5 Tools to Help You Monitor and Learn From Your Competitors

Let’s face it: we don’t do business in a vacuum. Your competition is out there and your customers are aware of them. Why not use this to your benefit?

Most businesses realize that, to do business today, you must have an online presence. This state of affairs makes it easier for you to keep an eye on how your industry rivals are performing and learn from what they’re doing right or doing wrong. For instance, if you make note of your competitors’ social media successes and failures, you can adjust your activities accordingly to refine your presence in that area to avoid the same pitfalls.

Below is a list of tools that we’ve compiled that are designed to make the task of monitoring your competition easier:

1. InfiniGraph – This free tool delves into the social media goings on throughout your industry. Not only does this help you monitor your competition, it also allows you to keep track of those trends most popular among your audience.

2. Marketing Grader – Marketing Grader is a practical tool that scores your competitors’ online performance to allow you to more effectively compare them. You can also compare those scores with that of your own to see where your company matches up. Marketing Grader is offered for free through HubSpot.

3. Google Alerts – This free service allows you to keep an eye on your competitors’ online activity by emailing you updates that let you know when their names are brought up online.

4. Socialmention – This valuable tool lets you search for companies’ names across different social media platforms in order to find out how often they’re being talked about and what’s being said about them. Socialmention is a free service.

5. SimilarWeb – SimilarWeb can tell you just how successful your competition’s websites are by supplying you with such statistics as category, country and global rankings. It also tells you where their website traffic is coming from. Don’t know which competitors to check out? SimilarWeb can even help you with that, too! Free trials are available as well as several packages with prices that range from $99 – $2,999.

Is there a tool you prefer that isn’t listed here? Please share below!