7 Unconventional Ideas You Need to Beat Your Competition
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2025 5:14 am
It is vital to stay one step ahead of the competition. It is no longer enough to focus on your own business, the products you offer, customer service, and operations. Business owners need to be actively involved in gathering information about the state of their competitors.
In fact, gathering competitive intelligence is not facebook database just about assessing the business landscape within a specific vertical. It is about actively improving the business. Why? Because, like it or not, competitors are probably doing well at something.
Let's look at seven of the most useful pieces of competitive intelligence you can get, where to find it, what it means, and what to do with it to get more revenue in the form of increased market share this year.
There are many ways to gather (and analyze) information about your competitors, and that's what we want to talk about today.
Let's get to the heart of the matter.
1. Product mix, features, positioning and pricing
Products, features, positioning and pricing are probably the most important competitive information you can get. Why? Because if products and services are incorrectly positioned or priced, no amount of marketing or competitive research will help you outperform your competitors.
When it comes to pricing, you can use competitive pricing tools, or price products or services as they are actually valued. Look at your competitors’ websites. How do they frame their offerings? What prices do they use? How is the product significantly better than theirs? How is it worse? How do they position their offering as better or different from other offerings in the market? When it comes to price, it can be tempting to undercut your competitors to gain more business. In reality, consumers often choose a higher price because they believe a higher price means better value.
2. Review and reliability analysis
You can use a competitive analysis tool to analyze reviews in bulk. There is an easier way. You can read reviews about competitors on independent sites.
3. Authority and SEO analysis at the highest level
Page and domain authority are important factors influencing a competitor's ability to rank ahead in search results. Authority is measured on a scale from 0 to 100 and is essentially the result of the main ally in off-page SEO (search engine optimization) - backlinks.
Does the competitor have many links from other sites? Are these quality links from reputable sites with interesting content? These are the questions to ask yourself.
4. Content Gaps, Keyword and Top Pages
Content gap analysis shows which pages or keywords are generating the most organic traffic for competitors.
You can see what keywords your competitors are ranking for on the first page. You can see what keywords you should rank for. You can sort by traffic. You can also just list your competitors' top keywords by traffic.
These reports will help you gain insight into what type of content you need to create and what keywords you need to target to achieve the same organic success as your competitors.
5. Backlink Analysis
It’s worth taking a look at your competitors’ backlinks. Once you understand how organically a company differentiates itself from its competitors, you can start digging deeper. It looks like the competitor at the top of the list with the most common keywords is outranking you in organic traffic. How did they gain domain authority to outrank them for so many keywords? You can do this by going to the “Backlinks” tab after searching their domain.
6. Paid Keyword Strategy
You can see that after entering a competitor's domain, you can see who they are competing with, how much paid search traffic they are getting, where their ads are placed, and most importantly, their highest paying keywords.
Understanding where your competitors are making money online and how they do it can give you insight into what types of keywords to bid on, what your ad copy might look like, and how many clicks and leads you can expect to get from those ads.
7. Paid Creative Strategy in Social Media
If you use any type of visual advertising, whether it's display advertising or out-of-home advertising, you'll want to check out the Meta Ad Library.
With this library, you can search through competitor brands and see exactly what creatives they are using.
This is a great overview of your competitor's paid social strategy. You can learn what types of messages your competitors are using to promote their products, what calls to action they are using, promotions, ad types, landing pages, and more. You can use this information for a variety of purposes: to inspire your own campaigns, to target a different market segment, to innovate your products, to develop new creative strategies, and more.
In fact, gathering competitive intelligence is not facebook database just about assessing the business landscape within a specific vertical. It is about actively improving the business. Why? Because, like it or not, competitors are probably doing well at something.
Let's look at seven of the most useful pieces of competitive intelligence you can get, where to find it, what it means, and what to do with it to get more revenue in the form of increased market share this year.
There are many ways to gather (and analyze) information about your competitors, and that's what we want to talk about today.
Let's get to the heart of the matter.
1. Product mix, features, positioning and pricing
Products, features, positioning and pricing are probably the most important competitive information you can get. Why? Because if products and services are incorrectly positioned or priced, no amount of marketing or competitive research will help you outperform your competitors.
When it comes to pricing, you can use competitive pricing tools, or price products or services as they are actually valued. Look at your competitors’ websites. How do they frame their offerings? What prices do they use? How is the product significantly better than theirs? How is it worse? How do they position their offering as better or different from other offerings in the market? When it comes to price, it can be tempting to undercut your competitors to gain more business. In reality, consumers often choose a higher price because they believe a higher price means better value.
2. Review and reliability analysis
You can use a competitive analysis tool to analyze reviews in bulk. There is an easier way. You can read reviews about competitors on independent sites.
3. Authority and SEO analysis at the highest level
Page and domain authority are important factors influencing a competitor's ability to rank ahead in search results. Authority is measured on a scale from 0 to 100 and is essentially the result of the main ally in off-page SEO (search engine optimization) - backlinks.
Does the competitor have many links from other sites? Are these quality links from reputable sites with interesting content? These are the questions to ask yourself.
4. Content Gaps, Keyword and Top Pages
Content gap analysis shows which pages or keywords are generating the most organic traffic for competitors.
You can see what keywords your competitors are ranking for on the first page. You can see what keywords you should rank for. You can sort by traffic. You can also just list your competitors' top keywords by traffic.
These reports will help you gain insight into what type of content you need to create and what keywords you need to target to achieve the same organic success as your competitors.
5. Backlink Analysis
It’s worth taking a look at your competitors’ backlinks. Once you understand how organically a company differentiates itself from its competitors, you can start digging deeper. It looks like the competitor at the top of the list with the most common keywords is outranking you in organic traffic. How did they gain domain authority to outrank them for so many keywords? You can do this by going to the “Backlinks” tab after searching their domain.
6. Paid Keyword Strategy
You can see that after entering a competitor's domain, you can see who they are competing with, how much paid search traffic they are getting, where their ads are placed, and most importantly, their highest paying keywords.
Understanding where your competitors are making money online and how they do it can give you insight into what types of keywords to bid on, what your ad copy might look like, and how many clicks and leads you can expect to get from those ads.
7. Paid Creative Strategy in Social Media
If you use any type of visual advertising, whether it's display advertising or out-of-home advertising, you'll want to check out the Meta Ad Library.
With this library, you can search through competitor brands and see exactly what creatives they are using.
This is a great overview of your competitor's paid social strategy. You can learn what types of messages your competitors are using to promote their products, what calls to action they are using, promotions, ad types, landing pages, and more. You can use this information for a variety of purposes: to inspire your own campaigns, to target a different market segment, to innovate your products, to develop new creative strategies, and more.