Tracking competitors is a great way to maximize your marketing results as a business owner. If you haven’t been keeping a close eye on your competitors, your company may not be reaching its full potential. Monitoring competitor performance has many advantages that will help you grow your own business.
Why Should I Monitor My Competitors?
It’s essential to check up on rival companies frequently in order to stay competitive. You can gain benefits such as:
Getting Insights Into Their Marketing
Learning from others is the best way to successfully market your own business. If you keep an eye on your competitors’ social marketing campaigns, you’ll be able to see how online customers respond to their brand. Use their comments to fuel your own marketing plan. Throw out what they didn’t like and really promote strategies that got their attention.
Related: How to Tell If Your Brand Strategy Is Working
Finding Backlink Opportunities
For the best Google ranking, you’ll need a good number of backlinks from authoritative sources. The goal is to get more than your competitors, so you should do your research. You can use several tools, like Brand24, to help you find out what sites are linking to your competitors’ webpages. Backlink research will allow you to see what content is generating the most interest to help you decide what to create for your own website. This will improve your content strategy and give insight into your competitors’ SEO approach as well.
Earning Leads From Dissatisfied Customers
By monitoring your competitors online, you’ll be able to identify unhappy customers right away. Come up with a solution for their issues with your rival and offer it up to the customer in a helpful and professional manner. This is an easy way to gain more clients and more revenue for your business.
Related: Customer Loyalty and Customer Retention
How Do I Monitor Them?
Now that you know why you should monitor your competitors, you might be wondering how to do so. The following methods will help you track them effectively.
Related: Brand Reinvention Tips from Your Competition
Use Tools to Check Their Keyword Targeting
Invest in a tool like SpyFu to uncover the keywords your competitors are using to target searchers. You’ll also be able to access the keyword phrases that they didn’t use, so be sure to incorporate those keywords into your own strategy. Follow up with an SEO ranking tool, such as AccuRanker, to track their progress against yours. This tool will also give you insight into how your competitors are performing online with your target keywords. If they are outranking you, it’s a good idea to visit their website to see what content might be helping them rank and adjust yours as necessary.
Browse Their Sites Often
You should be aware when your competitors are changing content. Sign up for available newsletters and keep up with their latest blog posts. This will help you stay informed of what is performing well among customers and give you ideas for content to create for your own website.
Check Social Media Activity
By looking at your competitors’ social media performance, you’ll be able to get a good sense of what appeals to their customers. Keep track of what people are commenting on and sharing by setting up your own personal Facebook or Twitter account and liking or following your competitors’ pages. This is a cheap and easy way to keep tabs on what customers want to see so that you can reach them effectively via your own social media channels.
Related: 7 Strategies for Protecting Your Brand Online and Offline
Taking some time to analyze your competitors could pay off in a big way. Use these tips to get started, and you may find more customers and increased profits for your business.
