6 Smart Tactics for Gathering Competitive Intelligence - Visualping

6 Smart Tactics for Gathering Competitive Intelligence

The business landscape is, quite simply, no longer what it used to be. These days, a good strategy takes more than a solid product and well-timed ads to execute properly. The most successful companies find ways to deeply understand their competition, usually by using advanced digital research methodologies, to give them a significant edge in strategy.

On your way to building a thriving business, you’ll need a tried-and-true method for gathering competitive intelligence. The use of smart tactics and a fullsome competitive marketing intelligence program will ensure your company has the knowledge it needs to succeed in your crowded market.

Why Is Gathering Competitive Intelligence So Important?

The purpose of competitive intelligence gathering is to acquire as much information as possible about your competition, by building the information pipelines you need to inform your own brand strategies as a result.

Firms need competitive intelligence to inform their decision-making in constantly evolving market environments. Everything from your branding to content needs to reflect your business, and an understanding of how your competitors are reaching out to customers can help you improve your approach.

Companies that understand how to carefully monitor competitors can create excellent marketing strategies by using their collected competitive intelligence to find opportunities and inform decisions that will help them improve their position in the market.

How Often Should I Gather Competitive Intelligence?

No set amount of time is guaranteed to produce a successful campaign. The best solution is to develop a competitive intelligence strategy that will allow you to collect competitive intelligence all day, every day, with as little effort as possible.

Regardless of whether you’ve got a single employee or an entire department dedicated to competitive intelligence, using automation to streamline the process will make your life easier.

How to Collect Competitive Intelligence: 6 Tactics You Can Use

Gathering and acting on competitive intel can be a complicated process, as there are often vast amounts of data to pore over. You’ll need to have a clear strategy beforehand to maximize results.

There’s no perfect way to gather competitive intelligence, either, but it doesn’t hurt to know some of the most practical strategies on-hand to try out as you develop your own solution.

Use Visualping to Keep Tabs on Your Competitors’ Pricing, Content Marketing Strategies, and More

Successful competitive intelligence-gathering campaigns require the ongoing monitoring of your competitors’ website content for evidence of changes to their strategies. If you need a simple tool capable of improving your competitor website analysis practices, there’s no better solution than Visualping.

With Visualping, you’ll have everything you need to automatically check any competitor web page (or section of a page) for updates in real-time.

There are several ways you can leverage Visualping to improve your competitive intelligence gathering. Whether it’s as a means of staying informed of new products, services, and discounts, or as a way of learning about new job postings, Visualping has your back.

How to Use Visualping to Gather Competitor Web Page Updates

It’s easy to get started with Visualping. First, simply copy the URL of the competitor web page you want to track and paste it into the search bar on the Visualping homepage. Next, use the tool to select which part of the page you want to track, then select a frequency telling Visualping how often to check back. Once you’ve finalized your account by verifying your email address, you’ll start receiving notifications about competitor changes as soon as they occur.

Use Google Search Modifiers to Find Discussion Threads Online as a Form of Social Listening

You can also use Google search modifiers to gather more information about your competitors. Since it’s a built-in Google tool, you can easily find any information about a specific page at any time.

One way you can use Google search modifiers is to enter “site:[website link].com [query]” into the search bar. As an example, searching for “site:www.reddit.com [name of competing product]” will allow you to quickly search through Reddit threads and find opinions on your competitors’ products from actual customers.

You can also use it to dig for information on your competitor’s website about a certain topic. (For example, try Googling “site:visualping.io [competitive intelligence]")

Use SEO Software to Gather Insights into Your Competitors’ Keyword Targeting, Search Rankings, and Backlink Profiles

What is SEO monitoring? SEO software is a great way to research your competitors’ strategies and build your own approach by considering the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches.

Your competitors’ SEO campaigns can give you some useful insights into how they’re marketing their products and services, and software such as Ahrefs and SEMRush will allow you to spy on your competitors, giving you valuable information about the keywords they use, top pages, backlinks, and whatever else you might be interested in.

If Your Competitors Are Publicly Traded Companies, Take a Look at Their SEC Filings

Under regulations, publicly traded companies in the United States are legally obligated to submit the necessary documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Any filings are made publicly available, making them the perfect source of information about your competitors’ business practices. SEC filings allow you to look at valuable data, such as quarterly earnings calls, to get a better picture of how well a specific marketing campaign is working for your competition.

Sign Up for Your Competitors’ Email Lists, Follow Their Social Media, and Perhaps Even Consider Making a Purchase

Comprehensive competitive analysis begins with gathering as much information as possible. Signing up for email lists, social media, and other marketing channels will give you insight into how other businesses communicate directly with their customers. Even consider making a purchase; that way, you’ll get a clearer picture of their sales process and the marketing strategies that were used to pull you into their sales funnel.

Conduct a SWOT Analysis of Your Competition to Generate a Big-Picture Summary of Where They Stand

Once you’ve gathered all the information on your competitors you can handle, completing a SWOT analysis of your competition is a great way to summarize your findings. SWOT research allows you to understand how your business compares to its rivals and find any competitor weaknesses that you can take advantage of.

Gather Actionable Intelligence with Visualping

There are a vast variety of methods available for gathering competitive intelligence, all with their own limitations, but for the most comprehensive website monitoring, there’s no better choice than Visualping.

Visualping is entrusted by hundreds of companies all over the world as a reliable tool for collecting competitor data. If you want to make better decisions without having to comb through large volumes of data, consider using Visualping to simplify the process.

Most companies charge an arm and a leg for access to actionable competitor intelligence, but [https://visualping.io(Visualping) is free for anyone to get started, and it gives its users a flexible solution to track any website listing they’re interested in.

Get email alerts as soon as your competitors’ listings are updated by monitoring it with Visualping’s streamlined user interface. We make the internet work better for you by aggregating valuable intelligence and displaying it in an easy-to-understand format. Don’t be left behind by the competition. Try Visualping absolutely free today!