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How to Spy on Your Competitors? Best Strategies and Tools for Spying?

Andy
Andy
Jul 24, 2022
How to Spy on Your Competitors with the BEST Spy Tools

What’s the number one rule of business?

The answer is simple: know your competition.

In order to be the best, you have to know what the best are doing. And in order to do that, you need the best spy tools.

Manual research is fine, but it’s very time-consuming. And if you’re not careful, you might miss important details.

Imagine seeing what your competitors are doing, what strategies they’re using, what ad campaigns they run, etc in real-time.

If a business is running campaigns on a product, service,  or offer, it means they have researched about it, know there is a demand for it, and want a piece of the pie.

As a business owner or marketer, this information is invaluable. And you can get it without spending hours on manual research.

All you need are the right tools for spying and strategies. The right spy tools and strategies can help you monitor your competition, find areas of opportunity, identify trends, track customer behavior and more.

This article will discuss the top tools for spying and strategies to help you stay ahead of your competition. Keep reading to get the most out of your business and make it the best in its field.

1) Subscribe to Newsletter and Social Media

Guess what? Your competitors aren’t the only ones tracking you. You, too, can receive their updates.

When you want to spy on competitors, one of the best strategies is to subscribe to their email newsletter and follow them on social media.

This way, you will know what they’re up to, who they’re targeting, what kind of content they’re producing, and other important pieces of information.

Get to understand their marketing strategies, and you can use the same tactics to improve your business.

Turns out, newsletters and social media are great for keeping track of competitors. You can even track their social media ads,  special offers and other stuff that can give you an idea of what’s working for them.

If you want to automate this process, you can set up a tool like Minea, which allows you to get notifications every time your competitors make a move. We will discuss what Minea does in detail later.

2) Monitor competitor website traffic:

One effective way to spy on competitors is by checking how popular they are. But let me clear, tracking social media and seeing thousands of likes doesn’t indicate success. Track how their content is performing and how much webiste engagement it’s getting from the audience.

Website traffic is a great way to measure the success of your competitors. Are people actually clicking your competitors’ website links? Knowing this will give you an indication of how well they’re doing.

You can use a tool like Adplexity to get insights into your competitors’ website traffic. It provides detailed information such as the number of visitors and their sources,. In fact, you would get more than just website traffic data. You would get information on their ads, placements and more.

Again, we will discuss what Adplexity does in detail later.

3) Check how perfect their SEO is:

If content is king, then SEO is the queen.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any website. It helps you rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs) and drives more organic traffic to your website.

If you want to beat your competition, you need to understand their SEO tactics.

You can use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to evaluate the SEO performance of your competitors. I would suggest to also analyze the keywords used by competitors in their content. This will help you identify low competition keywords that you can use to rank higher in SERPs.

So, how to find out what keywords your competitors are using?

My suggestion is to target paid keywords. This is because most o the traffic your competitors are getting is from paid search. So, why they opted forpaid media? Have they found really helpful keywords?

So, tracking their paid keywords will give you an idea of what marketing strategies they use.

4) Check backlinks and referral sources:

When it comes to gaining visibility in SERPs, backlinks play a crucial role.

You can use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to find out the number of backlinks pointing to your competitors’ websites. This will give you an idea of how well they are performing in terms of SEO.

Also, keep track of the type of websites linking to them. Are these reliable sources? Do they have a good reputation? If yes, you can reach out to them and get a backlink for your own website.

Moreover, these tools will also provide you with information about your competitors’ referral sources of traffic. This will help you identify new channels through which you can generate more leads for your business.

5) Monitor pricing and discounts:

Well, price is the main factor that plays a huge role in your customers’ decision-making process.

Your competitors may be offering discounts and other promotional offers to attract customers. You must keep track of their pricing strategies so that you can adjust yours accordingly.

When you monitor your competitors’ pricing, you will also get to know their shipping policies and payment methods. This way, you can ensure that your customers get the best deal.

You can also use third-party tools such as Minea to track your competitors’ pricing and discounts. Minea is a powerful tool that helps you analyze your competitors’ prices in real time. It will help you identify the pricing gaps and make informed decisions to optimize your pricing strategy.

