If we all had the magical lamp of Aladdin, the one wish that every B2B marketeer would request to Gennie would be to disappear their competitors. Sadly, though, this isn’t the Middle Eastern fable, and even more sadly, Gennie’s aren’t real.
Now, we don’t know which part of that sentence made you sadder (for us, it was the latter), but the one thing that we can guarantee you is that there still are metaphorical magical lamps that can help you triumph over your competitors, if not making them completely disappear. And we believe that’s something we all can work with.
Welcome to the magical world of competitive intelligence research (CI research). Competitive intelligence research (CI research) is the process of gathering, analyzing, and studying the data associated with the market, your competitors, and industry trends. This research empowers you with data-driven insights and information you need to navigate the complex, competitive environment effectively. In no form is it magical or espionage; at its best, it is pure science.
In this blog, we look closely at 5 of the most potent competitive intelligence research tools that make the magic happen for marketeers by tracking, analyzing, and extracting valuable insights on their competitors. Marketers can use these tools to gain a competitive advantage by identifying gaps in their offerings, anticipating the moves of their competitors, or just staying on top of the industry trends. So, let us give you the top 5 free competitive intelligence research tools that we believe can magically transform your marketing endeavors.
Table of Contents
Tools for Monitoring the Competition
You must stay aware of their strategies and adapt accordingly to stay ahead of the competition. Competitive intelligence research can help you do so. Here are some excellent free tools that you can leverage for your competitive intelligence research:
1. Google Alerts
Google Alerts, a proactive service offered by Google, sends you real-time updates through email, related to any keyword or phrase that you want to monitor online. This feature allows you to stay ahead of your competitors by being the first to know about any relevant online mention.
For your competitive intelligence research, you can set Google Alerts for your competitor’s products, brand name, or industry keywords. It will help you monitor their marketing activities, product launches, and industry engagement. As a result, you will be able to tweak your product, service, or offering to gain a competitive edge.
2. Similarweb
While not entirely free, Similarweb offers a free version that offers in-depth traffic insights on any website you want to monitor.
These analytics on your competitors’ websites help you analyze and estimate the traffic sources (social media, organic search, Etc.), traffic volume, and audience demographics for your competitor. These insights can further improve and tailor marketing strategies for the targeted audience.
Complementing web-focused monitoring tools, Sprout Social is a practical choice for tracking brand mentions across various social platforms. By using this tool, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your competitors’ online perception and identify the content that resonates best with your audience.
Tools for Analyzing Competitors' Online Presence
While monitoring the competitor’s online presence is an excellent practice, it isn’t enough for your competitive intelligence research. To have a comprehensive understanding of your rivals, you must dive deep into their strategies and the content fueling their online success. Here are some free tools for analyzing the online presence of your competitor.
3. Buzzsumo
With Buzzsumo, you can practically track and analyze the most viral content from your competitors, helping you stay ahead in your content strategy.
By analyzing the content shared or created by your competitor, you can identify the content gap for your brand and consequently build content around the themes that resonate best with your audience.
4. Wayback Machine (archive.org)
Let’s face it, getting a business website right takes multiple iterations. Even if you are getting it done by professionals with years of expertise, a website goes through a long period of evolution to eventually achieve the look and feel that’s globally acceptable. And even that gets changed with time. Wayback Machine (archive.org) is an excellent tool for tracking the evolution of any website.
By using the Wayback Machine (archive.org), you can track the evolution of your competitors’ websites and gain insights into the trends that have worked well for them. This understanding of industry trends can be a game-changer for your brand, allowing you to stay competitive and adapt to changing market conditions.
Tool for Researching Competitors' Keywords
Keywords play a significant role in the success of any content strategy. By carefully analyzing the keywords your competitor might be targeting, you can use that information to formulate your content strategy. Here is a good tool to help you in your keyword research.
5. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner allows you to identify the search trends that are frequently searched by your clients and tailor your content and product offering accordingly. It’s worth mentioning that Google’s Keyword Planner will not give you the exact keyword your competitors are targeting; however, it will provide you with the keywords that your competitors are bidding on, and accordingly, you can plan your keywords.
As a general best practice, you must always target long-tail keywords; hence, once you’ve got the search volumes on the keywords your competitors are focusing on, you can use the long-tailed version of those keywords for your content strategy.
Be Free and Powerful
As a business, if you are looking to bolster your competitive intelligence research (CI research) but do not have a hefty budget to get started, well, fret not. All the aforementioned free tools for competitive intelligence are free, and with the right approach, these are powerhouses of resources and can equip you with insights and knowledge needed to power up your competitive intelligence research. If you are not sure where to kickstart your competitive intelligence, you can write  to us at [email protected], and we will help you get started with your research and gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
