When it comes to digital marketing, keeping track of what your competitors are doing is essential. Keeping an eye on competition not only lets you be aware of what they are up to but it also lets you understand how you can improve your own marketing techniques. We list down 8 ways to track, analyze and monitor the competition to improve your digital marketing campaigns.
1. Content: You can learn a lot about content marketing if you take a look at what your competitors are publishing. You will understand how effective your competitors are in content publishing. When you study their articles, you understand what type of content they tend to create specifically and which ones their audience likes.
Monitoring these activities will help you to realize if there is any gap in your content and if so, how you can improve. Sign up to their mailing lists and follow every post that they publish (set an alert or subscribe to their RSS Feed).
2. Design: How often have you picked up a book with a plain cover? Chances are, never. The very first thing that catches our eye whenever we read is the way it has been presented. In many cases, content goes viral not because it is well written but because of the way it has been presented. So, take a look at how your competitor’s content has been designed, specifically the ones that have been performing exceptionally well. If possible take a look at their designers’ profiles to understand the design tools they use.
3. Traffic: A major reason for increased revenue for online businesses and organizations is the website/app traffic. If you notice your competitors landing up with more traffic, you know that they are doing something right. You can assess other websites’ traffic using various tools like SimilarWeb. These tools can help identify the source of traffic and it’s a wise decision to invest in the traffic yielding directories, blogs and other such sources that have yielded traffic for your competition.
4. Backlinks & SEO: Using simple SEO tools, you can find out which websites are redirecting traffic to your competitors. You can now plan which websites to approach for backlinks. If they have agreed to backlink your competitors, there seems to be no reason why they should not backlink your company’s website. In a similar fashion, you will be able to determine the keywords that they are using so that you can take on the competition head-on.
5. Branding: Brand consistency is the foremost rule of branding, and it is more than just establishing a logo. Digital marketing largely revolves around establishing your brand and letting every piece of marketing material complement each other as part of the same brand. Taking a cue from what your competitors are doing will help you understand how they are establishing their brand identity on a digital platform. The way they are projecting their brand and customers are exhibiting their brand loyalty thereafter, will reveal a lot about their branding process. Effective branding will lead to brand loyalty amongst customers as well, which will boost your sales.
6. Customer Base: Competitors selling the same products as you are will be targeting the customer base that is most likely to buy that product. If your sales are dipping, take a cue from their customer base and target the same audience to boost sales and build a bigger customer base.
How to find their customer base? Simple, everyone likes to brag about their customers. Look at the names of their clients on their website, media mentions about customer acquisitions, case studies and customer interviews. Scan their social media profiles to find happy and unhappy customers. If your competitor is losing customers, you can analyze the reason for such a phenomenon and can use that to your advantage. Once you realize what is wrong with their marketing techniques, you can launch your own campaign with better services and lure customers with what you have to offer.
7. Customer Service: Customers are the only reason for your company’s survival and it is best that you cater to their every need. Learn how your competitors are dealing with their customers and what complaints their customers have so you can keep them in mind and not repeat them in your services so that your customers are pleased.
8. Originality: Whatever you do, you will realize that originality is the key. Whether it is a competitor or an industry leader, you will realize that in order to make your company a success, you will have to be original. You can take ideas from your competitors, but you cannot copy them under any circumstances.
How to Monitor Competition?
Use Google Alerts
You can use one of Google Alerts to get notified whenever your competition is mentioned online. This will essentially help you monitor updates and news about competitors and keep a tab on them. Google Alerts automatically sends out email alerts whenever Google detects new content on a topic that interests you. You can obviously choose the frequency of alerts as per your convenience. Mailing Lists/RSS Feeds
Subscribing to your competitor's mailing list or RSS feeds will also help you keep track of the content, new offers, and features that are being introduced by them. What other ways do you deploy to improve your digital marketing? Let us know.