5 Competitor Monitoring Strategies & Tools for Your Online Businesses

In any industry, keeping tabs on competitors is crucial. Competitor monitoring helps you identify new market opportunities and threats, as well as evaluate your performance relative to rivals.

That being said, competitor monitoring can be challenging. The online space is flooded with new businesses and brands all the time, making it difficult to stay on top of who’s doing what.

If you’re ready to take your competitive strategy to the next level, this post will help you get started with five strategies for monitoring competitors that are tailored for online businesses. Each tip can help you monitor your competition more effectively so that you can continue to drive growth for your own business.

Read on to discover how!

Monitor competitor prices with Visualping

A vital component of competitor monitoring is keeping track of changes to competitor prices. This can be especially helpful in industries where prices often fluctuate, such as in the retail industry.

Keeping a close eye on competitor pricing will help you stay informed about pricing changes, and knowing when a price change happens can help you understand the reasons behind it.

For example, if a competitor’s product regularly retails for $100 and then drops to $50, you can deduce that the product likely didn’t sell well. And these inputs can help you understand how a competitor’s performance may impact your own business.

Monitoring competitor pricing can also help you identify new profitable opportunities. Suppose you notice a competitor’s product is more expensive than similar industry products. In that case, you may decide to be more competitive, and attract more customers by offering a lower price.

An effective and very easy-to-use price monitoring tool is Visualping. You can simply select the area of the web page you want to track for changes – such as where the price is listed on the page – and you will receive an email notification when the price changes.

Track competitor brand mentions with Mention

Monitoring how and where your competitors brand themselves online can give you great insights into what they’re trying to stand for, and how they’re positioning themselves.

Observing how other brands get mentions online can help you identify new opportunities to reach customers. For example, if you notice a competitor using a particular keyword you weren’t using before, you may be able to use that keyword to get in front of new customers.

Brand mentions are also a must-do competitor monitoring strategy that will help you identify potential threats to your business. For instance, if you notice a competitor talking about a new product feature that may be important to customers, you can take action to match that feature so that you don’t lose customers.

A great tool to track when competitors are mentioned online is Mention.

Take control of your competitor online reviews with Reputology

Using tools for monitoring online reviews can help you understand how customers feel about a competitor’s products, services, and customer support.

Watching these reviews will also help you get to know how your competitors are impacting their customers. This insight will also help you identify areas where you might be able to improve to keep customers satisfied. It will also give you new ideas from potential customers on how to add more value to your products.

If you notice a recurring issue in your competitor reviews, you may be able to address that issue with your product to prevent customers from feeling disappointed.

Following competitor reviews can also help you identify potential threats to your business. Suppose you notice that a competitor has a lot of complaints about a similar problem. In that case, you could try to solve that issue with your own customers to prevent that criticism from hurting your business image.

Capture competitor newsletters with Owletter

Monitoring how your competitors grow their content and audience can help you identify new opportunities. You can do this by analyzing which content formats perform better for your competitors, and then try to emulate that success with your content.

You can also use services like Owletter to capture all emails sent from your competitors´ websites to their mailing lists, rather than creating a new email address and manually subscribing to every newsletter you find. Keeping tabs on the most shared content from your competitors can help you identify new topics to cover.

For example, you can try to provide more information on a popular topic or solve the problem that is raised in that content. Whether you’re trying to create more of your own content or trying to emulate the success of your competitors, monitoring content performance can help you find new occasions to reach new customers.

Analyze competitor ads with Anstrex

Spying on competitor advertising performance can help you identify new chances to generate leads. Tools like Anstrex will help you unlock native, Google, Facebook and Linkedin ads.

If you notice that a competitor’s ad campaign is generating more leads than you’d expect, you may want to find new leads by emulating that strategy with your own ad campaign.

Watching how your competitors are reaching customers with paid advertising can also help you identify potential threats to your business. If you notice a competitor is driving a big amount of low-quality leads with their ads, you may prefer to avoid those leads. And use different settings instead to target more profitable audiences.

Conclusion

Competitor monitoring is a crucial part of any business strategy. Tracking your competitors can help you identify new opportunities to grow your business while also protecting against threats to your performance.

The online space makes it even more important to keep tabs on your competition because changes are happening faster. But it also makes it easier when you know what tools to use. By implementing these strategies for monitoring your competition, you can stay informed about your rivals so you can continue to drive growth for your business.