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Tag: spy

  • 7 Amazing Ways to Spy Your Competitor on Facebook

    When social media platforms were developed, the primary intention was to help people connect with others around them. However, over the years these platforms have developed into profound tools for marketing one’s business. It is interesting to note that these platforms have not only evolved as a marketing ground but also as a battlefield wherein brands compete to win the attention of the customers.

    Marketing and the resultant competition have only increased over the years, especially with the increase in e-commerce. Hence, it has become all the more important to trace the activities of your competitors that sell the same range of products to the same target audience.

    Since information is much more public on these platforms, it will be easier for people and brands to have access to the important details about the plans of your competitors. This article will focus on Facebook and explore the ways in which brands can analyse and infer information from their competitors through this platform. It has to be noted that these ways can be looked up by budding brands as well so as to learn and develop their own marketing strategies.

    WIDGET: leadform | CAMPAIGN: Link Building

    1. Befriending the Competitor
    2. Following Competitor’s Ads
    3. Advertising at the Right Place
    4. Analysing Content Engagement
    5. Following the Comments of the Competitor
    6. Analysing Sources of Traffic
    7. Using the Right Tools

    1. Befriending the Competitor

    One of the first and the smallest yet most important thing to do when you try to spy on your competitor through Facebook is to ensure that you follow all of their pages, groups and accounts. Not only that, these online outlets should be visited regularly to keep in touch with any kind of updates.

    Social media platforms being as democratic as they can be, paves way for excellent competition analysis through the amount of information it puts out there in one way or the other.

    Following them can be a great way of getting ahead of your competitor or reducing the impact of campaigns that would have been groundbreaking if not for a similar intervention by the others.

    2. Following Competitor’s Ads

    It is well-known that over the years Facebook has evolved as an important advertisement platform. Being someone who wants to follow up on the functionalities of their competitors in this digital platform, it is important to dig deeper into this than just watching them.

    In such a situation you can use the options like “Why am I seeing this ” on the sides of every ad in order to understand more about the competitor’s target audience and other intentions.

    Why am i seeing this ad feature by Facebook
    Why am I seeing this ad feature on Facebook

    By getting details about the target audience or the target location one can curate a detailed counter-plan by paying close attention to the details that you might have missed in your own campaigns. For example, if there is a location that the competitor has focused on that you haven’t, this can be an opportunity to include the new place in your campaign.

    3. Advertising at the Right Place

    It is not just enough to follow the ways in which the competitor engages with Facebook for marketing. Developing counter strategies and executing them is also a part of this constant spying.

    Details of the followers of the competitor can be obtained directly from the page. It will be beneficial to advertise to the followers of competitors. Keeping up with the followers of your competitor not only helps you focus on a specific audience but will also increase the chance of them switching to your brand.

    4. Analysing Content Engagement

    One of the biggest game-changer when it comes to digital media marketing is the impact of content engagement. Anybody can create content publicising or promoting their own company. However, as long as there is no content engagement or viral content, the entire act becomes futile.

    Analysing the content engagement statistics of your competitor is an excellent way to keep up with them. Sites like Facebook’s Top Posts help you break down the details of content engagement including their organic reach. Following successful patterns and trends within the page of competitors can be a great way of adapting and improvising your own strategies.

    5. Following the Comments of the Competitor

    Understanding how the competitors negotiate through the concerns and opinions of customers is an efficient way of making sense of their marketing patterns. Each content that one posts on Facebook have a provision to accept comments.

    Additionally, unlike on Twitter, one can easily follow a single comment to do a thorough follow-up on Facebook. Hence following the comments that deal with the queries and concerns of the customer will significantly help in understanding the prevalent practices in the competitor’s firm. It is indeed a good way to learn and adapt to hitherto unnoticed things.

    6. Analysing Sources of Traffic

    Finding the root cause of everything that is happening is the best way to tackle any situation. This goes a long way in the case of analysing competition as well. It is quite natural that every company spends a certain amount of money and makes sure that their ads reach more places especially when organic traffic dies down. However, it is always important to understand where their traffic comes from.

    You can use various tools like SimilarWeb for this purpose. While doing this analysis, make sure to target the most popular pages of the competitors for efficient results.

    SimilarWeb
    SimilarWeb 

    7. Using the Right Tools

    As digital marketing thrived, various online tools were also introduced to make the process of competition analysis easier. They, in many cases, get the news or ads in front of you instead of you having to go and hunt for them in the feed. Here are a few of them

    AdSpyder

    AdSpyder helps you to spy on your competitor’s ads on all the platforms. It can help you to track your competitor’s Ad campaign on Facebook. You can know what is working for your competitor and which is their winning ads.

