While stalking is not generally recommended, in the name of marketing, it is a grand idea and one we recommend to all of our clients. Let me clarify… we don’t mean hiding in people’s bushes or being a creeper. We mean... Stalking or spying on your competitors’ marketing strategies and following their social media campaigns is not only encouraged, but to not “stalk” them, leaves you at a disadvantage and uninformed on how to compete. Technically, we call this kind of stalking, competitive analysis, and frankly, it is marketing 101.
What kind of information should you look for?
Google Them
Search Google for mentions of your competitor. You can utilize Google alerts to get basic monitoring of your competition. It will notify you of your competition’s mentions online. Read all the pages that mention the business’s name in their content. Find out any articles and news they have been linked to, and to see if they are partnered up with any other businesses. This helps you to reevaluate your own connections and how you are faring against the competition. Find out where their brand is getting mentioned and think about how you can get mentioned across industries, social platforms, and in the media.
Keywords
It is important to determine what keywords/phrases they are using or buying to get their content seen. Go to their website and look at the content they have linked to their website. Look for common repetitive words they are using in their content. There are a number of SEO tools to help you compare. SpyFu is a good one to see what your competitors are ranking for and to determine what keywords you can rank for that your competition isn’t using. You can then implement those same keywords for search engine optimization of your own content. When consumers do a search using those keywords, not only will your competition’s content come up, but now your content will too!
Website Traffic
There are a number of spying tools, like Alexa, which allow you to determine how your competition’s website is comparing with your website by their engagement numbers and traffic. You can find out where the traffic comes from for their site and your website. Alexa allows you to track changes in traffic from day-to-day and gives you an overall picture of your competitor and the success of their website.
Social Media
Because social media campaigns help us and our competitors to build brand awareness, improve engagement, and even generate more sales, analysis of your competitors’ campaigns yield huge dividends. Find out which platforms your competitors are using, determine which ones are performing well and where they have their most engagement, evaluate their content including the responses and comments. Look at which types of content get the most traffic (videos, ads, etc…) and look at the demographic; use all the information to guide you in your choices of platforms and content.
Checking out your competition’s marketing strategy is good business. Competitive analysis allows you to know your competition, see what’s out there, get inspiration (for the good and the not so good) and helps you to fine tune your marketing strategies — to weed out the bad and incorporate the good. So, get out there and spy; it’s good business.