Let's talk about a topic that, frankly, some marketers are a little uncomfortable with.
Competition.
No matter what industry you're in, marketing is a race for your audience's attention. With so many marketing channels available today, this competition is often fierce.
Think about it.
Competing for traffic, ad placement, followers and sales. The list goes on and on. And while the idea of conducting competitive analysis isn't particularly "fun", it is absolutely necessary.
Why competitive analysis tools are essential
But the good news? There are many competitor analysis tools that can help you quickly and efficiently assess how you stack up against your top competitors.
And with the right tools on deck, you can spend less effort fumbling with your competitors and more time.strictly speakingMarketing.
Instead of spending a lot of time spying on your competitors, why not let some smart tools do the legwork for you?
We've compiled a comprehensive list of competitive analysis tools to help you:
- Competitive analysis tools for social media
- Competitor Analysis Tools for SEO
- Competitive Content Analysis Tools
- Competitive analysis tools for email, ads and industries
1.Scion Social
With social media ranks theChannel #1 to connect with customers, there is no better starting point for competitive analysis.
Sprout Social allows you to understand your competitors' social media performance from multiple angles and data points.
You can use sproutsCompetition Report Seriesto measure and optimize your social strategy with rich data points that you can track across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Whether you want to take a quick look at your competitors' posts or compare their growth to the average of profiles compared, everything is just a click away, minus tedious manual research and confusing spreadsheets.
Improve your analytics game with Sprout's premium analytics tool, which offers deeper insights into your social platforms, along with interactive charts and graphs that you can customize to meet your goals.
Sprout offers the sameCompetitive analysis on Instagramfor.
And with Sprout you can dive even deeperAdvanced HearingTool.
VonTap publicly available social conversationsyou can quickly find out what consumers think about your competitors' products and services, and examine your own voting share in your industry.
We use listeningunderstand what is being said about us on social media,and even more so on the web, for example B. in blog posts and forums. We also follow what is being said about our competitors and the manufacturers we have in stock. We then take all of that information and use it in our quarterly social media strategies to determine how to tailor content that we think our audience might be interested in.
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With direct access to consumer sentiment, Sprout makes it easy to identify opportunities to differentiate your brand from the competition.
2.phalanx
This Instagram Engagement Calculator will show you how active the followers of a specific account are. This is a great feature to analyze your competitor's presence on Instagram. In addition, it also serves to know if an influencer has a legitimate following or not.
The Phlanx Engagement Rate is calculated based on the number of followers an account has compared to the rate at which followers engage with the content (likes, comments, etc.).
For example,Trader Joeshas an engagement rate of 2.56%. This is a fair score for a larger brand that posts regularly.
But compare that with those ofDennys, known for its cult-like social following and rabid fans:
This score isn't the beginning of a brand's Instagram presence, but it does offer some much-needed perspective.
To takeAdidas, for example, one of the most followed accounts out there. They get an insane amount of engagement on their posts, but it's small compared to their massive follower count.
That speaks to a bigger pointCompetitive analysis on social media. Context is important. It's easy to get caught up in the follower count, but engagement is arguably a much more important metric.
3.social blade
A fun tool to try on bigger brands is Social Blade. Among other things, it evaluates the number of followers on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. While it's often used to gauge the popularity of celebrities and YouTubers, here's some interesting information for marketers.
For example, Twitter's competitor analysis applies a “grade” based on the average number of retweets and likes.
Perhaps most notably, Social Blade offers a daily follower update, as well as a live follower count.
Another cool feature is the ability to stack brands' social presences against each other.
Competitor Analysis Tools for SEO
4.SEMRush
SEMRush is one of the most usedSEO Toolsin the market, but its competitive analysis capabilities set it apart from the crowd. For starters, you can use SEMRush to get your competitors' backlinks and monitor changes in your rankings.
Here is an example dashboard after running a domain analysis forFreeCodeCamp:
And here's the part of the analysis that gives you an overview of who is competing for your keywords:
This is an invaluable tool for understanding who your competition is from a pure SEO perspective. Likewise, highlighting which keywords your competition is targeting directly influences your own content strategy.
5.Ahrefs
Another essential competitor analysis tool for SEO is Ahrefs.Site-Explorer, which lets you check the top organic keywords for any URL. It also provides a rough estimate of how much traffic a competitor is getting for those keywords.
It's also easy to review a site's top-performing content based on backlinks (instead of shares). This information will show what kind of products or messages work best for a brand.
In addition to top-performing content, measure which keywords are driving the most traffic to a competitor's site.
The cafeteria here? Your competitor's traffic doesn't have to be a guessing game when you regularly generate your own reports.
