9 Competitive Insights & How to Get Them

Competitive insights (also called competitor insights) are useful details about other businesses that help us make smarter choices for our own business. To get these insights, we can either check what other businesses are doing by hand or use special tools to do it faster.

9 Types of Competitive Insights and How We can Find Them:

1. Market Share for Different Results:

We should check how much market share each company in our industry has. This helps us understand how every business is doing and shows us which ones are strong competitors. But it’s not only about money. We should also look at other important numbers, like:

• Product sales
• Active users every month
• Website traffic

This helps us see what really makes companies grow in different ways.

2. Traffic Sources:

If we know where our competitors get their visitors from, we can find new channels we’re not using yet. We can also see where we’re not doing well. We can check up to five websites at once and compare with our top competitors.

This dashboard gives us a big-picture view, but there are other dashboards too. The AI Traffic dashboard shows how tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot send traffic to other sites. We can use this info to see trends, plan smarter, and stay ahead in the AI world.

3. Social Media Reach:

If our competitors are using social platforms that we are not, we might miss chances to connect with more people. Most businesses add links to their social media in their website footer. We can check those pages one by one.

But a faster way is to use the Traffic & Market Toolkit dashboards.

4. Products and Services:

Looking at what our competitors offer can help us find new ideas. It also helps us find ways to stand out. We can check things like quality, price, and features.

For example, if we sell yoga clothes, we might notice no one else uses the same strong material we do. We can then highlight this in our marketing. We may also see that a competitor offers many color choices. This could inspire us to add more colors to our line.

5. Target Customers:

We should find out who our competitors are trying to reach. This helps us make sure we’re not missing any important groups. It also shows us if there are customer groups no one is focusing on.

We can learn from how competitors set up their websites. For example, Slack has special pages for different job roles and industries. Each page focuses on different benefits of their product.
They also make content for each group of customers.
The number of resources they offer shows how important each group is. We can also read Slack’s success stories to learn about their customers. This helps us build buyer profiles and understand customer problems.

To see who visits our competitors’ sites, we can use Audience Overlap and Demographics dashboards. Add up to five competitor websites to see details like:

• Age, gender, and country of visitors
• What sites the same people also visit
• These popular sites may be good places to place ads or build links.

6. Most Visited Webpages:

By checking our competitors’ top pages, we can see what products, services, or content their visitors like most. To do this, enter a competitor’s website into Top Pages dashboard. Then choose the time and location we want to review.

7. Google Search Rankings:

We can see which keywords help our competitors show up in Google search. This gives us ideas for keywords we should also target.

To pick the best ones, check these details:

• Volume: How often people search for the word
• KD%: How hard it is to rank for the word
• Intent: What people are trying to do (buy, learn, etc.)

8. Ads and Results:

Knowing where competitors place ads and how well those ads work can help us plan better campaigns.

Use these tools to explore ad strategies:

• Advertising Research to see Google search ads
• PLA Research to check Google Shopping ads
• AdClarity to view display, video, and social media ads

9. Reputation – Good and Bad:

It’s important to know what people think of our competitors. We can copy their strengths and use their weak spots to our advantage.

For example:

• If a competitor is loved for their great service, we can try to do the same.
• If they’re known for poor service, we can highlight our good reviews.

Check review websites like Google and Yelp. Read what people often say about competitors and look for repeated comments.

Also, search their names on Google to see what’s being said in articles or news. Skip their own site and social pages — go for third-party opinions.

Start Collecting Competitor Insights

No matter how we gather insights, we should do it often. This helps us spot changes early and act quickly.