Many entrepreneurs say that in the business world cooperation and competition are exclusive. Running a successful business involves knowing your competition all too well. Indeed, the truth is that it’s important to explore your environment and find out what your competitors are doing so that you can gain the upper hand. Businesses all over the world can do so by using social media spy tools.

Nowadays, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn not only provide you with a great opportunity to market your business but also with a strategic place. Here, you can monitor the activity of your competitors.

Social media monitoring consists in “listening out” for any conversations relevant to your brand that is carried out on social platforms. Businesses use this technique primarily to spy on their competition. But also to measure their social media reach, connect with their customers and learn about the latest trends. By using spy tools to see what the competition is up to, businesses can learn what advertising strategies work for their niche and adjust theirs accordingly.

Best Spy Tools to Try

In this article, we will look at some great social media spy tools that can help businesses get comprehensive insights into their competition’s social activity. Thus find out where they stand, what their strengths and weaknesses are.

SocialMention

This is an Internet monitoring tool that helps you search the web for specific terms. It is both a social media search engine and an analysis platform. Besides scoring through Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, blogs, etc, it also offers an analysis of the social media landscape. Businesses that use it will be able to easily keep track of what their competition is doing or what people are saying about their company or products.

Let’s see how it works. You basically type in a search term (it can be a keyword or the name of a company) and the tool will search for you. You will discover what it is being said about that specific topic across the web, especially on social platforms.

The SocialMention spy tool is free to use. It comes with a simplistic, intuitive design. It tells you how many times your search term appears in mentions and how many different people are mentioning it, all in one place.

SpyFu

SpyFu is a great tool for keyword and ad monitoring. It allows its users to easily gather SEO intel on their competitors and analyze their actions online in order to obtain a competitive edge in the market. It basically lets businesses that want to spy on their competition find out which keywords their competitors are targeting. The keywords, both in organic search and in AdWords, are delivered to them in a comprehensive list.

This is a paid platform and several packages are available. The Basic plan costs $79/month, the Professional plan is $139/month, while the Agency plan can be owned for $999 per month.

Synthesio

Synthesio is a great option for enterprise-scale social media monitoring and analytics. The tool helps users finding all the info they need to gain deep insights into what the competition is doing. Thus, adjust their marketing strategy and make better-informed decisions.

It is a tool for large enterprises and it features excellent monitoring capabilities and business value metrics, including social ROI metrics. The starting price of this comprehensive tool is of around $1,200 per month.

PowerAdSpy

PowerAdSpy is seen as one of the best Facebook Ad-Intelligence tools out there. It is designed for social media advertising and allows users to spy on their competitors and uncover their advertising secrets. Users can search through a large database of more than 50,000,000 real-world ads and analyze the activity of their competitors. They can discover their weaknesses and then use the newly acquired information to create comprehensive social ads campaigns.

PowerAdSpy is a paid spying tool that allows you to follow any number of competitors. Ou can filter ads based on interests, view ads live on Facebook, see likes, shares, comments for a specific ad, bookmark the best ads, etc.

The tool can be used on several plans for prices ranging from $49/month to $249 per month. Beware, though, that the Basic option is missing important features.

WhatRunsWhere

This easy-to-use marketing spy tool is among the most popular on the market. It has international coverage for more than 150 display networks and 140 mobile ad networks, including social media platforms. It allows users to learn where their competitors are advertising, what kind of ads they’re using, and which advertisers/ads are running on a particular domain.

WhatRunsWhere is also a paid tool. A trial version is available for those who want to take it for a ride for 3 days. It will cost them only USD$1.

Swipe.co

Swipe.co is the perfect tool for those who create copy or images for Facebook ads. It offers a great collection of swipe files. Actually, it includes an extensive library with 481 ad inspirations categorized as Modern or Classic with a focus on marketing, conversion or consumer psychology.

Also, this free tool gives its users short explanations to clarify what makes an ad successful. The variety of ad examples is also important, as users can gather ideas from various niches. They will know what their competitors are up to and find inspiration for their next advertising campaign.

Adsova

Businesses that want to have a competitive advantage over their competition can rest assured they will find what they need in Adsova. This is one of those spy tools that allows users to uncover their competitors’ strengths by putting at their disposal a huge database of ads. This one has 500,000 and new text and visual ads are added every day, so the collection is always up-to-date.

There is no free demo to show users how it works and pricing starts at $39/month. However, all plans come with a $1 trial, so there is that.

Conclusion

In today’s online environment, it’s crucial for every business to build a complex and multifaceted online brand strategy. This also involves staying up to date with everything their competition is doing. Social media spy tools are the best way to learn what other brands are up to.

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