Use my favourite 7 tools to spy on your competition completely free.
Competitor: Toms Shoes (Australia)
Goal: Get a feel for the competition in the market,
1. Visit their website. (toms.com)
Take a look at the look and feel of the website, what promotions do they have running. What is the perceived target market, age, gender etc. What type of products do they offer (men/women), what values are represented on the website?
Feel free to make notes as you go with any important callouts.
Time: 10-15 minutes
2. Manual google searches. (google.com)
Type in the competition’s brand name, and get an idea of what keywords are being searched and by volume. Get an idea of some of the top keywords and long-tail keywords. This will give you a good idea of what the users are typing in to get to reach the Toms website.
Time: 10-15 minutes
3. Take a look at their display ads (moat.com)
Take a look at the display ads they are running, perceived target audience, demographics. Get a feel for any promotions they may have running etc.
Time: 5-10 minutes
4. Facebook transparency. (facebook.com)
Check out page transparency, do they have someone managing the activity locally or nationally? Take a look at what ads they’re currently running in ‘ads library’. What type of languaging are they using, what type of promo’s are they running, what format are they using?
Time: 15-20 minutes
5. Google keyword planner (https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner/)
Use the competitor’s domain in Google Keyword Planner and take a look at what keywords they are currently optimising for. Filter by average monthly searches to see high volume keywords. You can also see how much competition is on each keyword and the average price you would pay for a click.
Time: 20-30 minutes
6. Ubersuggest (neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/)
Use this tool to get an idea of keyword ideas that the competitor is using. Make sure to filter these by country and sort further by volume.
Time: 5-10 minutes
7. BONUS: Google Alerts
Set up Google alerts to spy on your competitors directly. You can use high volume keywords, or by the domain and choose the frequency/region. I would recommend keeping these at once a week at the most. Would also recommend setting up an inbox filter so all google alerts go into one folder for you to check weekly etc, so your inbox remains clean.