6) Monitor social media presence:

Well, social media is the new battlefield.

Your competitors may use social media to reach more customers and generate more sales. So, keeping track of their social media presence and activities is important.

Tracking their social media presence will help you identify their target audience and the type of content that resonates with them. This way, you can create content to build relationships and engage with your audience better.

Remember, when it comes to social media, it’s all about engagement. So, you must focus on creating content your audience finds interesting and shareable.

Now, we have talked about the strategies to track your competitors. Let’s talk about the tools you can use.

What are the best tools for spying on Your Competitors?

Following are some of the best tools for spying on your competitors:

1) Adplexity Review

Adplexity is one of the most popular spy tools in the market. It allows you to spy on your competitors’ ad campaigns across different platforms, including Facebook, Google, Bing, and more.

You can use Adplexity to see what kind of ads your competitors are running, what keywords they’re targeting, what landing pages they’re using, and more.

This information is critical in understanding your competitor’s marketing strategy and how you can improve upon it.

How Adplexity Works?

As the home page shows, Adplexity lets you cover all and everything. No matter what version of your competitors you want to spy on:

  • Mobile
  • Desktop
  • Native
  • Push
  • E-commerce
  • Carriers
  • Enterprise

Adplexity has got it all covered.

Moreover, you can also use Adplexity to spy on your competition in any country or language. So, if you’re targeting a foreign market, this tool will be very useful.

Let’s see what kind of features Adplexity offers:

You can click on any of the above game-changing weapons to know more about how it can help you in your quest to dominate the competition.

Let’s have a look at how Adpexity works with Mobile Version variation.

Adplexity also has a mobile version that you can use to spy on your competition’s mobile campaigns.

This is very useful because a lot of people now use their smartphones to browse the internet and make purchase decisions.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to know what they’re doing in the mobile space. And Adplexity lets you do just that.

The mobile version of Adplexity helps in the following:

  • Target 75+countries where your competitors are advertising
  • Get access to millions of active and historical campaigns
  • Get access to 120+ mobile carrier traffic sources
  • Get what ads your competitors are running in android apps
  • Get what ads your competitors are running in iOS apps
  • You can download every single landing page into the zip folder

It doesn’t end here! You can use Adplexity for much more. You can use filters to get more targeted, more specific results. For example, you can use the following filters:

  • Filter the keywords you want to check
  • Check the only advertiser you want
  • Who is the publisher
  • What affiliate networks are promoting their products or services

 

If we go one step ahead, you can also filter by:

  • The time when the campaign was launched
  • Daily, weekly, or monthly spend
  • Filter by conversion tracking platform
  • How long the campaign has been running
  • Is it targeting android or iPhone users
  • What traffic did your competitor use
  • Did they buy the traffic?

The detailed filtering options offered by Adplexity are one of the main reasons for its popularity. In fact, the same features and options you get when you target the desktop, native, and push traffic.

However, the e-commerce weapon is different as it lets you target the most selling product of your competitor, the store you want to spy on, or the popular apps with your niche.

You will get the following info about the store or the product:

  • The social media ad they are running
  • Detailed product information
  • Similar products
  • The strength of the product like if the product is trending right now or dying out

How does the e-commerce weapon work?

It is pretty simple. All you need to do is type in the URL of the store you want to spy on, and Adplexity will give you all the info you need about their store and product.

How does Carriers work?

This is a new weapon offered by Adplexity, and it is specifically designed for carrier traffic. With the carriers weapon, you will get access to the following:

  • 1.6+Bn active campaigns
  • 120+ mobile carriers traffic sources
  • 180+ countries worldwide
  • You can REAL3G/LTE from 100+ mobile carriers

What is the price of Adplexity?

Adplexity offers different pricing plans for different weapons you use. The plans are very reasonable and start at just $69 per month.

To give you a better idea, let’s have a look at the pricing of some of the weapons:

  • E-commerce weapon starts at $199 per month per user
  • Mobile version starts at $199 per month per user
  • Desktop version starts at $199 per month per user
  • Native version starts at $249 per month per user
  • Push notification starts at $149 per month per user
  • Carriers starts at $149 per month per user
  • Enterprise has custom pricing

Get an exclusive 30% off at Adplexity now!

