If you’re running a business or selling a product, you will most likely run into competition.
All brands worth their salt have competitors. It’s nothing to worry about. You should worry if you don’t have competitors because that could indicate something wrong with your product.
So if you have competition, it’s a great sign but you shouldn’t stop there. Your competition is likely doing something you aren’t doing that works.
You can learn from them but you won’t find out until you spy on their activities. However, don’t fear because this is less nefarious than it sounds.
We’re not telling you to copy everything they do. Think of it as borrowing or taking inspiration from your competitors so you have a leg up.
Thanks to them, you can improve your products and branding and even make the customer journey better for your target market.
What information can you get from competitors and what should you do about them?
Keep on reading.
Spy On Your Competition In 8 Steps
- Subscribe to their newsletters
- Follow them on social media
- Navigate their website and pretend to be a customer
- Monitor brand mentions
- Check what software and tools they use
- Look into their website traffic
- Go over their SEO
- Spy on your competitors’ ads
- What do I do with this information?
- Ask yourself what your competitors are doing better.
- Assess what your competitors are doing wrong or worse than you.
- Determine your company’s edge over the competition.
- Marketing Tools to Spy on Your Competition
- Monitor Your Competitors with Competitor Analysis Tools
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Is it illegal to spy on competitors?
- Why should competitors be monitored?
How to Spy On Your Competition - 8 Proven Techniques
Subscribe to their newsletters
An easy way to spy on your competitors is to sign up to their mailing list.
This is where you should start to get a feel for the content they’re putting out and their marketing strategy.
Brands use email campaigns to connect with their audience on a deeper level. They also put out updates, new releases, and announcements via email so it’s an important medium to keep track of.
Competitive analysis puts a spotlight on your business’s unique qualities. The goal is to borrow but not to copy outright.
Tools like Panoramata do this for you automatically, eliminating the need to subscribe to endless newsletters.
Follow them on social media
Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok–your competitors will be on one or more of these social media platforms and you should take note of what content they’re publishing there.
Social media is the top platform for building a relationship with customers so it should be part of your competitive analysis.
Platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social can help you do this automatically.
Navigate their website and pretend to be a customer
Mimic what a typical customer goes through when looking at a brand by going to your competitor’s website.
This will give you a clear idea of the buying experience they’ve laid out for their audience.
Check if the shopping experience is enjoyable, if they have perks like easy returns, and if their website is structured well.
To take it a step further, try to add an item to your cart and check out.
Take note of what payment methods are available and if they try to upsell or cross-sell other products. You might find an idea that you’ve yet to integrate into your customers’ shopping journey!
Monitor brand mentions
People talk online about brands they like and brands they’re dissatisfied with. Which camp do your competitors fall under?
Brands put their best foot forward on their social media, email campaigns, and website but people’s experiences might tell a different story.
Customers might complain about their support team not being responsive or share that they have a long and drawn-out returns process.
Improving on their weaknesses and matching their strengths can give your brand an edge over them.
You can set up Google Alerts or use specialized brand monitoring tools to track brand mentions so you don’t have to do this yourself manually.
Check what software and tools they use
Dig deeper and you might discover that your competitor is doing something better than you e.g. retargeting.
You encounter their ads everywhere but you don’t know how they do it. Or maybe you like their website’s checkout process or customer service and want to know what they’re using.
You can check what technology and software a brand uses easily with simple tools like Panoramata so you can implement it for your brand.
Look into their website traffic
Website traffic is another thing you should check because it can give you takeaways you can apply to your brand easily. The best thing? It’s not hard to check.
Tools like Panoramata and Similarweb will give you valuable insights like how their website is ranking among similar sites, how many visits they get, and where their traffic is coming from.
Are there trends you notice? Is there a spike in their popularity in recent months?
If so, you now know you need to improve your web presence and maybe advertise to relevant demographics that you’ve observed in their website traffic.
Go over their SEO
Organic traffic is highly sought after because it leads to more customers and website visitors.
Competitor analysis in SEO is crucial because you should know what backlinks or keywords your competition is using and how their pages are ranking.
Reshape your SEO strategy using this information to improve organic traffic. You can use tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush to gather this data.
Spy on your competitors’ ads
In the same vein, you should be aware of your competitors’ advertising campaigns as it’s a crucial piece of digital marketing.
Check out their social media ads and landing pages to see how they’re writing copy, the photos they’re using, and how they present social proof.
With advanced tools, you can even see where they’re advertising, what automation platforms they’re using, and where they’re putting their ads.
How can I spy on my competitor's ads and know what they are targeting?
Panoramata automatically tracks ads for you including Google Display, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube ads. Just look up your competitor on the platform and you can access their published and unpublished ads across multiple advertising platforms.
You can also see the landing pages that come with every ad, which gives you a holistic view of your competitor’s marketing funnel.
If you see that your competitor published a certain ad multiple times, that means that this ad is more effective than others in reaching their potential customers.
If you take notes from their popular ads, you’ll reduce time wasted on trial and error and implement tried-and-tested strategies.
What do I do with this information?
After you’ve done your spying on relevant businesses and competitors, you can put the pieces together and apply that information to your brand. Here are some points to guide you.
1. Ask yourself what your competitors are doing better
Analyze which areas your competitors are performing well at or doing better than you. What are they doing that you’re not implementing?
Be honest with yourself and see which areas you’re lacking in or can improve on. It could be sales metrics, subscribers, customer service, checkout flows, and repeat purchases.
2. Assess what your competitors are doing wrong or worse than you
Your business isn’t perfect and neither are your competitors. You can learn a lot from their mistakes and avoid repeating them. Use their experience to improve.
3. Determine your company’s edge over the competition
Competitive analysis puts a spotlight on your business’s unique qualities. The goal is to borrow but not to copy outright.
Consider your unique selling proposition and how you stack up against the competition’s value proposition.
Marketing Tools to Spy on Your Competition
Panoramata
Panoramata is a multi-faceted competitor tracking platform. You can monitor your competition in one platform and get unlimited inspiration for your ads, landing pages, and emails.
Track newsletters, social media ads, Google display ads, YouTube Ads, email flows, landing pages, website changes, tech stacks, and SMS. Create lists out of the creatives you find inspiring or want to save for later and share them with your team.
With Panoramata, you can save hours spent on manual tracking and research and use your time for what really matters.
Semrush
Semrush is an SEO marketing tool that provides competitors' SEO strategies, including keyword rankings, backlinks, and organic traffic.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content research and analysis tool that helps marketers discover the most popular content in their industry and track their competitors' content performance.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a SEO tool known for backlink analysis and competitor research features.
Builtwith
Builtwith is a website profiling tool to uncover technology stack and infrastructure used by any website.
Monitor Your Competitors with Competitor Analysis Tools
I hope this article helps you determine what information you can extract from your competitors’ online presence.
These eight techniques cover the basics but you shouldn’t stop here. See what other useful data you can use through Panoramata, your all-in-one competitor tracking platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it illegal to spy on competitors?
As long as you don’t violate laws or engage in fraudulent activities, spying on your competitor’s marketing campaigns is perfectly legal. Remember not to violate copyright laws or use false identities and credentials when doing competitive analysis. Instead, use competitive analysis tools that are regulated and do not break any laws.
Why should competitors be monitored?
Competitor monitoring helps you understand your market better and predict your competitor’s actions. The knowledge you collect can also improve your marketing strategy and help you avoid revenue loss.
