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If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition



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If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition

When it comes to being successful online, you need to know what your competition is doing.  A lot of people are actually scared to spy on their competition because they think something bad will happen from it.  I'm here to tell you that there's absolutely nothing to worry about, you're not breaking any sort of law by figuring out what your competition is doing lol.  Think of it this way, if you can go on Google and figure out the marketing plan for a competitor, it's fair game and you can legally copy it.

Spying on your competition is what you'll need to be doing if you're getting into a competitive niche.  You'll need to research what the big players are doing, and mimic them in a way that you will still stand out from the crowd but give them a run for their money.  You'll obviously need to put your own branding onto your campaigns, but that's pretty obvious If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition

If you can figure out what your competitors are doing, you have a game-plan and know what you have to do, but you have to perform it better than they did in order to gain any ground on them.  In this discussion I'll be going over a few things that you'll need to know before you start seeing any results by spying on your competition and implementing marketing techniques they are also using.


Cut out a lot of your PR Media
The problem with going to the media about your new website or business is that there are so many places you can go, but not all of them are created equal. 

The very first thing you'll need to do is check each media website and figure out if they are covering anything about your industry.  If they aren't actually writing anything about your industry, cut them from the list and move on.  You'll cut them because it's just a waste of time contacting them every week with new pitches, you're literally wasting your time and you could benefit by contacting other media companies.

A good way to do this quickly is to set up Google alerts and have it focus on your competitors name.  This way you can see where they are being mentioned by journalists and you can contact that media company directly after knowing it's not a waste of time If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition  You can even go right to the writers and pitch to them, but since they just wrote about something similar to your business, they might not write about you right away.


Spruce up your landing pages
One of the big things you'll need to spy on your competition for is to see what they're doing with their landing pages.  If your competition is a million dollar company, you can be assured they spent some money on optimizing their pages for conversions.  You can mimic their layout in order to get the best results from anything you're doing such as PPC campaigns, SEO campaigns, Social Media Campaigns, etc.

You can also pick up on new strategies that your competitors are using to capture more clients.  I was recently spying on the competition for one of my own blogs and noticed the big authority competitor started using a video demonstration that auto played when people landed on the page.  I'm not a huge fan of these, but my competition is using it and they haven't taken it down, so they must be doing something right.

To see exactly what these big companies are doing, you might have to click on their ads since you won't really know what their landing pages are by typing in the display URL.  It's not the most ethical way of going about your spying, but sometimes it's necessary.  If you really feel bad about it, you can send them a check for $0.37 If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition



Spying helps find better keywords
In order to run a successful PPC campaign on Google, Yahoo/Bing, or Facebook you will need to know what keywords are best to target and which ones you should avoid.  It's a tough thing to figure out all the best keywords before you go broke, but you can do it a little easier if you simply spy on your competition lol.  Sure, you could use the Google keyword planner but they only provide a finite amount of keywords for you to target at a time. 

For something like this, I like using SpyFu so I can get a big list of my competitors keywords without having to do much of the work myself.  This is a paid service, so you'll have to part with a few bucks in order to spy on your competition, but I can honestly say I've made plenty of money using just this one tool and it pays for itself If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition  Think about it, you're not wasting time manually searching through every keyword to see if it pings back a result, you just type in your competitors domain name and the system goes and spies on your competition for you, then generates a report for you to download or just glance over.

I'm sure there are some free keyword spying tools out there that mimic SpyFu, but I haven't found any that were good enough to use a second time.


Rewriting Competitors Content
This is a big thing you can do in order to fight with your competition for the top spots in the search engines.  I've been doing this for years and claiming my position at the top of the rankings over time because the search engines began to see me as an authority just like my competitor. 

What you'll basically be doing is going to your competitors blog and figuring out why they're covering a specific topic and what they main keyword is for that post.  You'll then rewrite the post as well as you can and over time you'll be rewarded for it If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition  Obviously you won't want to copy your competitors blog post each day, you'll need to jump around and see what they've done in the past and rewrite it.

Of course you'll need to add your own style into the writing, but that will come naturally.  You'll want to stay professional at all times in order to be seen as the authority when people do come to read your content. 

One thing you MUST NOT DO is blatantly copy/paste the content from your competitor to your blog.  This won't do you any benefit in the search engines and if people catch you doing this, they will see you as a thief and never come back to read your posts.  You must never spin your content either, this is just the cheap mans way of churning out content on a massive scale, and it never works.  The search engines are much smarter than you think, so invest some time into this and do it right.



In Conclusion
You can see you competition as a sort of mentor, they are leading the way and doing everything they can in order to rank for specific keywords.  Of course, you'll be trying to rank for those same keywords and you'll be doing everything even better than them in hopes of overthrowing their dominancy If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition  You may not want to spy on your competition, but the marketers making the big bucks are doing it becuase it's all legal.  So figure out what your competitors are doing right and mimic them in a way that still allows you to have an identity.  Do this and you will be successful in a much shorter time frame If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thank!

Razzy

Comments

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Kakashi2020
I would have to agree with you on that spying on your competition is not wrong, on the contrary it's been the norm for ages in both offline and online businesses. Thats why there are Market Researchers and Corporate Spies because knowledge is power.

Years ago I attended a business seminar conducted by a successful entrepreneur and he told us that one of his secrets to success is being a copy cat.



