Do you want to know how to spy on your competitors and outsmart them in digital marketing? Do you want to find out their strengths and weaknesses, their strategies and tactics, their keywords and backlinks, their content and ads, and their traffic and customers?
Do you want to use this information to improve your own digital marketing performance and beat them in the game?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are in the right place. In this article, I will show you how to hack into your competitors’ accounts and steal their data and customers.
I will share with you some personal anecdotes from my experience as a digital marketing consultant, as well as some facts, data, tables, and lists that will help you understand the process better.
Why You Should Spy on Your Competitors?
Before we dive into the how-to part, let me explain why you should spy on your competitors in the first place. Here are some of the benefits of doing so:
- You can learn from their successes and failures. You can see what works and what doesn’t for them, and apply those lessons to your own digital marketing campaigns.
- You can identify gaps and opportunities in the market. You can see what your competitors are missing or doing poorly, and fill those gaps or do better than them.
- You can gain a competitive edge over them. You can see what they are doing well and do it even better. You can also see what they are not doing at all, and do it before they do.
- You can steal their traffic and customers. You can see where they are getting their traffic from, and target those sources with your own content and ads. You can also see who their customers are, and offer them a better value proposition or a more personalized experience.
How to Spy on Your Competitors?
Now that you know why you should spy on your competitors, let me show you how to do it. There are many methods and tools that you can use to spy on your competitors, but I will focus on the most effective ones that I have used myself. Here they are:
Method 1: Use Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free tool that allows you to monitor the web for any mentions of your competitors’ names, brands, products, services, keywords, or any other terms that you want to track.
You can set up alerts for as many terms as you want, and choose how often you want to receive notifications via email or RSS feed.
To use Google Alerts, follow these steps:
- Go to https://www.google.com/alerts
- Enter the term that you want to track in the search box
- Choose the sources, language, region, frequency, and delivery options that suit your needs
- Click on “Create Alert”
You will start receiving notifications whenever Google finds new results for your term. You can use these notifications to see what your competitors are doing online, such as:
- What content they are publishing
- What keywords they are ranking for
- What backlinks they are getting
- What reviews they are receiving
- What social media posts they are making
- What ads they are running
You can use this information to analyze their digital marketing strategies and tactics, and find ways to improve your own.
Method 2: Use SEMrush
SEMrush is a paid tool that allows you to conduct a comprehensive analysis of your competitors’ websites and online presence.
You can use it to see various metrics and data about your competitors’ SEO, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, video marketing, and more.
To use SEMrush, follow these steps:
- Go to https://www.semrush.com
- Enter your competitor’s domain name in the search box
- Choose the country that you want to analyze
- Click on “Start now”
You will see a dashboard with various reports and tools that you can use to spy on your competitor. Some of the most useful ones are:
Domain Overview
This report gives you an overview of your competitor’s website performance, such as traffic volume, organic keywords, paid keywords, backlinks profile, top pages, top subdomains, top countries, etc.
Organic Research
This report gives you detailed information about your competitor’s organic search performance, such as organic keywords ranking positions, organic traffic distribution by country, organic competitors, organic position changes, featured snippets, top organic pages, top organic subdomains, etc.
Backlink Analytics
This report gives you detailed information about your competitor’s backlink profile, such as total backlinks, referring domains, referring IPs, authority score, backlink types, backlink attributes, anchor texts, top-level domains, countries, etc.
Keyword Gap
This tool allows you to compare your competitor’s keywords with yours or with other competitors’ keywords.
You can see which keywords they have in common with you or others, which keywords they have exclusively, which keywords you have exclusively, which keywords they rank higher than you or others, which keywords you rank higher than them or others, etc.
Traffic Analytics
This report gives you detailed information about your competitor’s website traffic sources, such as total visits, unique visitors, pages per visit, average visit duration, bounce rate, traffic by countries, traffic by devices, traffic by channels (direct, referral, search, social), traffic by subdomains, etc.
Advertising Research
This report gives you detailed information about your competitor’s paid search performance, such as paid keywords ranking positions, paid traffic distribution by country, paid competitors, paid position changes, ad copies, ad history, landing pages, etc.
You can use this information to understand your competitor’s digital marketing strengths and weaknesses, and find ways to outperform them.
Method 3: Use Social Blade
Social Blade is a free tool that allows you to track the growth of any social media account, such as
- YouTube,
- Instagram,
- TikTok,
- Twitter,
- Facebook,
- Twitch, etc.
You can use it to see various metrics and data about your competitor’s social media performance,
such as:
- Total followers/subscribers/views/likes/comments
- Average daily/monthly/yearly growth rate
- Estimated earnings
- Future projections
- Rankings
- Live counts
- Detailed statistics
To use Social Blade,
follow these steps:
- Go to https://socialblade.com
- Choose the social media platform that you want to analyze
- Enter your competitor’s username or channel name in the search box
- Click on “Search”
You will see a dashboard with various reports and tools that you can use to spy on your competitor.
You can use this information to see how popular and influential your competitor is on social media, what kind of content they create, how often they post, how they engage with their audience, how much money they make, and more.
You can use this information to improve your own social media strategy and grow your own audience.
How to Outsmart Your Competitors?
Now that you know how to spy on your competitors, let me show you how to outsmart them in digital marketing.
Here are some tips that will help you do that:
Tip 1: Be Unique
One of the best ways to outsmart your competitors is to be unique. Don’t copy what they do, but do something different. Find your own niche, your own voice, your own style, and your own value proposition.
Offer something that no one else does, or do something better than anyone else does. Create content that stands out from the crowd, that provides value, that solves problems, that entertains, that educates, that inspires.
Create ads that catch attention, that generate curiosity, that evoke emotions, that persuade action. Create a brand that people remember, that people trust, that people love. Be unique, and be remarkable.
Tip 2: Be Data-driven
Another way to outsmart your competitors is to be data-driven. Don’t rely on guesswork,
but rely on facts. Use the data that you collect from spying on your competitors, as well as from analyzing your own performance, to make informed decisions.
Use data to:
- Identify trends and opportunities in the market
- Understand your target audience’s needs and preferences
- Optimize your website for SEO and user experience
- Choose the best keywords for organic and paid search
- Create engaging content that ranks well and converts well
- Build high-quality backlinks from relevant sources
- Test different ad variations and landing pages
- Measure and improve your ROI
Be data-driven, and be smart.
Tip 3: Be Agile
A third way to outsmart your competitors is to be agile. Don’t be complacent, but be adaptable. Digital marketing is a dynamic field that changes constantly. New technologies emerge, new platforms emerge, new algorithms emerge, new trends emerge, new challenges emerge. You need to be able to keep up with these changes and adjust accordingly.
You need to be able to:
- Monitor the market and the competition regularly
- Experiment with new ideas and methods frequently
- Learn from feedback and results quickly
- Implement changes and improvements promptly
Be agile, and be ahead of the curve.