2) Adheart Review

Adheart is one of the best spy tools for Facebook ads. It gives you access to your competitor’s Facebook ad campaigns, including all the ads they’re running, the ad spend, and more.

Adheart can see which ads are performing well for your competitors and replicate them for your business. With Adheart, you can target all the platforms, all geo-locations, and every format type.

This saves you time and money and helps you create more effective ad campaigns because you’re targeting the right audience with the right message.

How does Adheart work?

You can search for thousands if not millions of creatives and ads used by your competitors across the web. You can further filter your results by:

  • GEO
  • Links
  • The language you want to target
  • Domain
  • Advertiser
  • Start date of the campaign
  • Duration of the ads
  • Platform
  • And much more…

Adheart also gives you the option to white-label the results. This means you can brand the reports with your logo and company name and send them to your clients. You can also download or make your own file of the reports.

Who is Adheart for?

Adheart is for businesses of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises. If you want to spy on your competition and create more effective ad campaigns, Adheart is the tool for you.

What are the Features and Benefits of Adheart?

Adheart gives you access to your competitor’s Facebook ad campaigns, including all the ads they’re running, the ad spend, and more.

Following are the features of Adheart:

Analysis of an app:

You can view the ad campaigns or an app. What they did today in the past week, what are they up to for next week, what results have they achieved, etc. You can also check their app’s statistics, like the number of downloads, average rating, etc.

Campaign geography:

You can see where your competitor is running their ad campaigns. You can also view the results of their campaigns in different geographical locations.

Monitor close competitors:

You can monitor ads in your niche and see what’s working for them. You can replicate their campaigns for your own business or take inspiration and create something better.

Get into the largest ads database:

Adheart has one of the largest ad databases. You can access it and use it to spy on your competitors. The database is constantly updated, so you can always stay up-to-date.

What is the Price of Adheart?

Adheart offers a demo mode so you can try it before you buy it. Though demo mode is limited, it’s still enough to give you an idea of what the tool can do.

The paid plan starts at $52 per month, giving you access to all and everything Adheart offers with no limitations. You can also cancel your subscription at any time.

Get an exclusive 20% off at Adheart now!

3) Minea

Launching a new product is easy, but it is hard to launch it with the right angle, right targeting, and the correct expectations. This is where Minea comes in; it allows you to research your competition and understand how they are approaching the market.

Minea is a tool that allows you to track your competitors’ online activity and get insights into their marketing strategies.

It’s a simple tool with a clean interface. Just enter your competitor’s URL, and you’ll get a report on their recent online activity, including the ads they’re running, the keywords they’re targeting, the traffic sources, and more.

It shows you the top performing products on social media, on platforms like Shopify, Amazon, and eBay. In fact, Minea has a chrome extension that allows you to see the social media posts of your competitors right in your feed.

How does this help you?

Simple. You can use this information to fine-tune your marketing strategy and ensure you’re on the right track.

The bigger the market of e-commerce, the more Minea can help you. It targets more than 880 markets, analyzes millions of social media ads, and helps you target billions of users based on your competitors’ strategies.

What are the Features of Minea?

Minea offers the following features:

Detailed analysis of your competitor’s marketing strategy:

Minea provides you with selected KPIs that you can use to analyze and improve your marketing strategy. These KPIs let you understand competitors’ ads and influencer placements, and most importantly, you can analyze stores.

Filters make your research easy:

Minea provides millions of databases with filters so that you can focus on the most relevant information for your business. You can filter by:

  • Location
  • Platform
  • Industry
  • Device
  • Gender
  • Age group
  • and more
  • Starting date
  • Duration of the ads
  • Likes
  • Running time
  • Language
  • Countries
  • Platforms

The data is visualized:

All the data that Minea collects is presented in a way that is easy to understand. The data is visualized through graphs, charts, and heatmaps.

