When it comes to creating content, there are two ways to get started. You can either come up with an idea out of nowhere or draw inspiration from somewhere. Inspiration can be found all around us for the latter option, but we often focus only on successful examples. Keeping an eye on competitors and capitalizing on their success is key to traffic research.
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Then don't wait any longer! As soon as you finish reading the first section, you'll gain valuable insights into competitor traffic research and understand the key concepts we've discussed.
What is Competitor Traffic Research?
Competitor traffic research is the process of strategically analyzing the traffic of your competitors. It's not about looking at the figures and core aspects. You have to go in-depth and study every possible traffic parameter. Every aspect of traffic should be analyzed, from its origin to its destination, along with its reasons.
For example, if you are into blogging services, your competitors will be other bloggers. When researching their traffic, you have to see which platform they get the most traffic on, which posts have the highest and lowest engagement, and much more. In other words, competitor traffic research is about exploring your competitors' digital profiles to get insights into their traffic. Remember, in-depth exploring, not just exploring!
Benefits of Competitor Traffic Research
Market Trends
The first benefit is that you will learn about the market trends while doing competitor traffic research. The only condition is that you have to be doing so for a while. You cannot expect to understand market trends just by researching your competitor's traffic for once.
Let us explain this by an example. Suppose you are analyzing your competitor's traffic from the past three months so you will know the average traffic they receive. But all of a sudden, you see a significant rise in the traffic. That is the point where the market trends may have changed. You need to analyze the reason for the traffic growth and check whether it is a trend. If yes, you can follow the same as well.
Strategic Insights
As mentioned, when doing competitor traffic research, you need to analyze the traffic in every possible way, i.e., platform-wise, content-wise, and even schedule-wise. By doing this, you will understand what is working out or giving results and what is doing the opposite. All these insights will eventually help you strategize things. You can include the promising ones and remove the doubtful ones and, overall, can alter the strategy accordingly.
Improved Decision Making
By researching competitor traffic, we gain insights into market trends and can strategize accordingly. All these things together contribute to an improved decision-making practice. We can now make more data-driven or performance-based decisions rather than going by assumptions or instincts.
Enhanced User Experience
After competitor traffic research, you will get an idea of what things people like and what they do not. Therefore, your data-driven decisions will be based on performance metrics, i.e., traffic or engagement. In short, whatever you do, you will keep the audience in mind while doing so. You try to give them what they want, ultimately improving things. This is what is known as enhancing the user experience.
For example, suppose you are analyzing your competitors' websites and find that the performing ones are very creative in design. In that case, you will also redesign your website creatively. So what are you doing here? You are trying to give users what they like by enhancing their experience!
Identify Market Gaps
While you look at the things that are drawing traffic, you will also learn about the ones that are not, where your competitors fail to make an impression. You have to fill this market gap to take a competitive edge. You can spot the weaknesses of your competitors and turn them into your strengths, thus keeping yourself ahead of the competition.
For example, if your competitors do not have significant traffic on some social media platforms, you can see this as an opportunity to get ahead of them. You can get the upper hand on those social media platforms and gather the potential clients your competitors miss out on.
How to Do Competitor Traffic Research?
Examine Competitor Websites and Content
The first thing you can do or are supposed to do in competitor traffic research is examine their website and content. Visit their website and check out the layout, the sections, the web pages, services, and everything. Try to go as deep as you can. See how long the website takes to load, how deeply they have connected to the web pages, and much more.
For content, read whatever you can. Visit the blog section, read the testimonials and home page's content, and try to analyze the writing style, the topics they choose, etc. Don't forget to see the engagement in their content and how they interact with their users. Make sure you don't leave anything. You need to have complete knowledge of their website and content. Study these inputs properly and then strategize accordingly.
Analyze Social Media Platforms
For social media platforms, almost everything is similar to the websites. You have to see what kind of content they post, the scheduling, frequency, engagement, and user interaction. Also, keep a close eye on their profiles to avoid missing any campaigns. Use all these insights and then tailor your social media marketing strategy.
Utilize Online Tools
If you think that you have almost completed your competitor traffic research after analyzing the website and social media profile, you are completely wrong. A lot is still left to cover!
