{"id":16716,"date":"2018-12-13T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadsbridge.com\/?p=16716"},"modified":"2021-11-08T09:31:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T09:31:03","slug":"how-to-use-competitor-monitoring-tools-to-increase-conversions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadsbridge.com\/blog\/how-to-use-competitor-monitoring-tools-to-increase-conversions\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Use Competitor Monitoring Tools to Increase Conversions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most digitally-savvy businesses know that there are many ways to boost traffic funneled to their websites and increase conversions<\/strong>. Website ease-of-use, A\/B testing, and customer feedback all help to increase the chances of making a sale.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another tool available to companies who really want to get ahead of the game: competitor monitoring.<\/p>\n

Competitor monitoring tools<\/strong> are incredibly useful for giving businesses in competitive markets a leg up on the competition. They provide valuable information about what other firms are getting right and wrong, and provide the ability to capitalize on it.<\/p>\n

It seems counterintuitive, but competitor monitoring tools <\/strong>allow you to study competitors in a way that increases your conversion rate.<\/p>\n

Where To Look First?<\/h1>\n

Review Sites<\/h2>\n

One of the reasons that Amazon has been such a successful online retailer, apart from short delivery times, is the focus on customer reviews. According to ConversionXL<\/a>, more than 70 percent of people in the US check online reviews of products before buying them. If they don\u2019t like what they read, they won\u2019t buy.<\/p>\n

An excellent competitor monitoring tool, therefore, is to simply find customer reviews of your competitor\u2019s products, and discover what they like and what they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Start by selecting your largest, most successful competitor. If they\u2019re the industry leader, there\u2019s a good chance that they\u2019re already getting a lot of things right. What\u2019s more, if you find that they\u2019re doing something wrong you can look for ways to do it better, increasing conversions.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the major review sites that your competitor might be on. These could include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Trustpilot and many others.<\/p>\n

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You will know which sites host the most reviews for your particular industry.<\/p>\n

Once you start reading the material, you\u2019ll quickly get a sense of where the company is succeeding, and where it isn\u2019t. If you find a recurring issue, don\u2019t be afraid to address it in your marketing material to increase conversions <\/strong>directly.<\/p>\n

Review sites can be a powerful competitor monitoring tool. Between a third and a half of people have left a product review at some point in the past. There is a treasure trove of information out there, waiting to be uncovered.<\/p>\n

Social Media<\/h2>\n

Which digital marketing funnel is pushing the most people to engage with your business? The answer is simple: social media.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a problem. Despite being responsible for around 31 percent of overall traffic to business websites, the traffic itself is not high quality.<\/p>\n

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The reasons for this are easy to understand. Engagement is low because people do not use social media to find products they want (unlike when they log on to Amazon). Instead, they use it to chat with friends or post trivia about their lives. Furthermore, most people are not laser-focused on what they are doing making it hard to use social media to increase conversion<\/strong>. Attention spans are short on these platforms.<\/p>\n

However, just because social media is less potent a tool for increasing conversions than other channels, it doesn\u2019t mean that it is not a powerful competitor monitoring tool.<\/p>\n

Competitors engage with their audiences on social media all the time. And these audiences provide valuable, real-time feedback. Spying on your competitors through social media is an excellent way to find out what they\u2019re doing right, and what they\u2019re doing wrong. Twitter, in particular, is a good competitor monitoring tool for finding out what issues customers have in real-time.<\/p>\n

Monitor Competitors On Forums<\/h2>\n

Lastly, forums can provide insights into what customers think about other businesses in your competitive space. Forums are a valuable competitor monitoring tool because customers are often willing to go into more detail about how a company treated them on these platforms than on others. After all, people sign up to forums for in-depth conversations, not hastily written reviews.<\/p>\n

How To Use Competitor Monitoring Tools<\/h1>\n

Use Statistics To Inform Your Decisions<\/h2>\n

Competitor monitoring tools are a great way to increase conversions<\/strong>. But that doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re always easy to interpret. Going through and reading every social media post or online review is likely to leave you more confused than anything else.<\/p>\n

A much better strategy is to rely on statistics, rather than anecdote, when making decisions about how to react to what your competitors\u2019 customers think. You don\u2019t have to go into the hard numbers or do anything complicated like linear regression analysis. A simple word cloud, highlighting the most common words in the content will suffice.<\/p>\n

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From a word cloud, you might be able to glean valuable information that will help increase conversion.<\/strong> For instance, you might discover that:<\/p>\n