Unlike others, I don’t believe that competition should be seen as a problem for your business. Almost every business, in any industry, faces competition in some form, and rather than seeing it as a plethora of problems, look at it as a stepping stone.
We know they are your competition and the goal is to be better than them. But there is always something that your competition is doing differently from you and until you know that, it is impossible for you to outgrow. That is why it is important to keep an eye on them.
Today, we will discuss how you can keep an eye on your competition’s marketing efforts and make use of the results for your own improvement.
1. Identify the Keywords they are missing and analyze performance
Whether it is for organic research or paid research, your success in any of it primarily depends upon the keyword you have targeted. Uncover the keywords your competition has targeted, and it will help you identify the untapped markets.
Once you have successfully identified the keywords, use an SEO ranking tool and track the progress of your competition against the keywords they have targeted. Then track your progress against the keywords you have targeted.
If they rank below you, congratulations you are already winning! But in case they are ranking above you, troubleshoot your SEO campaigns.
2. What is their content marketing game plan?
Content marketing forms a very important aspect of any overall marketing strategy, so you must keep a tap on it.
Check your competition’s most searched and popular content, track their content calendars, the types of content that they capitalize, compare it with your own, and do the required changes.
3. Keep track of their new links
During the advent of search engine trends, there wasn’t any way for you to know when your competition has acquired a new link, but now, there are innumerable tools that can even notify you via emails when your competition has been doing some solid link building.
Invest in these tools. Tracking new links is important because they keep you updated with your competition’s content marketing as well. You will also know about the new piece of content that has helped them create a position in the SERPs.
4. Don’t forget their social media
One of the most important aspects of today’s marketing scenario, social media marketing, has the power to impact any business positively or even negatively.
Every business nowadays puts special emphasis on their social media accounts, and the least you can do is to always keep an eye, by simply following or liking their pages.
This simple activity will give you access to their posts, help you understand what works, and what doesn’t. Monitor their content, and if needed, take help from tools that have been designed to help you learn and know about your competition’s social listening. Research about them and invest in the best there is!
5. Take Screenshots of your competitor’s activities
Social media marketing, and marketing on the whole, is quite a dynamic place. It is almost impossible to see and learn what your competition is creating, every hour of the day, manually.
For instance, the trend of stories on various social media platforms has become quite popular these days, but they get automatically deleted after 24 hours. So how can you keep track of what your competition has been posting? This is when Automating Screenshots using Stillio comes to the picture.
This tool helps you automate screenshots depending on your convenience and time. It positioned itself as a website archiving tool in the beginning but has evolved and grown itself to serve you various purposes.
Over to you…
Social media marketing has become a major part of today’s marketing plan, and with such huge numbers, like, currently over 3.78 billion users, that is 48% of the population is hooked onto social media, – the impact is all the more stronger.
Among all of this, creating successful marketing campaigns is almost impossible without hardcore competitor research – so make use of the above-mentioned strategies and you are sure to win!
