keywords your competitors are using?

BuzzSumo, SEM Rush, SpyFu, and Ahrefs' are some of the top keyword research tools you can use to spy on your competitors.

Why is it important to do competitor analysis?

The purpose of a competitor analysis is to understand your competitors' strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your own and to find a gap in the market. A competitor analysis is important because: It will help you recognise how you can enhance your own business strategy.