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TommyCarey
Being a copycat definitely pays off, in the long run, lol If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition You can follow all the steps a successful company has taken, then put them into your own marketing campaign and profit after it starts to age.

People have been doing this for years because it's an easy way to avoid any sort of mistake that you could have made on your own if you're testing out different methods and strategies in order to make your own sales in a unique way.



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cmoneyspinner
"Being a copycat definitely pays off"? If you're looking for an "Amen!", I'll give you one. Years ago when I first started working online I did not know anything about HTML coding. I looked at websites and blogs that were similar to what I wanted to publish and learned HOW to make my sites "look like" those sites. I do this quite often. Sometimes I change the entire layout and switch templates just because somebody else's site looked so much more attractive than my site. The end result is that my site looks sort of like the site I admired, but it still reflects my personality and has my personal touch. I guess that makes me a copycat. But I'm not the only one! LOL. If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition



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Corzhens
There is one noontime show on tv that was running for so many years and its success cannot be questioned. When the rival network put up a competition, the host spied on the popular tv show. Sooner than what was expected in the ratings game, the new kid on the block was able to turn the tables. The host said that he was watching the popular tv show during breaks so he would be aware of what they are doing that maybe is making them successful in terms of audience share. In short, he imitated the rival show.



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centurion
Great and nice tips and tricks and techniques. All you have to do check and analyse the competitive websites from several search engines by several software and tools. The competitive websites and their keywords should need to be search and find out and should need to apply on your own website. The important keyword based article write and re write will increase traffic for your website for long term also.

Thanks
Centurion



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vhinz
This is really a great advice to keep up with the competition. It's like knowing your enemy's strategies gives you the advantage to win the battle. Peeking on someone's blog who does really great and apply them in your strategies is not a bad thing as long as you don't just copy and paste the whole thing. Just figure out what are the major keywords they are using that makes them on top of the search engine then write quality content using those keywords.



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TommyCarey
Exactly lol If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition

I like doing this because I know what is already working and I can see how the general community is reacting to what my competitors are posting or selling. If they are selling on Amazon, eBay, Chewy, or any other sort of platform that allows you to list your own products, and they're only doing a few sales here and there, I probably won't jump in right away.

Now, if they're selling on those platforms and their titles and descriptions are complete garbage, I'll jump on and list my own products or services and do all the optimization necessary to get seen in the search results on those platforms, which will likely boost my own sales and have me seen as the authority within that platform for my product or service If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition

I like to let my competitors screw up or profit and I see what they did wrong or what I should be doing in order to make more money. I like to think of it as they're doing a lot of my split testing and risk analysis for me haha If you want to be a successful marketer, you should be spying on your competition



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aeon
Yeah, you're right, thanks for this tips. Spying is not really bad, you just want to know what is your competitor's strategy, but copying the strategy of your competitor is not good even to your own business.



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treecko142
Definitely, keeping up with your competitors is a key strategy in being successful, and especially when you're just starting out, you can find your footing in the industry by improving on what your competitors have done before you've entered the market.



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aeon
Yeah, that's right, and I think if you going to start your business, competitor is not the proper call for that. It's more on inspiration to be like that, and if your business is strong enough, maybe you can call it competitor now.



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treecko142
I guess, but if you are both in the same industry, then you can still consider them a competitor because you need to assess the situation of the market first if it's oversaturated or if new businesses have room to grow. Even if you want to start a business in a particular industry, but the barriers to entry are too high, in part due to a very strong company (especially in those where a single company almost has a monopoly of the entire market), then it may not be feasible to start a business there. Looking at them as an inspiration may cause you some problems in the long run.



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Kakashi2020
A wise man once said that to be successful in business, one should study the competition, copying the good traits and being aware of the bad ones. There's nothing wrong in becoming a copycat because this would help you tweak your business to success. Also doing this is a time and money saver.



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Corzhens
Pardon me for saying that spying on the competitor is just like research but rewriting the competitor’s content is plain immoral in my books. I know that some people will do anything just to be the lead in the competition but to try too hard is not really good. Just reading the paragraph about rewriting gives me stress already because it is like being in a cut-throat competition situation. Maybe I will just focus on uploading high quality contents more frequently as a way of fighting the competition.



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jennyfermanuel
Compete with other successfull businessmen. Use them as an inspiration to do well, without copying almost everything. I mean look for the strategies they make, but don't copy almost everything! It is still a rewarding feeling if you know you made it because of your own abilities.



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blackmist
That's a good technique to increase our customers and profit. I think spying is not that bad for us to improve our sales. But it's like we don't have our own originality lol. Spying can help us to improve our service, to make some more god adjustment that are not on the others.



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kinja90
That's true. You should always know your competitor. It will give you new ideas and how you can improve your business. You should always be updated what's new and how they run the business but make sure you don't copy anything from them.



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jpk0007
Well, I completely agree that in order to stay in the competition and win it you need to use all the means that are not illegal to win the race. After all, everyone wants to win and be ahead of others. if you are able to know what your competitor is planning to do, then you may be able to do the exact same thing in your own way and style and take over the advantage. If however, you are caught sleeping by your competitors then it is very likely that you will be left behind in the race and you may not be able to catch up with them again. therefore its always better to be alert and do everything possible to stay ahead of all your competition



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mhingnhormz
If you want to be successful marketer you should be spying on your competition: It's not good to do such things. Spying them, only show that you cannot be a successful marketer and you don't trust yourself at all. You can be a successful marketer on your own without stepping or cheating others.



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