The best way to monitor your competitors

Competitive analysis is just a very fancy way of saying that you are snooping on your competitors and what it is they are doing exactly. Look at what moves your competitors are making is a great way to measure their strengths and weaknesses and learn a little bit about your own strengths and weaknesses.

By monitoring competitors on an on-going basis you get to know their behaviour and so can start to anticipate what they will be likely to do next. If you are looking for simple ways of competitor monitoring, read on.

Sign up to their newsletter

Lots of companies make it super easy for people to sign up and start receiving news about them. You can normally sign up for a newsletter through a company’s website, or even their Facebook page. Receiving a newsletter from your competitors can help you start to see thing from the point of a consumer in the respective industry. You will be able to get an idea as to the type of tone, creative style and offers that you may want to include in your own newsletters, and which ones

Give them a call

This plan can give you understanding into the way your competitors deal with their business, particularly if you and your competitors do sales over the phone. You can find out how firm their pricing structure is and whether or not they throw in incentives in order to close a sale. The best part of this competitive analysis strategy is that you can essentially ask them anything that you want!

Follow them on social networks

Seeing how companies are gradually using social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as marketing channels in the modern day, you will be able to keep a note of what your competitors are up to and pick up interesting facts about them just by tuning in. It is found that checking tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, and other new media references of your competition is an easy, cost-effective way to stay in tune with and in the know about the public’s sentiment about our competitors.

Attend a conference

Going to industry trade shows and conferences can be a fantastic way to learn about who your competitors are and what they’re offering to their consumers. You should make sure to attend these conventions anyway and to make sure to visit competitors’ booths while you are there so you can observe their interactions with customers, pick up literature, and check out the quality of their products.

Having a look at what your competition is up to can help guide your own efforts in terms of your own business, as you learn what to do and what not to do. However, it is important that you make sure to play fair and behave in an ethical fashion – never insult, defame, or bad-mouth your competitors on your website, your blog, or on your Facebook page. Don’t go through on their pay-per-click ads, don’t subscribe their contact or info email to spam mailings, and stop yourself from posting negative reviews of their YouTube videos or their Local Submission listings.