7 Shortcuts to Monitor Competitors and Always Stay Ahead of the Game

Want to win over the hearts of your prospects and ensure scalable growth for your business? Then learn how to outdo the competition first!

Today, rivalry is tough in all industries, and to win you need a competitive advantage. Therefore, success in the modern business landscape is nearly impossible if you don’t monitor competitors. 

Keeping an eye on other players in your niche gives you the chance to see how well your business stands among the rest, identify gaps, find areas for improvement, and learn how to stand out from the crowd. Read on, and this guide will tell you what competitor tracking is, why it matters, and how to use it to always stay one step ahead!

What Is Competitor Analysis?

It is a strategy that implies identifying other companies in your niche, monitoring their activities (such as marketing campaigns, website updates, content, etc.), analyzing their tactics, and anticipating their future moves. Simply put, it’s the process of watching and assessing your business rivals for the success of your own brand.

These days, it’s crucial for every business to monitor competitors. First and foremost, this tactic enables you to gain a better understanding of your industry, target customers and learn marketing do’s and don’ts.

It turns out that competition is good for success. It brings a healthy motivation to do better and delivers insights to do so. For example, it will help you make better, more strategic decisions in terms of pricing, processes, promotions, etc.

Also, this strategy will help you determine your rivals’ gaps and weak points so that you can improve your own strategies. And it also helps you benchmark your own performance against other industry players and, thus, gain an advantage.

All in all, when done right, this tactic can help you stay at the head of the race and build a profitable business.

Competitor Analysis Directions to Include in Your Monitoring

Now that you know what competitor tracking is and why it matters for your business, you must be wondering how to handle it on your own.

To gain the best outcomes, it’s important to understand that your rivals’ performance consists of many different factors. Thus, you need to base your monitoring around several key directions:

Product or Service Analysis

When assessing other players in your field, you first need to take a closer look at their products or services. What exactly do they offer? How do they price their products or services? What audience groups are they reaching? What is the quality of their products or services? And what kind of technology and tools do they use to build their products?

Answering these questions will help you understand what exactly your competitors are selling and how they do it. That will give you a wealth of handy insights, enabling you to make more data-driven decisions in terms of your own products/services, prices, and so on.

SEO Strategy

We all know that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the primary drivers of business success in the 21st century. SEO helps companies increase their online visibility, drive quality website traffic, and, respectively, secure more sales. That’s why analyzing other players’ SEO strategies is another important stage.

Study your rivals’ keyword strategies to see what queries they are targeting in their SEO campaigns. Also, study their backlink strategies. And pay attention to what pages they work on the most actively to achieve higher rankings in search engines.

To make things easier, try using the SEO competitor checker by SE Ranking. It is one of the handiest competitor monitoring tools that can give you a 360-degree view of other businesses’ strategies, including their:

• Traffic;
• Keywords;
• Backlinks;
• Global metrics;
• Ads;
• And more.

Email Marketing

On average, email marketing helps companies make $38 on every dollar they spend. This ROI is significantly higher than what many other marketing channels can offer. So despite the wide selection of channels and tactics available today, email is still a big thing. The cost of email marketing is relatively low, and potential to follow up on customers, stay in touch with leads and subscribers is very scalable. Therefore, it’s one more analysis direction that should definitely be included in your tactic.

Subscribe to your rivals’ newsletters to study and assess them. This will help you see what email marketing tactics, routines, and tricks other companies in your niche are using. Collecting these insights should help you find the right tactics for your own email marketing strategy.

On top of that, following your rivals’ newsletters will help you stay updated on their news, product launches, new features, etc. This is one more tool you can use in your analysis.

PPC Ads

Although email marketing, social media, SEO, and other advertising techniques are trending today, paid ads are still there and still effective. PPC ads let you fill in the gaps and perfectly target your ads to the right prospects. So if you want to be one step ahead, it is also a good idea to watch how other companies handle their paid campaigns.

Determine which of your rivals are using PPC ads as a part of their tactics. Study what lending pages they are generating traffic for and what keywords they are targeting in their campaigns. Finally, analyze their cost per click to see how well PPC ads work for others in your niche and tweak your own strategy for greater results.

Social Media 

These days, social media should take a special place in your competitor analysis. According to the Digital 2023 April Global Statshot Report by DataReportal, the number of active social media users this year is 4.80 billion, which is nearly 60% of the world’s population. The use of social media keeps growing, which means it inevitably affects consumers’ buying habits. Now, more and more people are buying based on recommendations from social media or right from their favorite platforms. So when assessing your rivals, be sure to pay attention to their social media presence.

Watch other companies in your field on different social channels to learn:

• How they talk to their consumers;
• What information they share;
• Which topics perform best for them, etc.

All this data should help you hone your social media strategy and win over your target audience.

Content Strategy

Earlier, we mentioned the importance of tracking other companies’ search engine optimization efforts. It’s worth noting that SEO and content strategy go hand-in-hand, so it’s also crucial to pay attention to the content your competitors share.

While studying your competitors’ websites, blogs, and social media, pay special attention to their content. Check out which topics they cover and how they balance out informative and marketing content. Analyze their tone of voice, content length, keywords, and other specs that make their content stand out.

Most importantly, pay attention to your rivals’ most shared content. When there are plenty of likes, shares, and comments, it’s a clear sign that a specific kind of content works well for your industry. This will help you define the right direction for your content strategy.

Customers and Awareness

Finally, if you want to monitor competitors to the fullest, you should study their customers and what they think about a particular company. To do this, read customer reviews. Try to understand what customers love and hate the most about a specific company. How happy are they with the provided service?

Also, assess your rivals’ brand voice and the value they bring to their clients. All this information will help you find your unique selling points and gain a significant advantage over the rest in your field.

The Bottom Line

These days, if you don’t monitor your competitors, you could miss out on a wealth of opportunities. Watching and assessing your business rivals will help you see their strong and weak points and find areas for improvement in your own strategies.

Luckily, after reading this guide, you have everything you need to succeed. Use the competitor monitoring tools and tips from this article to keep an eye on other players in your field and level up your own game!