Competitive Intelligence Discovery
Online marketing is becoming increasingly competitive. Organic Search listings, Social Media Marketing and Pay per Click advertising are all competitive environments. In such a competitive environment, advantages can be created by monitoring the on-line activities of competitors. Competitors web sites, the social web and Press Releases are among some of the many ways competitors provide insight into their business strategies.
Keep a close eye on the stats
There are many services which can be used to gather competitor's information. However, much of the data collected will be an estimate. Estimates enable you to complete a comparative performance analysis of your competitor's to that of your own web site. When reviewing performance indicators be sure to compare information from the same source.
Identifying on-line competitors
Most businesses know who their competitors are however, on-line you may face competition from some unexpected sources. Finding your online competitors is easily accomplished by completing relevant keyword search using Search Engines, Social Media web sites and PPC Analytic services. Time spent researching on-line resources is time well spent.
Now you know who, investigate
When the competition has been identified you can then evaluate the competition to identify strategies and develop tactics to out perform the competition..
Get a feel for the competition
A visual inspection of web sites of interest is necessary to determine what business activities competitors are completing online. A few things to look for include:
- Professionalism of web design
- What business information and processes are available?
- About and other company information provided.
- Is the web site using a Blog? If so, how often is it updated?
- Are Social book marking icons provided? If so which Social book marking sites. How many times do they appear?
- Are Social Networking icons provided? If so which networking sites? review activity
- Is the web site offering new or trial services you were not aware of?
The tools of the trade
Google Alerts: Using Google Alerts lets you keep a close eye on competitors by receiving mention notification emails for keywords, brands, company names and named executives you've specified. The benefits of Google Alerts is you obtain information from various sources such as Blog Posts, a /Press Release or a Tweet.
Web Site Traffic Estimation: Determining actual traffic volumes of your competitor's web sites is not possible without access to web logs and Google Analytic /accounts. Since you're unlikely to be provided access to this data you must make do with estimates from service providers such as Alexa and Compete. It must be stressed that these are estimates only, but this data does provide useful information for comparison purposes.
Find Keywords and Phrases:
Identifying the keywords and phrases competitors are targeting assist to determine their product and service priorities and also may provide forewarning of new products or services about to be launched.
There are plenty of tools used to identify keywords. Google's Keyword tool provides an indication of competitors keywords by URL. Another tool is a Browser plug-in SeoQuake which also provides you with an inside look at competitors keywords plus other web development elements such as Page Titles and description tags.
There are a number of keyword investigation tools which target Pay per Click advertising campaigns. There are some very effective tools such as Keyword Spy and SpyFu. These tools provides in-depth analysis of keywords used, ad copy, cost per click paid, plus other reports to drill down and learn more about your competitors.
Social Media Marketing Activity
Social Media provides many opportunities to learn more about your competitors. Social Networking profiles, comments and discussions, Facebook and Twitter all provide information which can be used to gain competitive advantage.
Social Networking activity provides excellent insight into your competitors. Very active to little or no activity provides an insight into how competitors have embraced Social Media. A great deal can be learned about the company by reading Blogs, discussions and Tweets. There are many tools for monitoring Social Media and I use Ubervu. I can watch conversations by keywords, business names or management names. Ubervu is my preferred tool for Social Media monitoring.
And They Are Watching You
Of course the openness of the Internet provides the opportunity to get a closer look at your business. Being forewarned is being forearmed is an apt saying for this situation. Knowing the techniques available to you for monitoring competitors provides you with the information you need to develop strategies for the strategic release of information.
Does your business actively obtain competitive intelligence using competitor's online activity?
