You want to get there and enjoy the same success they do.

You need not sit on the sidelines waiting for good things to happen.

Instead you can research and try to emulate processes and systems that competitors use and apply them for your own business.

For this to bear any fruits you have learn from competitors who actually are your competitors and against whom you stand a chance.

The thing is, marketing strategies that work for big-ass players may not work for someone starting out. Hence a change in approach is called for.

#1 Find Out The Technologies They Rely On

WhatRuns lookup of TopShop.com

Tools like WhatRuns can help identify the technology websites run on.

It’s a spyglass that helps you key in to what’s under the hood.

As Dennis van der Heijden C, CEO of Convert explains, “We love companies like NerdyData to get an idea on what websites use which tools. It’s fairly easy to get an idea of customer spending and growth of competitors in the A/B testing market. We know in US Optimizely kills it and moved to the enterprise market pushing for higher yearly deals and you can see the installs grow there with segmenting high traffic sites they do 90M ARR now.”

The second A/B testing tool in the US is VWO that are spread out over the lower and mid segment of traffic with 10M ARR and we with Convert.com are third in the US with A/B testing and Personalization, right between those segments.”

By analyzing what different technologies your competitors currently use, you can compete with them and perhaps attract even more people by building something better or something new and relevant by combining different technologies.

#2 Run a Keyword Research

Keyword research is a fairly non-intuitive primer to achieve this.

Ordinary keyword research where you key in some keywords based on your gut feeling isn’t going to take you anywhere.

Delve into your analytics to find which keywords are resulting in conversions. And then search for those keywords to find who’s ranking above you. Capture as many competitors as you’re able to in this way.

The inherent weakness in the strategy is that not every one of your competitors bets big on search. They may advertise, host and or attend events and have other ways of getting traffic and customers.

A few subscription based sites I know of don’t rank for a single keyword but run their entire business through Reddit AMAs.

The second strategy is to ask your customers.

#3 Listen To Your Customers

Ask your customers as to who else they go to.

Think of it this way. A person buying stuff from Amazon additionally might visit Nordstorm or Radioshack. In relevant categories they compete with Amazon.

Even though you have extensive industry knowledge you may not be aware of all your competitors especially ones that are not well-known but have built their clout in a small way.

A survey can help bring things up to pace. The question you should be asking them is, “What alternative options are you considering?”

Other open ended questions like what they like about these competitors can help you sharpen or diversify your offerings.

#4 Analyze What’s Missing

One of the better ways to analyze your competition is to start looking for kinks and gaps. Your competitors might be providing a lot of things but they also might be coming up short on many fronts or at least a few.

Discover what those hidden gems are that your competitors can’t provide.

Perhaps they lag behind because they don’t have the right technology or don’t wish to offer that and get by with the bare minimum.

You can research about consumer needs on forums, through Facebook comments and blogpost comments.

Third party review sites are another avenue to gain insights. For example, you could analyze reviews from G2 Crowd, GetApp, Capterra Siftery, Trust Radius and similar sites to understand which competitors are absolutely killing it with their product. You can also gain insights into features they lack, common complaints raised and build on that to better your product.

Here’s what Joanna Wiebe chips in on about review mining, “If your message doesn’t come from you but rather from your prospect, then it holds that you should listen very closely to what your prospect says when she’s discussing products and services that either a) are yours or b) are similar to yours. Their words become yours. You’ll take what they say, and mirror it back to them”

She’s talking about review mining in the context of writing web copy but this applies to reverse engineering your competition too.

Joanna Wiebe on Review Mining

Fulfilling these unmet needs alone can secure your spot as a much more valuable competitor compared to your customer.

Find out what’s missing in their game that you could step in and provide? By identifying unmet needs in the current marketplace and the gaps in the competitor’s marketing strategy you can tap on a completely new realm of untapped opportunity.

Perhaps you could research what others totally alien to your own niche are doing and feel for ideas and functionalities that you could offer on your own site.

It then becomes a whole new thing.

For instance, Nine Apparel achieved a 481% year — on — year growth just by differentiating itself in the high-competition apparel niche.

When everybody and their grandmother is pulling out their hair searching for fresh designs, Nine Line honed in on Veterans.

Everything on the site has a patriotic theme. Even their packaging boxes reflect that core theme. They also hire only veterans. The sheer focus on patriotism not only helped them stand out but the theme appealed to a wide majority of Americans too.

The company currently does $14m in annual revenue.

Analyzing what’s missing can be a strong driver that informs your future decisions about your brand.

NineLineApparel not only advertises on Facebook but also employs the platform as a honeypot to get its loyal following involved and provide feedback on designs they’re conceiving. That helps them hit the nail on the head every time.

Why Does This Work?

Customers want variety.

They want to experience something new and different and if you could provide that you can definitely succeed.

The key to all this is to zero in on the technology competitors have under the hood.

Once you do that you’ll be able to see what drives traffic to their sites and capitalize on that.

Concluding Thoughts

Learning from your competitors is a great strategy that can yield rich dividends.

You get to know what your competitors are doing for conversions, the technology they’re implementing on their site and the exact strategy you need to ace the game.

All you need to do now is start working on finding your competitors and start learning what they’re doing.