Competitive intelligence necessitates an understanding of the competitive landscape and the development of strategies to combat your competitors. But how do you find out what your competitors are doing? How do you make sense of all the information available about your competitors? How do you choose strategies to outperform your rivals? To outperform your rivals, how do you locate the best competitive intelligence tools?
It is critical to use tools and resources not only to make information gathering easier and more efficient but also to make sense of it all and turn it into actionable strategies. In this blog, I’ll discuss 10 competitive intelligence tools that you should use to improve your competitive intelligence and make your life easier.
What are Competitive Intelligence Tools?
Tools for gathering and analyzing competitor information are known as competitive intelligence. The information gathered can then be used to develop strategies and further a company’s goals.
This article will provide you with ten such tools that are highly advanced, comprehensive, and have a good reputation. The tools were chosen based on their relevance to the current year, the features they contain, and, of course, how much they will end up costing.
Be rest assured that the tools we’ve chosen for you can meet a wide range of competitive intelligence needs and requirements.
The Top Competitive Intelligence Tools
#1. SEMRush
SEMRush is one of the best keyword research and tracking tools available online. It can track the keywords, backlinks, and traffic that you and your competitors compete for and win.
SEMRush allows you to break down and analyze competitors in a variety of digitally focused categories, including organic keywords, backlinking, content performance, display and search advertising, social media performance, PPC, and website traffic.
It provides a wealth of resources for making informed, data-driven decisions. You will be able to see how your competitors attract customers online, monitor their reputation, and identify growth opportunities in the online landscape.
Important Features
- PPC and Advertising Tracking and Analysis
- Analysis of backlinks
- Monitoring and analyzing keywords
- Website traffic statistics
- Social media monitoring
- Content effectiveness
Price
SEMRush has three tiers and offers customization beyond the three tiers. Plans range from $119.95 to $449.95 per month. Customization of the platform beyond the three available tiers may incur a monthly fee.
#2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a platform for tracking website traffic, campaign performance and conversions, and visitor demographics.
It is an all-in-one analytics platform for web performance, campaign performance, and visitor demographics. It can also be used to track user behavior and determine which social platforms are best to target. Google Analytics can provide you with detailed information about your website visitors. It can detail where your visitors came from, how long they stay on different pages of your website, the page paths they take within your website, and where in the world they are viewing your website from.
It not only displays detailed information about your visitors, but it can also outline campaign and website performance via customizable reports and alerts. You can create dashboards on your website to target specific data points and outline the information you need to make informed decisions in the competitive landscape.
Important Features
- Automatic Data Collection
- Customizable Dashboard and Reports
- Simple Integration with a Variety of Platforms and Tools
- Internal Site Search Metrics
- Detailed Information on Visitor Behavior and Demographics
- Campaign Tracking
Cost: Google Analytics is completely free to use and integrate with your website.
#3. HubSpot
HubSpot is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform designed to power your inbound marketing strategy and help you and your customers grow.
The platform offers a variety of services that can be integrated into the platform, but at its core, HubSpot functions as a CRM and market automation platform. It can help with sales by providing deeper insights into your prospects, automating tasks such as email and outreach, and organizing leads among teams. It can help the market by providing insights into traffic growth and visitor conversion. Hubspot also provides tools for landing pages, automation, analytics, and more.
Also, it can serve as a customer service hub with tools to help you connect with customers and turn them into promoters for business growth. HubSpot’s software and services can streamline many business processes in sales, marketing, and analytics.
Important Features
- Website CMS Blogging Platform
- Social Media Platform
- Analytics Software
- CRM Email Marketing Platform
- Call to action tools and landing pages
- Data can be exported to Excel or Google Sheets.
- Personalization for specific business requirements
Pricing
HubSpot offers a free starter package. Additional features beyond the free starter pack range in price from $45/month to $3,200/month. This depends on the needs of your specific business.
#4. SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is most likely the most popular tool for comparing website traffic.
It offers a robust analytics program that can assist you with everything from identifying emerging competitors in your industry to determining what strategies they may be employing.
Simply ensure that your target markets are covered by your subscription, as each country database must be purchased separately.
In addition to monitoring your own performance, you can see how your metrics align with those of your competitors, giving you a better understanding of how you stack up.
This platform shows you where you stand against your competitors in terms of referral traffic, marketing channels, overall engagement, search traffic and terms, and more.
SimilarWeb also has a strong audience insights platform. This will give you a better understanding of what niches of the overall target audience you’re getting and how they compare to the traffic and audience segments your competition is getting.
This is important because it can highlight key segments of your audience that you may be overlooking and provide insight into how to better connect with them, especially since you can also track which funnels are most effective at driving conversions.
Please keep in mind that the basic subscription will only provide you with access to 12-month data.
- Why this tool was chosen: SimilarWeb’s overall analytics are strong, but their funnel visualization is their most distinguishing feature. Being able to see how you’re driving conversions — and who is more successful — is extremely valuable.
#5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social has comprehensive competitor analytics tools for data and intelligence, including social listening.
This competitive analytics platform can tell you a lot about what people are saying about your competition, as well as help you keep track of what they’re doing.
You can also gain access to information about their top-performing social posts, overall engagement, and social growth.
This can provide you with a condensed version of their overall content strategies, demonstrating what they’re discussing, what your audience finds engaging, and how your content is faring.