Analyzing those two will only give you basic information that is visible. What about traffic, keywords, and demographics? These are real assets, and they are not visible. You have to find them using digital tools and analytics. Even if you decide to do it on your own, you will find that in some cases, it is not feasible, and in some, it is not even possible. Tools are the best possible solution!
For example, when analyzing content, you need to know the keywords they are targeting because that drives them the traffic. It is not feasible for you to analyze every content and list the keywords. You have to go for online tools as they will do the job quickly and effectively. Similarly, it is impossible for you to know the traffic of the website and its demographics just by going there; tools will also be required in that case.
Overall, these tools will give you a detailed report of your competitor's digital presence, which will help you craft your strategies, stay ahead of them, and gather as much traffic as possible.
Key Things to Look For in Competitor Traffic Research and How to Utilize Them?
The most important things you should look for while doing competitor traffic research are the platform, keywords, content writing style, and audience demographics and behavior. If you know the platform at which your competitor is performing well, you can also go there and drive some traffic for you. Similarly, by analyzing the keywords of their top engaged posts, you can understand the current trends of the market and can capitalize on them.
For the content writing style, we want you to see what kind of content works for them, the length, the topics, the tone, everything. All these insights will eventually help you in drafting your content. Lastly, by understanding the audience demographics and behavior, you get to know what consists of the majority and what they are doing the most. You can use these insights to plan your strategy that resonates with them and their behavior.
Understanding Competitor Traffic Research Using Examples
For the first example, we are taking an organic food startup that is entering the market. Upon doing competitor traffic research, it finds out that the leading player in the market is getting traffic majorly from its social media platforms. Using this insight, startups can tailor their strategy around social media platforms. Collaborating with influencers can drive traffic to its social media profiles. Thus, you can see how competitor traffic research has helped the startup craft its marketing strategy.
For the next example, we are going with an already-established tech giant. Despite being the leading player, it continuously invests in competitor traffic research to keep itself aware of its competitors and emerging startups. Using those insights, the tech giant can now find where it is lacking and where others are getting an edge. The company can now work on filling those gaps, which will grow them and help them retain their position in the market.
Competitor traffic research is beneficial whether you are a new market entrant or a leading player. It is beneficial for all businesses and thus should be practiced at all.
Challenges in Competitor Traffic Research
Data Accuracy and Reliability
No matter how advanced the technology gets, you still can't expect 100 percent accuracy and reliability. The tools can predict things wrong, and the data can be inaccurate and inconsistent. Risk is always there, but these things happen often, so you don't have to avoid using these tools. You can go ahead of them.
The best approach is to start with the basics and double-check everything. For example, if you rely on traffic insights to make decisions and validate the data. What if the data turned out to be inaccurate? The moves will fail! So it's better to double-check everything!
Ethical Considerations
The next thing to consider in competitor traffic research is ethics. A lot of times, for the sake of competition, we cross the line. Make sure you don't do that. All you have to do is to gather competitive insights and respect the privacy of your competitors. If you have been found using malicious practices, you may face serious legal troubles, harming your business's reputation. So always take care of your boundaries.
Changes in Trends and Digital Algorithms
Another critical challenge is dealing with the change in trends and algorithms. Whatever data you get from analysis is historical; it does not predict the future. So, your every move will be based on what has already happened; you need to know whether the same thing will work in the present.
Similarly, the data will be based on the current digital algorithms. If those get changed, you will need to alter your strategy. The ones you have already applied may not give you the expected results as the algorithm is not the same anymore. The best way to cope with this is by keeping yourself aware of the changes in digital algorithms and market trends.
Conclusion
Competitor traffic research is not a choice; it's a must! It not only helps you stay ahead of the competition but also helps you in making informed decisions. By doing this, you are not just understanding your competitors but your industry's market dynamics. What is working and what is not, the current trends, where the industry is falling, the opportunities, your loopholes, or the areas you need to work on? You will learn about all these things once you start researching competitor traffic. With this knowledge, it will be much easier for you to thrive in the market, so make sure you make the most of it.
Remember, the market is ever-changing! It's important to maintain a persistent and relentless effort. What works today may not work tomorrow. Consistency is key to achieving your goals.
