Competitor Analysis Tools that Work to your Advantage

Competition. One-word but a world of different rivals. One product or service but offered in different brandings and packaging. What keeps your business afloat? What keeps you thriving? What makes you survive in the vast waterscapes of various people - competitors and audiences alike?

Does it matter what industry you’re in? Does it matter really? With the many marketing channels and social media platforms, can you still recognize the sea of brands and can you still reach the right audience? The idea of conducting competitive analysis was never fun, but all the while, remember that every brand needs it.

Let me count the Competitor Tools that may work to your advantage depending on your practice and know-how which are categorized into the following:

1. Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools - Phalanx, Sprout Social, Social Blade

2. SEO Competitor Analysis Tools - MozBar, SEMRush, Ahrefs

3. Content Competitor Analysis Tools - Feedly, Similarweb, Buzzsumo

4. Emails, Ads, and Industries Competitor Analysis Tools - iSpionage, Owletter, Owler, Mailcharts.

Phalanx

Usually relevant to looking at competitors’ Instagram accounts, this calculator measures how active any followers’ accounts are. This also keys in whether an influencer has a legitimate following. This tool measures an account's number of followers plus follower engagement on interactions such as likes, follows, and comments.

Sprout Social

Sprout social makes you understand the competitor’s profiles from various angles and data points. It furnishes you with competitive reports that can be used all over Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It’s all one click away minimizing the tedious efforts of manually powered charts or even excel. The Premium gets away with interactive charts and graphs that can make your goals more reachable.

Social Blade

A fun tool for checking bigger brands. It accesses Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube based on follower counts. Often used by celebrities and Youtubers, even marketers can find relevant use for this tool. You can assess day-to-day performance and explore brands' performance side by side like a stack.

MozBar

This uses a browser extension called Moz where a website is ranked based on its visibility through google ranking. Based on a metric on domain authority, it assigns a score based on its likelihood to appear in search engines. Its feature includes determining a site’s search performance. You can also see how sites compete through google queries.

SEMRush

This starter pack sets them apart from other tools. You can pull backlinks and monitor changes in the ranking of your competitors’ tools. It helps you understand who your competitors are. The use of keywords as highlighted also reflects the performance of your content.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ site explorer, allows one to check top organic keywords from any URL. You can assess a rough estimate of how much traffic a competitor gets on these organic keywords. Looking at backlinks teaches you what products or messaging works best for a brand.

Feedly

Want to know your competitors’ stats without checking their blogs? Then, do so by using Feedly. This content aggregator brings together the content as they are published. In turn, this allows you to see important topics covered by your competitors all on one page.

Similarweb

Amazingly, Similarweb is a comparative tool both for content and SEO. It helps you know where your competitors’ content and traffic come from.

Buzzsumo

This tool allows you to assess top-performing content from your brand and your competitors’ brands. Content engagements through total shares are used to determine performance. It also allows you to explore more trending topics as part of your upcoming content.

iSpionage

If you’re interested in paid Adwords, you can use this tool to see how many more words a brand is targeting. This makes up for realistically estimating whether or not an ad you put out is worth the spending you made.

Newsletter

This user-friendly tool allows you to gather data from emails and organize them into a simple dashboard. It also helps you know when to send those important emails. With this tool, there is no need to make a dummy account to spy on your competitors.

Owler

This assessment tool makes you to curate data and content with startups connected or linked to your niche. Here, you can input brand names to create your dashboard of big brands to watch out for.

Mail charts

Lastly, this competitor’s analysis tool dons your email away from the tedious platforms online that might scare you away. Mailcharts pull data from your competitors to influence your content and ensure you’re at home with the best practices guidelines like frequency, subject line length, timing, and others.

The next time you’re eyeing your competitors, don’t fret. You have all these resources to check on. With these competitor analysis tools, surely, you’ll find your way through this competitive world even if it means passing through the tiniest needle hole.