As a brand, we think we are aware of the competition around us, and we assume that we have it all figured out. But, in this growing landscape of alternative brands, it is not easier to conduct extensive studies on your competitors’ profiles. That is why having a competitive intelligence tool is a need of an hour.

The successful businesses in the marketplace are profit-making because they are ahead of their competition. They keep tabs on the moves of their competitors, their strategies, and their conduct.  

Beating competition is not the main goal here. But setting a benchmark for your competitors is going to pave your way to success. Thus, a competitive intelligence tool will provide you with enough intel so that you can make decisions that thrive in your business.

But let us first know what exactly is a competitive intelligence tool!

What Is A Competitive Intelligence Tool?

When we talk about competitive intelligence, there are two things to consider; Who is your competition, and what are their tactics? Some tools make you aware of the competitors in your niche and their moves all in one place. 

A competitive intelligence tool is a medium that gathers intel on your competitor’s inclination based on their actions so that you can formulate improved strategies that lead you to make confident decisions.

For example, PowerAdSpy enables you to reverse engineer the advertisements of your competitor. Plus, you can reveal their strategies and audience profile in no time. Not only this, your competitive intelligence research is more likely to give you the upper hand in predicting the forthcoming market mood in the upcoming days.

What Is The Importance Of Competitive Intelligence Tool And Analysis In Your Business?

Competitive intelligence is an important aspect of an organization in many ways. Successfully reaching your milestone is not only the product of hard work but smart work.  Competitive intelligence tools give us a portal to explore our competition to avoid latent mistakes that can cause us consequences.

Nowadays, the parameter of measuring the importance of an aspect is via its beneficial returns. So let us explore the importance of competitive intelligence and analysis through the following benefits.

• Competitive intelligence tools ease your research on market trends and upsurges of businesses.

• Predicting your competitor’s moves and being ready to counter them feels like a jackpot, right? Well, you can avail of this with a competitive intelligence tool.

• Identifying your own team’s potential is also part of competitive intelligence.

• Competitive intelligence tools assist you in determining and managing risks with real-time data and robust analysis.

• Through competitive intelligence tools, you can get an idea of consumer sentiment and employee reviews too.

• The road to success passes from guarding your data and team against external and internal threats. You might want to improve your defense system with a competitive intelligence tool before you plan your move.

• With a competitive intelligence tool, you can track your competitor’s overall actions and decode their strategies, just with a little planning. All you need to do is to pay attention and keep following them.

Well, there are more benefits of these tools than you can imagine. So let us proceed and know how we can leverage them on hammering out your masterstroke!

Ways to Leverage a Competitive Intelligence Tool For Market Research

There are several benefits of acquiring a competitive intelligence tool in your business. In 2021, this tool is not only making a difference but keeping the established business from falling apart, which is a huge deal!

The goal of using competitive intelligence is to make a distinguishable customer service. Before we begin to discuss the specific ways of leveraging competitive intelligence tools for your business upthrust, let us know that sloppy competitive intelligence research can do more harm than good. 

But don’t worry, we have got you covered!

Track your competitor’s advertisements

Ad campaigns are the epicenter of lead generation for any business. So it is crucial to get the know-how on your competitor’s strategy and conduct. Plus, knowing their marketing moves and observing their highs and lows gives you a competitive advantage of not repeating their same mistakes.

Some ad intelligence tools like PowerAdSpy, enable you to browse your competitor’s ad campaign on eight different platforms, including popular social sites like Facebook and Instagram. 

Nobody wants to waste money on producing ineffective ads only to find out what’s working for them. Instead, people prefer to conduct thorough research on the present trends of ads, along with the know-how of alternative strategy, conversion prospects, advert potential, audience reach, and competitor’s ad insights.

With PowerAdSpy, you can understand present-day marketing trends with these eleven amazing features:-

1. Search through relevant keywords of your niche.

Here you can enter any keyword that represents the niche, brand, or product. Then hit the search button if you are satisfied with the keyword. Also, you can subscribe to those keywords too!

2. Search By Dashboard

Get the convenience of advert breakdown by advanced search methods, go to search by and explore the ad using appropriate keywords.

3. Sort By Dashboard.

Sort ads through their likes, comments, and share amounts. Get hold of the most successful ad campaigns using this feature.

4. Filters Dashboard.

Get hold of advanced filter options such as platform, relevant CTA, country, Ad type, and Ad position to cater to your advert research.

5. Lander Properties Dashboard.

Get ahold of comprehensive advert placement-based sorting. Know what placement option is proving to be most successful these days.

6. Detailed Reports Through Show Analytics Dashboard.

Choose any ad that seems relevant and click on the show analytics option given below in the ad.

7. Ad Analytics Report.

Get robust reports of your competitor’s ads. When you click on the Show Analytics option, a separate window will open to show you the behind-the-scenes of their ads.

8. Detailed Audience Profile.

Get the most comprehensive report on the audience matrix of your competitors. Just scroll through that window, and you will find it.

9. Demographic Location.

Track the location of the successful ad and deduce your strategy according to it.