The disadvantage here is: Sprout Social is a social-heavy tool, so while it provides more valuable insights into social data than most other tools, it doesn’t compare to the data you can get from overall site analytics if that’s what you’re looking for.
- Why this tool was chosen: The social listening tool and social analytics provided by Sprout Social can assist you in determining what people are saying about your competitors and what they are doing on social media. You’ll learn about their strategies and what people are saying about them in general.
#6. Wappalyzer
Wappalyzer is a laser-focused tool that only does one thing exceptionally well.
This browser add-on will immediately display the specific technologies used on the site you’re currently viewing.
The extension is simple to use, and the insights it provides are not found in many other resources on this list.
Examine the technology and extensions used by your competitors!
You may notice, for example, that all of your competitors who rank highly in the SERPs use SEO plugins to optimize their pages for specific keywords.
Or, you may find that those with the most sales have integrations with email software like Mailchimp that can distribute autoresponder campaigns.
- Why this tool was chosen: Wappalyzer allows you to see which technologies other websites are using and then improve your own results in terms of increased traffic, engagement, and even sales.
#7. Owletter
This is yet another highly specialized tool, but it examines something that almost no other CI service does.
Owletter is an email competitor research tool that provides in-depth information on what offers your competitors are running, when their sales are running, how they announce new products, and even what subject lines they’re using to increase email open rates.
This can reveal a lot about what your audience wants to see and how they react to it.
- Why this tool was chosen: Owletter can provide you with detailed information about what is working in your competitors’ email campaigns and what strategies they are currently employing.
#8. Moz
Moz has a robust suite of competitive research tools that provides detailed information on their keyword usage, domain authority, position ranking, and more.
Their analytics tool is one of the most popular and well-known in the industry.
Its audit capabilities can provide you with a wealth of information about what’s going on on your site (both technically and strategically) as well as what’s going on on your competitors’ sites.
The platform also provides cursory social media analytics, providing a big-picture view of what’s going on.
This is an excellent tool for crawling and comparing your competitors’ websites to your own.
The suite includes the ability to examine your competitor’s backlink profile and look for other sites (and other factors) that may be helping or hurting their domain authority.
Since Moz created the domain authority score, this is all linked together seamlessly, giving you a clear picture of how well everything fits together.
- Why this tool was chosen: Moz has a comprehensive suite of tools that can provide you with strategic and technical insight into what your competitors are doing. The best feature is the ability to see how your competitors’ backlink profiles affect their domain authority.
#9. Alexa
Alexa is an Amazon analytics program with some great audience research features.
This tool is lightning-fast and will show you how each site you’re looking for compares to industry standards.
You can see how they compare in terms of site traffic, bounce rate, linking, and overall ranking.
The tool also suggests several tools with similar audiences, so you may be able to identify new competitors you weren’t aware of and which channels are driving the most traffic to each one.
Alexa also has a ton of keyword information, showing you which is driving traffic to other sites and giving you new content ideas.
This is tightly integrated with their audience and demographic data, which may be the most advanced on the list.
See what your competitors’ audiences are interested in, how much overlap you have with different competitors, and how they interact with the site.
- Why this tool was chosen: Alexa is strong overall, but the audience details are the reason you should use this tool. The audience overlap feature is useful, and its data is more detailed than some surface-level demographics.
#10. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content-focused competitor analysis tool that can help you identify what your audience really wants to see in terms of top blog post topics, lead magnets, and more.
You can use this tool to find new competitors and see what they’re doing with their content marketing.
You can quickly assess the top-performing content in your industry by seeing how long their blog posts are, what mediums are being used, and how long their blog posts are.
This can be extremely valuable because content can tell you a lot about your audience, their pain points, and how to attract them to your site.
Why this tool was chosen: BuzzSumo is a tool for content-oriented competitive intelligence.
What is the Process for Gathering Competitive Intelligence?
It is primarily obtained by reviewing the business advertisements or websites of your competitors. By referring to materials made public by your competitor, you can learn vital information about their strategy. Many competitive intelligence tools make it very easy to sift through this material.
What is the Goal of Competitive Intelligence?
The primary goal is to identify potential risks and opportunities that the company may face. It enables businesses to respond appropriately to their competitors’ strategies.
Competitive Intelligence: Ethical or unethical?
Absolutely! Corporate espionage and competitive intelligence should not be confused. The former is a research process that entails browsing through the information that competitors have made available for public use.
Conclusion
Competitive intelligence tools have simplified and streamlined competitor analysis. Every company and competitor now takes a different approach. As a result, depending on their businesses, different companies will require different tools. Try to comprehend the worth of each tool in terms of its distinct features.
Crayon is an all-in-one comprehensive competitive intelligence software. If your company is more content-driven, Moat is a tool you should use to create creative content inspired by your competitors’ previous creative work.
- MARKETING INTELLIGENCE: Definition, Types, Tools, Strategies & Examples
- PRODUCT ANALYTICS: Detailed Guide With The Top 5 Tools
- Financial Intelligence: Babysteps to Proper Mastery (+ How to guide & Detailed courses)
- TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: Types, Features, and Software Solutions
- PRODUCT ANALYTICS: Detailed Guide With The Top 5 Tools
References