Minea lets you target by category:

You can use Minea to target a specific category, such as:

  • Fitness
  • Food & Drink
  • Health & Beauty
  • Home & Garden
  • and more

Minea lets you get all the details of your competitors who are running ads on:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • Pinterest ads
  • And influencer marketing placement

Get inspiration from different creatives:

You can use Minea to get inspiration from your competitor’s creatives. What kind of ads are they running? What color strategy do they use? How do they preset their product?

You can use this information to improve your own creatives.

What is the Price of Minea?

Minea offers 3 different plans:

  • The Lite Plan is free.
  • The Starter plan costs $49/mo
  • The Premium plan costs $99/mo.

Here are the features and details of each plan:

Get an exclusive 20% off at Minea now!

4) Jungle Scout Review

If you’re in the eCommerce space, have an Amazon FBA business, or are thinking of starting one, then you need Jungle Scout.

Jungle Scout is a web-based software tool that allows you to spy on your Amazon competitors. With Jungle Scout, you can research products, find profitable niches, track competitor sales, and more. The best part about Jungle Scout is that it’s very user-friendly. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, you’ll be able to use it without any problems.

How does it work?

Jungle Scout uses Amazon’s API to gather data. This data is then organized and displayed in an easy-to-understand format.

With Jungle Scout, you can:

  • Research products
  • Find profitable niches
  • Track competitor sales
  • Get relevant keywords for your product
  • Spy on your competitors
  • What are their ranking factors
  • How many sales do they make in a day

In short, Jungle Scout provides all the data, information, and insights you need to make informed decisions about your Amazon FBA business.

Who is Jungle Scout for?

Jungle Scout is everyone! No matter your level of experience, Jungle Scout will be useful to you.

For beginners:

If you’re new to the Amazon FBA game, Jungle Scout will help you understand how it works. You’ll be able to find profitable niches and products and track your competitors.

You can also track how and in what time your products start t get ranking and how your products are doing in terms of ranking. You can evaluate, at any time, the reason behind the ranking and whether it is a long-term or short-term thing. You get real-time data on whether the product you are choosing has any potential or not.

For existing Amazon sellers:

If you’re already selling on Amazon, Jungle Scout will take your business to the next level. You’ll be able to find new products to sell, track your competitor’s sales, and get insights into what’s working and what’s not.

This is where you can spy the right way on your competitors for the right reasons. You can check their product page, reviews, and other related pages to get an idea about how they are faring in the market. This is a must because, in order to do better than your competitors, you need to know what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.

For agencies and consultants:

If you’re an agency or consultant that works with Amazon sellers, Jungle Scout will be a valuable addition to your toolkit. You’ll be able to offer more comprehensive services to your clients and help them grow their businesses.

With Jungle Scout, you can:

  • Understand the shares your businesses in the market
  • Track and analyze your main competitors
  • You get access to Jungle Scout API

Jungle Scout has a Google Chrome extension, which makes your task even easier. It has many additional tools that make every step in the eCommerce world much easier for you, from product research to sales analysis, listing builder, and from there to product tracker and even more than you can imagine.

In short, Jungle Scout is an essential tool for anyone selling on Amazon if you want to stay ahead of the game and beat your competitors.

What are the Essential Features of Jungle Scout?

There are too many features to list them all here, but we’ll highlight some of the essential ones:

 

Supplier database:  

The supplier database is a comprehensive list of suppliers that Jungle Scout has verified and approved. This is a valuable resource if you’re looking for new product suppliers.

Product database:

The product database is a searchable database of available products on Amazon. You can use this database to find new products to sell or to research your competition. You can also use it to find products similar to ones you’re already selling, calculate profit, export data, and more.

Sales Analytics:

The sales analytics feature allows you to track your sales and see how they perform.  You can get the full picture of how, when, and where you earned, got sales, how

many units sold, refund rates, and more.

What is the Pricing of Jungle Scout?

There are three different plans:

  • The Basic plan is $29 per month.
  • The Suite plan is $49 per month.
  • The Professional plan is $84 per month.

Here are the basic features of each plan:

Get an exclusive 30% off at Jungle Scout all packages now!

5) Anstrex Review

Anstrex is an all-in-one market intelligence platform. It provides detailed insights into your competitor’s ad campaigns, shares insights on what’s working for them, and how you can improve your own campaigns.

