How To figure out what your competitors are doing better than you

Intro

The question goes thus: How do you figure out what your competitors are doing better than you?

And I say the answer is simple: Just Put a call through to them and ask them

LOL. That's a joke.

None of them are likely to be open with you about their little secret.

But not to worry, that's why we've got something called "competitor Analysis."

It's a set of calculated efforts to uncover your competitors' biggest strength and deepest secret.

Brace yourself. Competitor analysis isn't cherry and cheese. It requires a great deal of hard work.

If you think you're up for that, keep reading to learn tips on how to figure out what your competitors are doing better than you. Make sure these tips are shared in your next team meeting to help you collaboratively decide which approach is best for your company.

7 ways to know what your competitors are doing better than you

1. Attend Professional conferences/trade shows

You might be wondering why professional conferences. Well, professional conferences and tradeshows can help you understand your competitors in ways you never imagined. It is an opportunity to take a new perspective on your competitors' landscape.

Brightkeys CEO revealed recently that he discovered his best sales strategies from attending numerous expos and tradeshows.

Imagine going to a beverage trade show featuring Coca Cola, Pepsi, and some other top names in the soda industry. If these are your competitors, you bet you’re coming home with one heck of information.

Indeed, trade show events are a great place to learn so much about your competitors’ strategies. They will want to use these events to showcase their products and even make sales. They will come with their entire arsenal to win over potential customers. This opens an avenue to learn everything you need to know about them.

In summary, a trade show events allow you to make deductions like:

• How your competitors are going about certain things
• What they are doing that you aren’t doing
• Tools they’re leveraging but you aren’t
• Ideas they have but are alien to you.

From this investigation, you will be able to have answers to so many questions and get intel you never thought existed.

The image showcasing how to gather Intelligence on your competitors at conferences / trade shows

2. Analyse your competitor's website and SEO strategy

Another tactic that you can use to understand your competitors is an SEO strategy. As you know, virtually every brand nowadays has a website. So, that’s a good place to find out quality information about any brand.

Many businesses believe SEO to be an important aspect of their marketing strategy, so they invest a lot of resources into this. Some businesses even put all their marketing eggs in the SEO basket.

For you, this is a wonderful opportunity to uncover some of their deepest secrets.

You want to examine what they are doing differently and try to adjust your own strategy. It might be that they are ranking better than your business for certain keywords. Or maybe their website offers more solutions to their customers. It could be that their website is user-friendlier than yours. It could also be that your page takes a lot of time to open, making you lose many potential customers. But this might be different for your competitors as theirs might be very responsive.

All of these things you should try to analyse as it will aid in your improvement.

3. Spy on competitor's social media presence

Online sales for businesses are now simple thanks to social media. Most businesses conduct the majority of their sales online because most consumers prefer to make purchases on social media. Businesses can follow, interact with, and keep an eye on their customers on this social media platform very easily.

How does this relate to your business? There are several things that your competitors might be doing right on this social media. Maybe they might have a good customer relationship with their buyers. Good customer relationships can help increase sales and even bring referrals to the business. This is one place you learn about your competitors.

Well, that's not all; there is more. You can also learn about the social platform that your competitors are using. It could be that your competitors are making more sales from their Instagram page, or it could be on Facebook. Or it could be that they're getting their sales from niche social platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, etc.

You must check how often your competitors post on their social media pages. The kind of content post they make may be video content, or they use animation to get the attention of potential customers.

Again, check for their number of followers. It could be that they have more followers than you on this social platform. A good number of following is a step to having huge engagements on posts.

Again, try to study the way your competitors promote their content. It could be that they make use of influencers for their promotion.

Finally, Look out for your competitors' engagement on their social media platforms. For example, how often do they reply to comments? How fast is this response? Etc.

All this can give you a better understanding of your competitors and how they relate on their social platform.

4. Examine your competitor's content marketing strategy

Content can come in different shapes, from blogs, videos, infographics, Ebooks, etc. While it might not be easy to gauge the suitable content, you might have some information that can help you improve your content strategy. This is why it is essential to look at your competitors' content strategy.

Jamie Daniels of Searchmen.com once said, and I quote, “the ultimate weapon to use against a competitor is their own content.”

The following are some tips that can help you understand your competitor's content strategy:

• The content; As mentioned earlier, content comes in different shapes like videos, infographics, etc. You need to understand which of these content formats is being adopted by your competitors the most. And why? Visit their website, blog, communities, and social media pages, and you’ll have all the answers you need.
• The frequency; You can monitor your competitors' social media and blog pages to see how often they post content. Also, check if this content brings a lot of engagement from their followers and visitors. For example, on social media, you can check for number of likes, comments, etc. Whereas on their blogs you can look out for number of visits a page has or number of comments. Some sites display this information, so it’s worth checking.
• The quality: What makes their content stand out? How good is their scope? Are there topics they’re yet to cover? Are their content SEO-optimized? You need to ask all these questions and look for the correct answers to them. Understand how they went about their research and if it’s better than yours.
• Relevance Here is another thing you will have to examine. Aside from the quality of this content. Are they relevant to your industry? It's not about creating the content alone. But how relevant is the content to your industry or the buyers? That is what you should be asking.

5. Study your competitor's email marketing strategy

An email marketing is a form of sending commercial messages to a group of people using email. Brands use the tactic to message potential customers and even current buyers. It is a beneficial strategy to get people to know about your business and give information about your product.

Currently. email marketing is a strategy adopted by approximately 81% of businesses. That means, the chances are high your competitors are using this tactic.

Barbara Williams, Keepgoing.co.uk - “No smart business would ignore email marketing in today’s world.”

How does email marketing help you learn about competitors? You wonder.

Usually, when people visit company websites, most of these companies ask them to subscribe to their email newsletters. This is your opportunity to know more about your competitors.

How?

Because you can also sign up for these newsletters. When you do this, you will be able to get useful information about them such as their offers, frequency of their emails, content types, content style & format, sender score, etc. Smart right? You're welcome.

By the way, don’t forget to utilize Topol for all your email marketing campaigns. That’s one tool that’s sure to bring your emailing game plenty of success.

6. Take a poll among your rivals' clients, partners, and personnel.

Another way to learn about your competitors and what they’re probably doing better than you is to conduct a survey among their clients, partners, customers, employees, etc.

You’re probably wondering, how do I get access to these people, let alone such information.

LOL. It’s easy. Let me show you.

There are some independent companies that conduct surveys on behalf of others. These are the people you’ll give the job to.

They will dig deep into your competitors’ network and fish out so many useful data you can learn from.

You can find these companies in the infographic below.

You’re welcome, by the way. 😊

7. Hire your competitor

A smart way to figure out what your competitors are doing better than you is to hire their workers. That’s a straight-to-the-point approach to getting real-time valuable information. The new hire will share with you all the secrets you may need and voila, you have all the hints at your fingertips.

It is not a sin to hire people from your competition. You just have to look for the right candidate who you believe can give you the information you need. Find out how you can persuade them to work for you. Perhaps you could try to offer them a wage that is higher than theirs. Statistics show that roughly two-thirds of employees are unhappy with their current pay. So, there might be a window of opportunity for you there, you never know.

Additionally, you might try including some additional incentives to entice them to change.