10. Social Engagement Report.

Understand the advert strategy by its engagement levels concerning the day and date altogether.

11. Ad Demographics.

Get a hold of the First and Last of the ad, language, post date, advert running days, audience’s age, and domain registration date.

So, what are you waiting for?

Check out the updates on competitor’s products. Know what else they are bringing to the table. The best way to know that is by looking at it on their webpage. 

Also, you can track their employees through their About section or teams landing page of the website. If they have hired a new hand or have lost an old employee, you can track it by simply following their webpage.

If they are aggressively hiring, then they might be currently loaded with work. Or else, in the process of making a bigger move in the upcoming days. Or if their employee just left the company, you can assume the dissatisfaction from the company’s side. The reason could be anything! They might not get a salary raise or are facing an extreme work-life imbalance.

Either way, you can forge your decisions by knowing the internal status of your competitor.

Competitive intelligence tools like Visualping and Versioninsta detect changes in the websites you are tracking and inform you promptly. 

Check your competitor’s web page updates

Check out the updates on competitor’s products. Know what else they are bringing to the table. The best way to know that is by looking at it on their webpage. 

Also, you can track their employees through their About section or teams landing page of the website. If they have hired a new hand or have lost an old employee, you can track it by simply following their webpage.

If they are aggressively hiring, then they might be currently loaded with work. Or else, in the process of making a bigger move in the upcoming days. Or if their employee just left the company, you can assume the dissatisfaction from the company’s side. The reason could be anything! They might not get a salary raise or are facing an extreme work-life imbalance.

Either way, you can forge your decisions by knowing the internal status of your competitor.

Competitive intelligence tools like Visualping and Versioninsta detect changes in the websites you are tracking and inform you promptly.

Keep an eye on your competitor’s product reviews and testimonials.

Pay attention to what people are talking about your competitor. Collect reviews and testimonials of your competitors and compare them to yours to find who is more popular among the consumers.

Also, notice negative feedback posted about competitors, work on it. That is what is going to help you to make things different from them.

Many third-party review applications allow your customer to get to know about your software before purchasing, follow them, and track your reviews too. Tools like SaasTrac and Mopinion give your customers all-in-one feedback services. Follow it to know customer sentiments.

Well! You can also opt for those competitive intelligence tools that most similar product users practice to give feedback. Collect real-time data on customer insights from the actual source for better transparency with customer sentiments.

Monitor changes in your competitor’s traffic

One of the best ways of monitoring your competitor is, knowing the traffic graph of your competitor and the sources of traffic generation. This intel gives you the advantage of comparing their potential to yours.

There are some competitive intelligence tools available that trace back the source of their traffic generation and engagement rate so that you can take advantage of their lead bank.

For example, Similarweb is a tool that allows you to compare the web traffic of your competitor against you, plus it traces the source of their engagement. 

If their increasing traffic is a product of some marketing campaign or their trending content, you can look at it and get their strategy. Or else the traffic generation is due to a device or landing page where most of the product users are active. These tools require no time to show you the source.

Check up on their employees

Research your competitors’ employees because employees are the backbone of any organization. If you manage to keep their employees happy, they persist, and as a result, they prove to be more productive.

If you are a new firm, you can start your competitive analysis with these questions

• How often your competitor is hiring?
• What are their job openings & eligibility specifications?
• What is their recruitment process?
• What do their employees say about the work environment?
• Who is the biggest talent in the company? 

Well, non-technical competitor analysis objectives also have great potential to make a big difference in the company stats within the marketplace because the inside team is the reason for their quality product and successful lead generation strategy.

Research employee reviews about the alternative company to get hold of evolving your organization’s work mood and become a better option as compared to your competitor.

Survey customers that you lost

Losing your customers will always be hard, but knowing what makes them leave you might ease your future conduct. What was the reason? Was it price, service, or incompetency with the product? Anything that costs you a customer is an area to work on. 

What you can do, is to put up a survey form on the unsubscribe option so that they have to fill in the reason for their checkout. 

Meanwhile, you can also survey your competitors’ customers and gather intel on why they opt for your competitors. Ask their clients regarding the feature that benefits them and their expectations with the software. You can get a lot of great ideas to have competitive advantages by simply asking customers for feedback. 

There are numerous competitive intelligence tools for customer surveys available, such as Google Forms and Survey Monkey.

Analyze your company’s productivity status

Analyzing your competitor is cool and all, but have you considered checking on your team? 

Due to the pandemic, most of the companies are currently in work-from-home mode. Which practically invites a system that governs the employees from any remote location and prevents insider data breach threats.

Conclusion

Digital technologies are rapidly stretching our boundaries on competitive intelligence research. But up to what extent? It depends on us!

Sometimes competitive intelligence tools that favor us to sneak on our alternatives seem like a non-ethical option to opt for.

Well, this is not entirely true! There are some tools available that have GDPR and other compliance registrations, which prevent their abuse. 

With increased business activity, competitive intelligence provides us with actionable intel that narrows down the possibility of beating the competition and setting up the benchmark. So let us move along and use this technology for bigger gains.

Read some more!

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