After your customers, one of the single most important stakeholders in your business is your competitors. Everything they do, from PPC ads to where people are talking about them online, can help make or break your business. Keeping an eye on your competitors can also make you more innovative and help you learn what strategies work for them, and thus what approaches you could adjust to better fit your business for success.
To save you from the hard analysis of searching through competitors Tweets or constantly having to obtain their latest ad, take a look at the tools we use below and let us know in the comments if you have any extra of your own!
Icerocket – Brand Monitoring – Free 
Ever wondered who’s talking about your competitors? Word of Mouth is the Holy Grail for most businesses in marketing and it’s always great to know what your competitors are doing right, and quite often what they’re doing wrong. With Icerocket you can search the world of blogging for your competitor’s brand name, analyse their recent activities and target blogs who are open to working with brands like yourself. The simple search bar brings up the most recent mentions of different brands and you can slowly work through the world of blogging to find your competitive edge.
Netvibes – Web Dashboard – £
From affiliates, to social, to search; this tool is one of the most futuristic brand monitoring tools available. With a dashboard that should be starring in an episode of Star Trek, Netvibes make it easy to keep track of your competitor’s latest offers, campaigns and reputation all on one screen. This tool encompasses many elements of a competitor analysis, but it has limited depth in the information you can retain.
Opensite Explorer – Competitor Link Research – £
Opensite Explorer is one of the most popular SEO tools available for use and with good reason too! Find out who’s linking to competitors and target these sites for link neutralisation and link building activities. As part of the Moz family it can be quite an expensive tool, but for extensive competitor link research there’s not much better and easier to understand available.
Spyfu – Keyword Breakdown – £ – Free
Working with AdWords as a small business is never an easy task. It’s quite costly to outsource and it takes both a lot of time and skill to use it effectively. It is also time consuming to weed out what doesn’t work, among the ads that do work. To help, Spyfu have the inside track on your competitor’s last 3 months’ use of AdWords. Use it to get a breakdown of what didn’t work for competitors, or to research the cost per click and search volume statistics on keywords. Many claim the specifics to be a little inaccurate, but as a whole the tool is something every small business thinking about using AdWords should look at.
Semrush – Align SEO & SEM activities – £
Semrush is one of the most comprehensive SEO and SEM tools available all in one dashboard. Find out who your direct competition is for common keywords, direct competition for keywords in ads and get a live update of your competitor’s latest ads. It is worth mentioning that you only get a limited number of attempts and buying a full package is quite costly. However, it is an easy to use and incredibly valuable tool for getting a good insight into your major competitors SEO and SEM activities.
Textfreeapp – Social Research – Free
Finding content that’s relevant and interesting to your audience is never an easy task, and it’s especially annoying when you watch your competitors share great content first. With TextFreeApp you can cut straight to the chase. Built with an angle towards Twitter users, you can download all the links your competitors have shared and analyse each click, RT and Favourite. There’s a ton of other uses with this site, but it is by far an incredibly useful tool as it offers the ability to download all your competitors Twitter followers. How’s that helpful? You can research who their biggest influencers are and transfer that influence onto your brand.
Are you using any of these tools? Let us know below or comment on our Facebook page!