How to increase your ROI by exploiting the competition

Tomer Granit is Marketing Manager at AdClarity, a leading marketing intelligence & research platform.

It’s certainly a bit taboo to be encouraging exploitation, but wait before you judge: we’re not encouraging using dirty practices to exploit your competition. We’re arguing that you’re not using your competition to your advantage.

Within your competition lies valuable intelligence you can use to boost your company’s ROI. Your competition’s successes show you what works. In the same way, your competition’s failures show you what doesn’t.

So how does exploiting your competitors increase your ROI?

Your competition gives you intelligence

No need to hack into private company files here. From your competition, you can gain digital media intelligence, social media analytics and more simply by watching how their patterns and trends have changed over time and even looking at how their business plan has adjusted to obstacles.

For example, take a look at their advertising history and social media channels to see what campaigns generated success and which flopped. There is no better place to start learning than from those who have tried before you, so use intelligence gathered from your competition to increase ROI by avoiding mistakes before you make them.

Your competition tells you who you are

Who is your competition? At first, you may think your competition are just others in your niche targeting the same audiences you are. In reality, everyone is your competition.

When you are battling against thousands of other websites for global attention, keywords become a new source of competition, just as your direct competition may be others in your field but your indirect competition is everyone else on the internet.

Re-think your brand identity against your competition to maximize ROI. It’s no longer enough just to be different than others in your niche, it’s now important to look at what audiences they aren’t targeting that give you an opportunity to be the leader in this arena.

Your competition gives you a new customer base

Your competition has a valuable asset: a dedicated customer base with measurable ROI. However, it’s surprising how easy it is to convert customers from your competition to you. All you need to know how to do is effectively attack their weak spots.

When customers are upset or frustrated about customer service, social media response time, or a product flaw, listen to their complaints and provide a solution. You can also use their forums, like their social media channels or other forums they have posted on online, to answer questions and assert yourself as an expert so their audience becomes interested in you.

These are easy, meaningful ways to use your competitors to your advantage so you can maximize your ROI – all without doing anything unethical. 

Let us know if you have any other tips or feedback on what has worked for you when leveraging your competition.

Read next: Top LinkedIn tricks for outfoxing your competition