Free Tools to Conduct a Competitor Analysis
When it comes to building a digital marketing strategy, one of our favorite places to start is with a competitor analysis. After identifying our client’s competitors, we conduct a deep dive into the strengths and weaknesses of their online presence and overall marketing strategy. We then leverage the information found to fill in any market gaps by offering and implementing optimization recommendations for our client’s current marketing efforts.
Read on for a few of our favorite free tools for conducting a competitor analysis. Spoiler alert: some of these tools are SO good we question how they’re even legal… 👀
MILLED
If you recently onboarded a new email marketing client or are just in need of new content inspo, allow us to introduce you to Milled. A search engine for email newsletters, this platform contains past newsletters from over 100,000 brands! Simply search for your competitor’s brand on the site and instantly explore dozens of their past email blasts, including the subject line, preview text, date, and time it was sent to subcribers.
META AD LIBRARY
Similarly, for ad clients, you’re going to want to familiarize yourself with Facebook’s Ad Library. This database is a collection of ads currently running across Meta technologies. It can take up to 24 hours from the time an ad receives its first impression for it to appear in the library.
After searching your competitor in the database, you’ll be exposed to all ads that they currently have active, including the ad’s creative, copy, start date, and the platform(s) it appears on.
SOCIAL BLADE
For organic social media clients, we start by analyzing our clients’ competitors on the social platforms themselves and taking note of the kind of content they’re sharing. From there, we love turning to Social Blade for numerical data.
By setting up a free account, you can search for any Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or YouTube account (and others!) and learn more about that account’s:
Media upload count: both overall and the amount uploaded weekly
Follower count: both overall and the amount gained or lost weekly
Following count: both overall and the amount added or removed weekly
Engagement rate
Average likes
Average comments
UBERSUGGEST
For blog or SEO clients, UberSuggest is our go-to resource for analyzing competitors’ traffic over time. Search your or your competitor’s domain to discover which keywords you have in common and which keywords your competitor is ranking for that you are not.
For each keyword, this tool also shares its corresponding monthly searches and competition score to allow us to easily assess whether or not our client should aim to rank those keywords as well. Note that with the free version of this platform, you are limited to 3 searches per day.
O’DWYERS
Lastly, interested in identifying the PR firm of a competitor? We’ve had some luck with O’Dwyers in the past. If the brand is included in the database, their PR firm’s name and contact information will populate when the brand is searched on the site.
We hope you found this blog post helpful in discovering a few free tools to conduct a competitor analysis! For more tips, be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our digital marketing newsletter. Chat soon!
xx,
The Homies
