In today’s age, you have to gain every competitive advantage possible. That is why instead of just developing your strategies, you have to also keep a watch on your competitors. When you consistently monitor your business competitors, it is easy to stay ahead of the competition. Many businesses think that monitoring competition is a waste of time. It is not true at all.
We will today highlight a few tools which you can use to monitor your competitors but also help you understand the importance of the same.
What is the advantage of using online tools to monitor competitors?
These days there are various online tools which facilitate the monitoring of competition. Before you start using these tools, let us look at some of the advantages of the same.
- Understanding the strategy of your competition:
Once you use these tools, you can easily understand the marketing strategy of your competition. You can keep a watch on the new moves taken by your competition.
- Gaining insights on new products and services:
Many times, when you’re not able to keep pace with the developments in your industry, it is wise to keep a watch on your competition. If you’re in a fast developing field, monitoring your competitors will let you know about the latest products and services which are doing well. It will allow you to expand your business without having to go through the entire trial and error process.
- Knowing the weak links of your competitor:
By monitoring your competitors, you can identify the verticals which they are not focusing on. You can then take a niche appeal and gain more business in those verticals. It will allow you to gain the upper hand over the competition.
- Gaining customers at their expense:
Every business has unhappy customers. When you monitor your competition, you can know more about the people who post negative reviews for their business. You can then win them over with your business strategies. It will allow you to reduce your customer acquisition cost and get a lifetime customer.
These are the four primary reasons why you should always use online tools to monitor your competition.
Using reverse phone lookup to monitor competitors:
Once you understand the importance of watching your competitors, you might want to know about the tools which you can use for the same. One of the most versatile and useful tools to use is the phone number search like Spokeo. The phone number search will help you find a lot of information about your competition. You can get information like:
- Name and address of your competitor
- Additional phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Location and address history
It will help you conduct necessary due diligence on your competitor. After that, using the email addresses, you can once again use Spokeo to monitor their social media activity.
It will allow you to gain more insights into the marketing strategy of your competitor. That is why reverse phone lookup tools like Spokeo are one of the best options which you have when it comes to monitoring your competition.
Additional competitor monitoring tools
You can also use a few extra tools like:
- Google Alerts:
Google alerts will allow you to create specific alerts which let you know about new articles, pages on your competitor’s website. It also alerts you whenever a press release mentions your competitor. Thus, not only you will know about his/her marketing strategy but also the updates which your competitors make on their website.
- Ahrefs:
Ahrefs is particularly useful when you want to know about the digital marketing strategy of your competitor. Ahrefs is helpful to monitor the SEO efforts of your competition. You can also keep a watch on their backlinks. It will provide you with information regarding:
- Competitor backlinks
- Competitor keywords
- Competitor’s Paid advertising and much more
You can add your competitor’s website to the ranking console which will help you monitor their progress consistently. In a single instance, you can know the entire marketing strategy of your competition.
- Spyfu:
SpyFu helps you discover the PPC marketing campaigns of your competitor. You can then use similar keywords to create your advertising campaigns and gain an edge over your competition.
If you build your business campaign from scratch, it will cost you hundreds of dollars in research. When you directly choose the effective keywords for your competition, you can save these hundreds of dollars and build a profitable campaign right away.
- WhatRunsWhere:
WhatRunsWhere helps you discover that ad placements of your competitors on any platform. It will also help you monitor the new advertisements for your competitor.
- BuzzSumo:
Buzzsumo will help you analyze the best performing content for your competition. It means that you can quickly know what is working for your competition. Since you are in the same industry, you can outperform them by building a better strategy.
It allows you to monitor all the data and also the data of the past 24 hours which is a definite advantage. You can even contact the influencers who share the content of your competitor. It will help you gain social shares easily which will, in turn, make it easy for you to get more traction for your website.
Conclusion
So, instead of ignoring your competition, you can use Spokeo and other such tools online to keep a watch on them. When you do so, it is easy for you to build a proper strategy.
Using that strategy, you can edge past your competition and increase your bottom line exponentially. It will help you emerge as a dominant force in your industry rather than just another player.
Bio
Olga Andriichuk works as the content manager at Spokeo. Her field of expertise includes business, marketing, and personal growth. In her spare time, she enjoys yoga classes and exploring new destinations.