6.MozBar
This Moz browser extension gives you a high-level overview of how trustworthy a website is in the eyes of Google. Based on Moz's own metricdomain authority(DA) MozBar assigns websites a DA score based on their likelihood of ranking in search engines (based on factors such as backlinks). The higher the DA score, the better.
The MozBar that resides in your browser is a useful tool for quickly determining a website's potential search performance.
With this option enabled, you'll also see how competing sites perform in a Google query.
With MozBar, you can perform a kind of passive competitive analysis as you scan competing sites to find out how long they've been around and whether or not they're gaining backlinks.
Competitor Analysis Tools for Content
7.Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo lets you preview top-performing content for topics relevant to your brandEcertain competitors. The tool examines a piece of content's engagement on social sites, as well as its overall shares across the web.
Not only does this give you an indication of who is doing well in terms of industry content, but it also helps you identify potentially hot topics to explore on your own.
Whether you're looking for influential people in your industry or just a new blog post idea, Buzzsumo offers definitive answers.
8.Similarweb
Similarweb is an insanely comprehensive tool for content and SEO. The tools help you dig deeper into your competitors' content and where their traffic is coming from.
For example, you can determine a website's referral traffic and also where a website sends its visitors.
More importantly, for content marketers, see what topics visitors are looking for and what other relevant sites they visit.
9.Feedly
If you're looking for a way to keep up with a competitor's content without constantly checking their blog, look no further than Feedly.
Feedly is a content aggregator that stores and organizes content as it is published, including that of its competitors. This allows you to see important topics covered by your competitors on one page.
Competitive analysis tools for email, ads and industries
10.mail graphics
Email marketing is arguably one of the most boring channels for competitive analysis.
With that in mind, Mailcharts collects emails from competing campaigns to influence yours. In addition to capturing subject lines, Mailcharts pulls in data like sending frequency and compares it to your company's campaigns to see how your emails are performing.
Plus, the tool compares your campaigns against its own massive library of marketing emails to ensure you're following best practices (think: timing, frequency, subject line length, etc.).
Not only is Mailcharts a powerful competitive analysis tool, but their website offers a ton of it.email samplesto draw inspiration. Looking at some of the biggest campaigns out there will give you a better idea of what today's top performing emails look like.
11.owl letter
This tool automatically collects emails from competitors and organizes them into a simple, easy-to-use dashboard. Owletter's analysis detects changes in your competitors' email frequency and also captures trends to help you optimize when to send your own emails.
This represents an efficient and data-driven alternative to running a fake email account to spy on your competitors.
12.espionage
If you're interested in a competitor's paid ads, iSpionage is definitely for you. This tool looks at various aspects of PPC campaigns, including how many keywords a brand is targeting in AdWords:
Also, you can see what your target PPC keywords are.
You'll also see who else is competing for PPC ads on a given topic, in addition to your estimated monthly budget:
For brands considering PPC, this tool is essential for meeting realistic ad spend expectations.
13.Euler
Last but not least, this industry analytics tool uses community data to curate startup data and content relevant to your niche. Another tool reserved for bigger brands, enter brands to create your own custom panel of industry names to watch.
And that ends our list!
Quick Tips for Conducting Competitive Analysis
While each of these tools can effectively help you analyze your competitors, you also need to keep an eye on what's going on.afterYou run the numbers. Below is a sort of "final word" on how to make the most of each one.Competitive Intelligence Strategy.
Analyze your real competitors
It's no use trying to exceed your weight. A local coffee shop with 1,000 followers shouldn't blame itself for not having as many followers as Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts.
As already mentioned, context is important. Take a look at what the big players in your industry are doing. However, when assessing your competition, first focus on those that are most similar in size and size.target group.
Focus on metrics first
When looking at competitors, it's tempting to focus on what's new.
However, it makes more sense to take a data-driven approach to analysis first. Try to get as many metrics as possible before trying to break down the “why” of your marketing.
For example, how often do your competitors release new content? What is the ratio of advertising to non-advertising posts? What are the best performing keywords and hashtags?
The answers to these questions are arguably just as important as understanding a person's messages.
Turn analytics into action
Finally, make sure the uncovered data translates into some sort of action.
Perhaps, based on your research, you'll discover a new set of keywords to target in your content. Perhaps you haven't pushed your content enough based on your competitors' activity.
Either way, the ultimate goal of competitive analysis is to improve your own marketing strategy. The more information you get from competitors, the better.
What competitive analysis tools do you use?
Competitive analysis is a crucial part of fine-tuning your marketing strategy. By using the right tools, you can get your analysis done quickly and spend more time focusing on your own efforts.
So how often do you spy on your competition? Are there any tools that you consider essential for carrying out competitive analysis? Let us know in the comments below.