Spy on Your Competitors

10 key tactics to discovering your competition’s strategy and what it takes to beat them!

The old adage, "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer", is applicable not only to personal relationships but business relationships as well. While I'm not suggesting that you befriend your competitors, it is important that you are cognizant of your competitors' business ventures and methods.

It is important to realize that while monitoring your competitors is essential, it could easily become an obsession. Therefore, it is crucial that you strike a balance when incorporating it into your business plan. There are several ways to conduct successful stealth competitive intelligence operations. While it is fanciful to imagine yourself as a secret agent or spy, none of these techniques are difficult, hidden or secretive. In fact, most of them are tools or services available to all businesses.

1. Ego Searches - What are ego searches?

Ego searches are keywords or keyword phrase searches for a specific brand, product, or company name. Ego searches are a great way to monitor mentions of a competing product. You can automate the set up of ego searches using RSS, so anytime a competitor's product or brand name is mentioned in the news, blogosphere, or print you receive notification and the details in an RSS feed.

How to Setup Ego Feeds - http://www.feedforall.com/ego-searches.htm
Create RSS Ego Searches - http://www.rss-tools.com/ego-search-feeds.htm

2. Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence is defined as the process of gathering actionable information in a competitive environment. Competitive Intelligence is researching the business environment or techniques that another business uses. Competitive Intelligence is often used to influence a strategy for business development.

First, it is necessary to know your competition. Background research can be conducted using the tools at DNS Stuff http://www.dnsstuff.com, and various other websites. The DNS stuff website will allow you to do a “WhoIs” lookup. A number of other research tools are also available on the site.

3. Google Alerts

Receive notification via email on the latest relevant Google search results (web, news, etc.). Define the Google Alerts using a competitor’s company name or product name. http://www.google.com/alerts

4. Meta Tags

Have you ever considered what keywords or phrases a competitor is targeting on their website? Have a peak at their meta tags by simply viewing the webpage source. Pay particular attention to the header tags that include title, description, and keywords. Are these keywords part of your marketing mix?

5. Information

Arm yourself with information. The Googspy website is particularly useful when used properly. Enter a keyword, company name, or domain, click the results and view the companies top 25 competitors. If any of those websites are using pay per click on Google, you will also be able to obtain a partial list of the adwords they have purchased. The website gives you a glimpse inside competitors, but the list they provide is by no means exhaustive. http://www.googspy.com

Good stuff, yeah?! Stay tuned... tactics #6-10 coming soon!

Forward this post to a friend (not a competitor!) by sending them this link: http://darrenhardy.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/spy_on_your_com.html

Not subscribed to the email updates? Subscribe Now - input your email address into the subscribe section at the top left.

Comments

[devdutt kaushal]

well i have first time gone through the information provided to me through this wonderful site now let me see if it is beneficial to me in terms of pharma point of view and marketting

[Glenn]

A very good site that offers reverse phone searches and other lookups is http://www.trace-a-phone-number.com