So, chances are you clicked on this article because you’re looking for a competitor tracking tool, but you’re unsure of where to start or which criteria to use to decide. You’re aware of the benefits of competitor monitoring and analysis and are ready to take the next step.
However, with so many tools out there–and they all look surprisingly alike or too complex to understand–it’s hard to find the best solution for you.
In this article, I’ll take you through the questions you need to ask before you purchase your competitor intelligence solution and how to determine which tool fits your needs.
Let’s get started.
Benefits of competitor tracking software
Competitor tracking or intelligence has always been a thing in marketing, but with the rise of digital marketing, competitor tracking software began to take shape. Their benefits are numerous. Here are some of them.
Identify trends and opportunities
Competitor analysis lets you know what trends are happening in your industry, so you can seize them before they get stale. When competitors are creating eco-friendly packaging or offering white-glove delivery, you won’t be left out of the bunch. Better yet, you can see these trends in the early stages so you can use them and stay ahead of the pack.
Reverse-engineer your competitors’ marketing strategies
Are you envious of a competitor’s successful product launch or seasonal ad campaign? Well, you can learn how they conceptualized and implemented those campaigns when you spy on their funnels, newsletters, and their entire marketing strategy. Then, you can deduce what works for them and execute those tricks in your own marketing.
Foresee potential problems
Threats such as new entrants that can eat away at your market share can be identified quickly if you conduct competitive research. If any incoming issues are headed your way, you can avert them quickly becaus you’ve been anticipating them all along.
Make better marketing decisions
Just as you can learn from your competitors’ successes, you can also learn from their mistakes. By tracking your industry’s movements, you can spot failures and avoid them.
When there’s backlash against a competitor’s pricing or a surge of complaints about their customer service, you can find a way to position yourself as the better option.
Benchmark your performance
You can also use competitor tracking to gather data about your competitors and evaluate how your marketing strategy stacks up against theirs.
What are their website traffic stats? How many social media followers do they have? How frequently do they send email newsletters or give away discounts?
These data points are invaluable tools for objectively benchmarking your company’s performance.
What tools can be used for competitor analysis?
Competitor tracking solutions come in all shapes and sizes. The best one depends on your own use case.
Here are the main kinds of competitor tracking tools:
- SEO and web traffic
- Social media
- PPC and paid ads
- Social listening
- Email marketing
- Content
Just as you can learn from your competitors’ successes, you can also learn from their mistakes. By tracking your industry’s movements, you can spot failures and avoid them.
Considerations for choosing a competitor tracking solution
Where do you start when shopping around for your competitor tracking solution? Let the following criteria guide you in making the best choice.
Comparison or Benchmarking Functions
Firstly, does the tool in question have comparison or benchmarking features? With competitor tracking tools, you want to be able to analyze the data at a glance and mine them for insights easily.
Benchmark reports and graphs make this infinitely easier for you. Bonus points if you can personalize your own benchmark reports and include select brands you want to analyze.
Comprehensive Data Tracking
When we talk about comprehensive data, we are referring to:
- Real-time updates
- Historical data
- Both granular and macro perspectives on your industry
This means that a competitor tracking tool should ideally have an extensive database of collected information on your competitor while also tracking their emails, ads, and other assets in real time.
Real-time alerts are a bonus but even email notifications are great too, so you always stay in the know without logging in to the tracking platform.
Multi-Channel Monitoring
Some competitor tracking solutions focus on just one channel (for example, email) and while that’s well and good if you want to track just one piece of your competitor’s marketing, a multi-channel monitoring tool is better, and not just because it is more cost-effective.
If you want the full benefits of competitor tracking and analysis, it’s ideal to track several parts of digital marketing. If you track emails, you might also want to track ads. If you track landing pages, you might need to track website changes as well for a fuller understanding.
This is not to dissuade you from highly focused competitor tracking tools. Each one serves a purpose, but ideally, you want to analyze multiple data points.
Useful and Actionable Insights
Okay, so say you have a tracking tool with benchmarking capabilities and that collects comprehensive data from multiple channels. What will you do with all that information?
This leads us to our next criterion: insights. Data alone without analysis is not enough. You have to turn them into actionable insights that are beneficial to your use case.
It can also help if your competitor tool has artificial intelligence features that turn data automatically into summarized snippets so you don’t have to compare graphs manually to come to conclusions that you can act on.
Relevance to Your Business Goals
Ask yourself who the intended audience is for the competitor tracking solution in question.
- Is it made for e-commerce brands only?
- Is it meant for agencies, small businesses, or enterprises?
- Is it best suited for B2B and SaaS companies?
Ease of Use
You also have to be comfortable with using the tracking software you will pick. Anything that’s needlessly complicated is not worth it because a tool is meant to make your life easier and save you time.
Ideally, the learning curve should be low or nonexistent so you can get started with competitor tracking right away.
Other elements that make for a better user experience include:
- Quick setup
- Intuitive interface
- Searchable databases
- Filters to find the exact information you need
- A dashboard you can personalize
- A way to share your findings with your team or clients easily
- Collaboration features
- Automatic report generation
Cost Effectiveness
Before you make a choice, especially if you are on a budget, determine the value for money of each competitor tracking tool you’re eyeing.
- Is the pricing competitive?
- If the price is higher, are the features worth it?
- Are there pricing tiers or a free trial?
- Do you need to pay for additional seats or other add-ons?
You can also look up customer reviews online to learn about less visible aspects like customer support. Do your research, or better yet, try it out before you make a year-long commitment.
Navigating Competitor Analysis Solutions
This wraps up our guide to choosing the best competitor tracking solution for your use case. As you can see, there are different factors to consider, and it’s ultimately up to what results you want and what type of industry you’re in.
Use these pointers to get started. We hope you begin a fruitful competitive analysis journey and make better marketing decisions backed by data.
Ready to start your own competitive analysis? Grab your free competitive analysis template below. If you’d like to learn more about Panoramata, book a demo with us or take it out for a spin by signing up here.
FAQs
What are the benefits of competitor tracking?
Competitor tracking helps identify trends, learn from competitors' strategies, foresee potential problems, make better marketing decisions, and benchmark performance.
What kinds of tools are used for competitor analysis?
There are various tools, including those focused on SEO, web traffic, social media, PPC, social listening, email marketing, and content.
What should be considered when choosing a competitor tracking solution?
Consider features like comparison or benchmarking functions, comprehensive data tracking, multi-channel monitoring, useful insights, relevance to business goals, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness.
