Ecommerce is a difficult space to find success in. The competition is increasingly rising and finding ways to effectively scale your business is becoming more difficult. You need to find an edge to grow your position in the marketplace.
- The eCommerce industry is growing 23% year-over-year, yet 46% of American small businesses still don’t have a website.
- According to research, 25% of US shoppers check with social media before making a gift purchase for a family or friend
- E-commerce is expanding to different online channels, 61% of online consumers bought a product after reading an article about it
- According to eMarketer, worldwide ad spending on Facebook and Instagram combined will reach nearly $95 billion annually in 2021.
While ecommerce is a growing industry, competitors are increasingly noticing the importance of online marketing and having their products in front of their potential customers.
Here are six ways to effectively spy on your competitors.
1. Moat – Find Your Competitors Partnerships
Moat has a free option for people that want to get different ideas. There are different places you can put out your advertisements.
Moat has allowed you to spy on your competitors’ display ads. You can model your ads based on your specific competitors. In general, you will find they have information on the bigger companies.
Moat Analytics – In Depth Impressions and Measurables
Moat is powered by Oracle Data Cloud. They have relationships with different companies to get this information. They have access to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and YouTube.
Their basic plan comes up with Analytics. You’ll be able to know exactly how your competitors are getting their customers.
Major sites like Huffington Post, Mashable, and Forbes sell advertising space. You’ll find that your competitors have a blend of websites that they partnered with. Their program allows you to get all this information.
Moat Pro – Video Analysis and Extra Features
Moat provides real time data on display ads and video ads. At this level, you will get access to video ads. Increasingly, competitors are utilizing video for their products. It increases engagement for potential customers.
- 68% of marketers say video has a better return on investment than Google Ads.
- 54% of customers want to see more video content from brands and businesses they support.
Moat will hold data for 3 years. You’ll be able to understand the evolution of your competitors and how they have built up their brand. This information helps you adjust to what your competitors are going. It’s increasingly important to be able to get information about how your competitors are using video for their business.
Moat Pro’s Mock Tool allows you to see how your display ads will look on another website. If you plan on buying display advertisements on specific websites, this is a vital tool if you want to have a successful launch. Increasingly, video will become more popular for display ads as well. Moat will help you stay in front of other competitors for your ecommerce products.
2. SpyFu – An Inexpensive Solution to Understanding Your Competitor’s SEO and PPC
SpyFu is able to get information about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click). Both of these platforms track mainly what your competitors are doing on Google. SEO is organic traffic and PPC is the paid traffic mainly on Google.
- 53% of Website Traffic Comes From Organic Traffic
You can see where your competitors are getting traffic for their business. It will give you an idea if you should focus on organic results or paid traffic.
SpyFu will give you more detailed information. For example, you’ll be able to tell how much traffic a certain keyword gets, such as high-value buyer intent keywords like discounts and coupons that are likely to lead to sales. You’ll also be able to calculate the cost per click. Having a blend of SEO and Paid Traffic information gives you a more holistic view on what your competitors are doing.
3. Ahrefs – Keywords and Backlinks that Your Competitors are Using
Ahrefs is a popular tool for marketers focused on SEO. A lot of competitors are utilizing blogs to get traffic to their business. Ahrefs sees what articles are talking about your competitors products.
Create a Blog for Your Own Website
Increasingly, websites are utilizing blogs to generate traffic for their own products. You’ll want to check if your competitors have blogs and if they are generating traffic on their sites from their blog articles.
This information can be quickly checked on Ahrefs by putting their URL on the search bar. You’ll see how much traffic each keyword brings. Writing articles is about targeting organic keywords. It’s a long term strategy for brands.
- 434% traffic increase when a business gets a blog on their website
- 61% of Americans spend 3X more time consuming blog content than they do email content
It’s increasingly important to have a blog for your website. You’ll want the keywords and backlinks that your competitors are using. Backlinks tells Google to trust your products and services. If you have enough quality content and you get your own backlinks, you’ll signal to Google that you have solid ecommerce products.
Once you start getting traffic to your blog, consider a lead magnet of some type to get potential customers to further interact with your brand. Using your preferred email platform or webinar software, there are many different ways that you can both educate and impress them to further engage.
Have Other Blogs Write about Your Ecommerce Products
Ahrefs will give information on which blogs have written articles about your competitors’ products. You will be able to understand which blogs have generated business for your competitors.
- On average, users spend almost 2 minutes 30 on a sponsored article, roughly the same duration as a purely editorial article
Look at reaching out to them about your products. Look at giving your product for free for a potential article review. This can mean traffic for your website and overall awareness about your brand.
Sponsored articles are another good way to get people to talk about your ecommerce products. You can pay bloggers to write about your products if you need a little more traction.
4. SEMrush – All in One: Google and Social Media
SEMrush has information about organic keywords and paid keyword traffic. You’ll get the estimate on total traffic from your competitor’s domain. You’ll get similar information about building links and thinking about content.
- The Top 5 searches get 70% of the clicks.
- Brand awareness can be increased by up to 80% through Google paid ads.
It’s increasingly important to understand how competitors are getting their traffic. You’ll find there are different strategies that your competitors undertake. In general, you want to be able to create great content while leveraging paid traffic to accelerate your brand.
SEMrush has a portal to track your competitors on social media platforms. You’ll get the overall impressions and engagements. You can model your own advertisements on these social media platforms.
SEMrush has most of the different platforms on this one tool to get a fairly good idea on what your competition is doing to get their customers. On this platform you’ll be able to get SEO, PPC, and social media.
5. Facebook Ad Library – Free Way to Get Display Ads on Competitors
Facebook Ad Library is a free platform for all advertisements on their platform. If your eCommerce platform is using a lot of ads on Facebook, you can find their display ads in the past and those currently running.
You won’t get all the information about overall impressions and costs per click. You will get ideas on how you should model your own advertisements. It’ll also give you information to the website it links to. You can understand how your competitors are forming their landing pages for their paid traffic.
- According to Spotify, 85% of orders from social media sites come from Facebook.
- Facebook (and its ads) accounts for 80.4% of U.S. social referral share to eCommerce and retail sites.
Facebook is a dominant social media platform. A lot of orders come straight from Facebook. You’ll be able to find the different products that your competitors are giving through the Facebook Ad Library for free.
Consider going on their business page and also take a look at their organic content. You’ll be able to find different things you can model for your own business.
The Facebook Ad Library will show you all Active and Inactive Ads. It’ll show you when they started running their ads. Some Ads will have gone for a long time. This will give you insight that it’s a successful advertisement.
6. Mention – How Are Your Competitors Using Social Media?
Mention will give you information about your competitors social media accounts. A lot of them will produce content and give promotions. You will want to check their engagement and model your own social media accounts similar to what is working for them.
- 32% of consumers check out a brand’s social media presence before checking out their website.
- 23.7% of Internet Users Claim They Discover New Brands and Products Through Recommendations or Comments on Social Media
Social Media is increasingly becoming important to display your business’s reputation. The more you are able to increase a following and increase engagement, the more you will be able to increase your own revenue.
It’s a good way to potentially connect with customers. Find out their pain points and see which of your products are a good fit for your customers. Look at using Mention to spy on your competitor’s platform and come with even better solutions.
If you can find a way to connect with customers on social media, they may share and recommend your products over your competitors.
Conclusion
Your competitors are increasingly focused on being omnipresent. They can target display ads on a specific blog, target SEO, PPC, or social media. You’ll want to find out where they are spending their advertising budget to make more of their sales. You can use this information to come up with your own strategy to increase sales.
A lot of these software have a free trial, give them a try for your business.
