For example, maybe you’ve seen positive reviews about a competitor’s customer service. Perhaps, while doing research, you learn that the client uses powerful customer service software that you haven’t yet taken advantage of. Having this information gives you the opportunity to outperform your competitors’ processes.
To find out what software your competitors use, I typed the company advertising database URL into Built With , a powerful tool for discovering what technology your competitors’ site uses, along with third-party add-ons ranging from analytics systems to CRMs.
Another option is to check out competitor job listings, particularly for web engineer or developer roles. The listing will likely mention what tools a candidate should be familiar with, so this is a creative way to gain insight into the technology your competitors use.
To measure how engaging your competitor’s content is to their readers, you’ll need to see how their target audience responds to what they’re posting.
Check the average number of comments, shares, and likes on your competitor’s content and find out if:
Certain topics resonate better than others
Comments are negative, positive or mixed
People tweet about specific topics more than others
Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content
Don't forget to look at whether your competitor categorizes their content using tags, and whether they have follow and social share buttons attached to each piece of content.
10. Observe how they promote their marketing content
From engagement you will move directly to your competitor's content promotion strategy.
- Keyword density in the copy
- Image ALT text tags
- Use of internal links
The following questions also help you prioritize and focus on what deserves attention:
- What keywords are your competitors focusing on that you haven't yet taken advantage of?
- What type of content is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
- What social media platforms does your target audience use?
- What other sites link to your competitor's site, but not yours?
- Who else is sharing what your competitors are posting?
- How is traffic being driven to your competitor's site?
- For the keywords you want to focus on, what is the level of difficulty? There are several free (and paid) tools that will give you a complete assessment of your competitor's search engine optimization.
11. Look at their social media presence, strategies and access platforms
The last area you’ll want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is your competitor’s social media presence and engagement rates.
How does your competitor drive engagement with their brand through social media? Do you see social sharing buttons with each article? Does your competitor have links to their social media channels in the header, footer, or somewhere else? Are they clearly visible? Do they use calls to action with these buttons?
If your competitors are using a social network that your brand isn’t present on, it’s worth learning how that platform can help your business as well. To determine if a new social media platform is worth your time, check out your competitor’s engagement rates on those sites.
First, visit the following sites to see if your competitors have an account on these platforms:
- Snapchat
- YouTube
Next, take note of the following quantitative elements for each platform:
Number of fans/followers
Frequency of publications
Content engagement (do users leave comments or share your posts?)
Viral content (how many shares, repins and retweets do your posts get?)
Using the same critical eye you used to measure your competitor’s content marketing strategy, analyze their social media strategy.