Anstrex gives you millions of authentic, real-time data you can use to test the market, improve your ad campaigns, and scale your business.

How does Anstrex work?

Anstrex has 4 products, each built for a specific purpose to help you spy on your competitor’s ad campaigns.

a) Anstrex Native:

It is a native advertising spy tool that provides detailed insights into your competitor’s ad campaigns. It helps you in two ways, first, by identifying the most profitable ad creatives, and second, by lowering your ad spend that you save without running test campaigns.

b) Anstrex Push:

It is a push notification spy tool that tracks your competitor’s push notification campaigns in real time. Get to know how they are driving conversions, what call-to-actions they are using, and what type of images they are using.

c) Anstrex dropship:

It is a spy tool for dropshipping that allows you to track your competitor’s products, prices, and inventory in real-time. You can easily get the most profitable products to sell and get an edge over your competition.

d) Anstrex pop:

With Anstrex pop, you can get the secrets of succesful pop ads campaigns. You can track what type of pop-ups they are using, what offers they are running, and how often they are changing their campaigns.

Who is Anstrex for?

Anstrex is for businesses of all sizes who want to get an edge over their competition. It’s for agencies, affiliate marketers, e-commerce store owners, and drop shippers who want to scale their business.

Integrations:

Anstrex integrates with popular third-party e-commerce platforms: The following are some of the integrations:

Boolean Searches:

Anstrex provides Boolean searches that allow you to narrow your search and get specific results. This is helpful when you want to target a specific type of ad.

The following are some of the Boolean searches that you can use:

  • “Keyword1 AND Keyword2” will give you results that contain both keyword1 and keyword2.
  • “Keyword1 OR Keyword2” will give you results that contain either keyword1 or keyword2.
  • “Keyword1 NOT Keyword2” will give you results containing keyword1 but not keyword2.

What are the prices?

Anstrex has four products, each with different pricing.

  • Anstrex native: The price starts at $69 per month.
  • Anstrex push: The price starts at $89 per month.
  • Anstrex Dropship: This product is free to use.
  • Anstrex Pop: The price starts at $89 per month.

Get an exclusive 20% off at Anstrex now!

FAQs –

Why should we monitor competitor website traffic?

Monitoring competitor website traffic can help you stay ahead of the competition. It allows you to identify trends and changes in your competitors’ sites, so you can adjust your strategies accordingly. This can include analyzing things like page views, bounce rates, and time spent on each page.

Tools for spying on competitors?

There are a variety of tools available for spying on competitor website traffic. These include software such as SEMRush, SpyFu, and Alexa. You can also use Google Analytics to monitor your competitors’ website traffic.

How to track the keywords used by competitors?

The best way to track the keywords used by competitors is to use a tool such as SEMRush or SpyFu. These tools allow you to track the keywords used by competitors, so you can see which ones are driving the most traffic to their sites.

How to track competitors’ backlinks?

You can use a tool such as Ahrefs to track competitors’ backlinks. This will allow you to identify which sites are linking to your competitors and what type of content they are using in order to get those backlinks. This can help you create a more effective link…

How to spy on competitors ads?

You can use a tool such as AdBeat to spy on competitors ads. This will allow you to monitor your competitors’ campaigns and view their ad copy and targeting options. This can help you identify which strategies are working for your competitors, so you can adjust yours accordingly.

What metrics should I track when monitoring competitors?

When monitoring competitors, it’s important to track a variety of metrics such as page views, bounce rate, time spent on each page, conversions, and more. This will allow you to identify trends in your competitors’ strategies and adjust yours accordingly.

What is the best tool to spy on competitor?

The best tool to spy on competitor will depend on your specific needs. But some popular tools include SEMRush, SpyFu, Alexa, Google Analytics, Ahrefs and AdBeat. Each of these tools offers different features so it’s important to find the one that best suits your needs.

Conclusion

These are the 5 best spy tools for spying on your competition. Each has specific features that can help you get an edge over your competition.

You can save hundreds of dollars in ad spend, get to know what’s working for your competition, and scale your business with the help of these tools.

No matter what level or industry you’re in, if you want to get an edge over your competition, you need to start using these spy tools.

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