Take a Look Through the Fence
Checking out your competitors is part of being in business – no-one wants to be caught unawares by a sudden price drop from a rival firm, or left behind when another player in your market snags a deal with the influencer everyone wants to work with.
Keyword research is one way of doing this, either by reading through their content and identifying the keywords they are targeting in content marketing (or for organic search purposes) or by using a keyword research tool, which we like as it returns results quickly and often brings up keywords you might miss by simply reading.
Looking at the ads your competitors run also shows you which keywords they are likely targeting. If you know they're doing well (which is easy to tell from the grapevine and by noticing footfall among local business competitors) then you know what keywords are worth going after. This could be in terms of running ads on Google, on social media or even using this information to run local print ads in magazines. It could also be a case of creating or fine tuning existing content and product pages to reflect the keywords and terms you ought to be using.
When you identify gaps in your keywords, or in the ones your competitors are using it is worth creating some content around these terms or topics. This will pick up potential customers searching for those terms and if you can get their business before they even find your competitors you'll be laughing.
Meta has recently launched a tool to help you see what competitors and big names in your industry are doing on their social media platforms, namely Facebook and Instagram. This tool will show you which creators and influencers your competitors are working with which brands, on either platform, within a specified date range. You can then follow the link to see the post, which could be a text post, a reel, a story or a long-form video.
You can also use it to check out the associations of a particular creator or influencer that you're considering working with. In this age of social media and accountability it's easy for a brand to become tainted in the eyes of some, if they're seen working with an influencer who also works with problematic brands.
This tool joins Meta's Ad Library, where you can search for any brand or company and see what adverts they have run, or are currently running. This allows you to see ads where you might have been blocked from the account running it, or to see ads that aren't targeted to you which you won't have seen.
There's also the facility to see how much advertisers are spending, but only from accounts related to social issues, politics or elections. Private businesses are not reported on in terms of amount spent, but that could change in the future if legislation around digital transparency forces Meta's hand; the Branded Content tool came about due to the EU's Digital Services Act.
Having a peek through the fence to see what your competitors are doing is part and parcel of business, and here at Parua Digital we know where the best holes in the fence are located.
