Competitor marketing is pretty much the obsession of every business owner out there. They want to know what the other guy is saying, doing and what is working. They also want to know what isn’t working, so they can swoop in and poach their customers (admit it, you do this any time you can).
But keeping up with the competition’s moves is hard and without the right tools you will never know if you are getting the full picture. Without the full picture, how can you take advantage of the data you have?
Here are seven tools to help you track, analyze and beat your competitors by gathering all the information you can and making an informed strategy that covers all the bases.
1. ClickCease: Beat Your Competitors’ Fraud Click Efforts
I am always amazed when I find out that these huge companies are using fake click services to drain your PPC budget. People can call it whatever they want, but we all know what it really is: click fraud.
ClickCease fights against it from the other side. Click fraud can begin to impact your brand when those bots find their way to your site and screw with your own numbers. Click Cease works by blocking those fake clicks from your site and so protects your PPC campaign.
2. Serpstat: Identify Keyword and Ranking Gap
Which queries are your competitors ranking for that you are missing? Are there any missed opportunities in your marketing strategy caused by poor site architecture? Where else can my site attract search traffic?
All of these questions can be answered by Serpstat’s Domain vs Domain tool. It’s highly visual and interactive and allows you to to dig deeper in your competitors’ ranking identifying their common keywords that your page are missing.
3. Spyfu: Monitor Your Competitors’ SEO and PPC Tactics
Spyfu is often cited as the most helpful keyword tool out there. Why? Because it literally spies on your competitor’s. It allows you to download a report of the most profitable keywords they are using and ads they have put out. You can examine the metrics and compare them to other keywords they are using, or your own.
Then you can create a better strategy for your own organic and paid search campaigns to compete with theirs. When I first heard about it I was skeptical, but having used it many times now I can honestly say this is a valuable tool that I couldn’t do without.
4. Buzzsumo: Monitor Your Competitors’ Content Marketing Efforts
Everyone knows and loves Buzzsumo so I won’t say too much about it. What I will say is that it is great to use for a more faceted approach to monitoring your competitors.
You can look at Most Shared, Trending, Backlinks, Content Analysis, Facebook Analyzer and Questions Analyzer. So you get more than just a basic idea of what is out there right now. You can see various angles for a better, more complete analysis.
5. Majestic: Monitor and Analyze Your Competitors’ Backlinks
How are your competitors build their backlinks? How do they get people talking? Is there an opportunity for you too? Or are there mistakes to learn from? Looking at your competitors’ backlinks is the best way to keep an eye on their marketing efforts and adjust your own.
Majestic is a great backlink analysis platform that also has a powerful competitor research functionality.
6. Sentione for Monitoring Your Competitors’ Brand Mentions
Sentione is a social listening platform. It works by scouring the social web for any mentions of your brand, so you can see what people are saying, interact with them and engage your audience.
Many brands will use Sentione to find complaints about products, as well. But you can go a step further by discovering what people are saying about competing brands. Do they have a need that isn’t being met? Your product to the rescue!
7. Kompyte: Watch Your Competitors’ Important Landing Pages
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could know the second your competitors made a change to their website? Or if they were announcing a new feature from their most popular product? Or they started a new marketing campaign?
Kompyte lets you monitor all of those things in real time so you know the second a change is made and can react accordingly. You can also watch their search ranking and even analyze their content in real time.
8. Owletter: Captures, Stores & Analyses Your Competitors Emails
I was skeptical about this tool because it seemed a little too good to be true. I have worked a long time in email campaigns and the ability to accurately analyze the other guys without scouring over it myself? It seemed doubtful.
But I was pleasantly surprised and found that Owletter is great for monitoring content campaigns in general. Plus at only $5 a month it is a steal.
Do you have a tool that belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments!