Monitoring the efforts of your competitors is exceptionally vital when you formulate your marketing strategies. Finding out how everything works for your competition enables you to be proactive and gain insight into the content that increases customer retention and engagement. It allows you to know what you need to do to cater to your niche’s broader needs and demands.
Your marketing team can utilize tons of online tools to dig deeper into a competitor content analysis and monitor their strategy. However, not every analytical tool out there will be sufficient enough to provide you a complete analysis of your competitor’s efforts. In this article, we will impart some ways that will allow you to keep track of your competition and what they are doing to improve their marketing efforts. You can find some of them listed down below:
1. Review Your Competitor’s Top Performing Content
Companies can learn about their competitor’s strategies by reviewing their best customer engaging content. One of the easiest and best metrics to evaluate your competitor’s efforts is by looking at their Social media shares. Different tools can help you find a top-performing clog post on a particular subject.
These tools dig deeper into every blog post and article. It gives you an analysis of the keywords they use, their total social shares, article length, and much more. Based on such insight, companies can know what makes their competitor’s content so popular and compelling. For example, they can get to know what solutions the content offers and what keywords it targets. Researching top-performing will allow you to develop new ideas and create new, improved topics for your content.
2. Keep an Eye on Social Media Presence
Nowadays, most companies are usually active on multiple social media platforms, giving you an excellent opportunity to track and monitor what they are doing. Sure, you can use the best competitor analysis tools out there. But nothing will provide you the best result other than watching their social media activity.
You can keep a close eye on them by following their social media accounts and turning on notifications if they post anything new. Amongst various indicators, you can observe their post’s tone, the type of images they post, and their marketing strategy’s overall effectiveness. Suppose a competitor shares a particular kind of content and sees thousands of likes and shares. In that case, you might want to go with a similar approach. Who knows, what worked for your competitor might end up working for you as well.
3. Identify the Type of Keywords They Target
Selecting the right type of keywords for your online content will dramatically increase your website’s chances of ranking high on search engine results. By doing a competitor analysis for keywords, you will know which ones see the most engagement and drive traffic towards your competitor’s website.
For example, you can use various online tools to find your competitor’s top-performing keywords, proficiency, and search volume. The specific keywords that drive traffic and are less competitive will enable you to target new engaging keywords with every new piece of content you create.
4. Keep Track of Any Changes to Your Competitor’s Website
Another effective way to monitor your competition is by keeping track of any changes they make to their website in terms of design and content. For example, your marketing team needs to know if a competitor launches a new service or product while tracking their approach to their content. It is crucial to analyze the overall content experience they provide to customers.
What fonts and colors they use? The way they organize their website’s content? Is this information easily accessible? You would want to know the way your competitor delivers content and ensure that you can give your audience a better experience.
5. Analyze Our Competitor’s Video Content
According to a recent study by Cisco, by the end of 2021, 81 percent of all internet traffic will be through video. Many brands now incorporate video in their general content marketing strategy. And you need to check for their video content’s interactions. These include comments, shares, views, and likes.
Engagement can be a good indicator when it comes to content performance. You should always check which of your competitor’s videos are getting the most likes and shares. Once you know which ones are, evaluate the keywords they use in the video’s meta description, title, or anything noteworthy. Companies should also subscribe to their competitor’s Youtube channel if they want to get receive whenever their competitor posts a new video.
6. Monitor Your Competitor’s Email
According to B2B magazine, around 59 percent of marketers state that email is the best and most effective medium for increasing revenue. As such, your marketing department should always be on top of it. And monitor the emails your competitors send to their customers and prospects. A good practice is to subscribe to their emailing list or website using your email address. Sure, it might seem sneaky at first, but the business world is cutthroat, and you need to search for small wins from anywhere. Just ensure that your email address doesn’t contain your company’s name to be more discreet.
When you do this, your marketing team will learn more about your competitor’s seasonal campaigns, type, and frequency of content publication, culture, business news. And also how they fulfill their target audience’s unique needs and demands.
7. Participate in Your Competitor’s Webinars
Around 62 percent of content marketers worldwide utilize webinars in their general content strategy. Webinars allow you to provide a detailed look into a specific subject or topic. Through this, you can know your competitor’s target audience’s interests and demands. Webinars typically consist of a question and answer session, so you must stick around to hear what the audience asks your competitors.
You can gather insight and answer those questions way before your audience through your online content. You can also create new topics or subjects for your content based on your competitor’s information.
Conclusion
There are multiple ways through which marketers or business owners can monitor their competitors. And doing so will allow them to develop new ideas and strategies that will continue to evolve and grow along with their business. More brands and companies enter the market. They should always be willing to change their strategy if they want to stay up-to-date and relevant in today’s challenging and competitive marketplace.