Competitor research can do wonders in your marketing campaign. Your most profound opportunities can often arise from your rivals’ performance insights.
“Spying” on their techniques and studying them uncover lessons and ideas that you can use to benchmark and enhance your campaign.
There are several ways to keep up with your competitors’ techniques.
Here are eight steps to find out what your competitors are doing in their online marketing:
1. Research who are your competitors
Finding your competitors does not have to be a complicated process. One of the easiest ways is to search on Google.
For instance, if your company gives out certifications as personal trainers, you can enter that or similar phrases.
I typed in “best personal trainer certification” as an example, and Google came up with these results:
With this simple search, you can find articles that list who the other similar service providers are, or you may find the sites of your competitors themselves.
2. Track their social media activity
It’s also good to track your competitor’s activity on social media as it contains helpful marketing information.
You can look through their social media profiles or use social media listening tools like Advoria.
In your dashboard, you can find updates on mentions from which social networking site.
You can also click on the dashboard to see activity reports for your company and your competitor for easy comparison.
Awario provides large amounts of data and insight. In different graphical presentations, it runs analytics on mentions, reaches, language, country, sentiment, and more.
3. Analyze their SEO performance
Any seasoned marketer can confirm how targeting the right keywords can make or break your marketing strategies.
Choosing the right keywords can help you reach your potential customers, rank highly in SERPs, know the profitability of your brand, and discover how your competitor is faring.
Tools like Ahrefs can help you unearth your competitor’s keyword strategies. Type in their domain name, and Ahrefs shows an overview of the results.
As an example, I used “example.com”
The tool revealed the number of organic keywords for the website. Besides the keywords used, Ahrefs also shows further information, such as monthly volume and the web page’s position in ranking for organic searches.
Once you determine the keywords your competitors are targeting for optimization, you can improve or recreate your SEO strategy.
Don’t use the exact keywords if there is a big difference in online visibility and size between you and your competitor(s). Sometimes you have to go after long-tail keywords initially as you are growing and trying to bring in traffic as a smaller competing site.
You can, however, take note of those keywords for your marketing schemes. We know that it can be difficult for you to develop an SEO strategy or use these advance level tools. However, you can hire the Columbus SEO Company to implement SEO.
4. Check out their websites and enable alerts
This strategy may seem over-simplified, but it can provide useful information about their online marketing habits and successes.
Search your competitor on Google, and read through their title, domain name, and meta-description. Check out the tone, words, style, and elements present, such as their Call-To-Action (CTA). A site Backlinko does a great job telling you who they are what they are good at doing with their search listing.
When you visit their website, you can see new product discounts and releases, appearance updates, categories, and many more help sales information acting as superb CTAs.
It’s also helpful to track alerts about your competitor through Google Alerts.
When you start tracking your competitor’s alerts, Google will notify you of any new content about or by your competitor. Be sure to use their name, URL, and any important products or people associated with them. You may also consider adding your brand or company name to keep tabs on what the Internet is “saying” about your company.
5. Study their content strategy
Studying your competitors’ content strategy helps you find out what ideas and techniques work for them.
As you spy on their content, find out the following:
What are the topics they focus on?
What kind of content do your competitors frequently post about? Is it digital marketing, e-commerce, cybersecurity, or others?
What are the style and formats used?
Do they write more informal content, personal opinion, or educational guides? That determines if they take on a casual and friendly tone or a professional, technical one. There will likely be a mix, but see what serves them better overall.
What is the type of content that works best for them?
Do they post only narrative content, or do they also embed photos, videos, and interactive assets? Which type do they capitalize on?
The answer to these questions can help you compare and decide how to introduce content to your site and what your blog should look like. You do have a blog, don’t you?
Remember also that content is king. Businesses commonly use compelling marketing content (with CTAs) to increase sales.
If you find your competitors’ content better, you might consider hiring the Columbus digital marketing agency with marketing professionals to help you.
Conclusion
Here’s a recap of the five ways to spy on your competitors:
- Research on who your competitors are.
- Track their social media activity.
- Analyze their SEO performance.
- Check out their websites and enable alerts.
- Study their content strategy.
Leveraging these ways should provide sufficient insight into improving your marketing campaign once you apply them.