    AdEspresso

    This tool has over 15,000 advertisements fed into it which can be retrieved through keywords, industry or goals. It helps you greatly to narrow down your searches and enhance your focus.

    Moat

    They provide you with high impact creatives on Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat etc to ensure that the user never misses a single update by the competitor. It helps you in providing valuable insights.

    Zapier

    This app is integrated with Facebook and has been helpful ever since. All you need to do is to make an account with them and choose your preferences. It provides you with important insights that inform the user exactly about the functionalities in the Facebook page of the competitor

    Graph Tips

    It is yet another site that helps the user with a lot of information about their competitor. Unlike other tools, this one also helps in getting to know what the competitor is up to outside their own page.

    Best Ad Spying Tools for Digital Marketers in 2021
    10 Best Ad Spying tools for comprehensive competitors’ ads analysis including SpyFu, SpyOver, AdSpy, Anstrex, PowerAdSpy, Social Peta, Adbeat, iSpionage, AdPlexity and BigSpy
    StartupTalkyAnsh Mehrey

    Conclusion

    Competitor analysis is indeed a great way of streamlining the strategies of one’s own firm. However, it is also necessary to keep in mind the ethics of privacy and consent while using various forms of data.

    FAQs

    How can I spy on competitors on Facebook?

    Follow competitor’s ads, Analyze the traffic of your competitors, and Use the right spying tools.

    How do I track traffic on my competitor?

    SimilarWeb is a great analytics tool that’ll help you track your competitor’s traffic.

    What is Facebook transparency?

    Facebook Transparency is a feature by Facebook that lets you view the complete information about the ad on any page.

  • Case Studies of 6 Famous Corporate Espionage

    In every business school, you will learn that the primary objective of a business is to make money. However, no one signifies the right method to make a profit. Well, in greed to make more money, some people start to follow unethical ways. There can be thousands of unethical ways, one such way is to steal a competitor’s plan or idea and present it to the world, as their own. There are numerous big and small corporate houses present in history, that had stolen their competitor’s ideas. Due to this malpractice by the corporate houses, the term espionage evolved. If you are wondering, what exactly ‘corporate espionage’ means, then let’s get familiar with the term first.

    The dictionary meaning of corporate espionage, “Attempting to obtain trade secrets by dishonest means, as by telephone- or computer-tapping, infiltration of a competitor’s workforce, etc.“

    In the layman’s language, we can say that corporate espionage means spying on your competitor to gather their secret business information. There can be different means to spy, like tapping phone calls or hacking computer systems or even bribing their past and current employees to get competitor’s future roadmap. This practice is done by almost every corporate establishment, the only difference is that some got caught in time and some just don’t, instead they become rich on another person’s idea. So, today we are going to focus on the former one and will talk about corporate espionage by 6 top companies.

    Unilever Vs Procter & Gamble
    Cadence Design Systems Vs Avant
    Opel Vs Volkswagen
    IBM Vs Hitachi
    Avery Dennison Corp Vs Pin Yen Yang (Four Pillars)
    Waymo Vs Uber

    Unilever Vs Procter & Gamble

    In 2001, P&G admitted that they launched a spy mission for their core competitor Unilever to gather some inside scoop. Their cunning corporate espionage plan, which P&G referred to as an “unfortunate incident,” included going through Unilever’s trash in search of documents, although if Unilever habitually throws away full documents entitled “Super Secret Product Information That Will Crush P&G” their days as an industry leader are numbered. Later when the matters were disclosed in front of Unilever, then both the companies came to a mutual understanding and P&G swore not to use any gathered information. Thus the matter was mutually solved by both companies.

    Cadence Design Systems Vs Avant

    In the early 90′s the Avant, one of the biggest software companies in silicon valley at that time, had stolen code from a rival company, Cadence Design Systems. This became more than a simple case of unscrupulous business practices when prosecutors filed charges and, in 2001, Avant! was ordered to pay $182 million in restitution plus interest and fees, for a total of $200 million. The case got very hick at the time and Avant paid $200 million to settle the case and received the civil case in return. This marked a record for corporate espionage cases during that decade.

    Opel Vs Volkswagen

    Every employee is precious to the company and Opel faced the biggest shock of the time when their chief of production moved to rival Volkswagen and was followed by not one, not two, but seven other executives. The executives didn’t go alone but also took away all confidential documents along with them. Imagine the condition of the Opel. Opel fought a long legal battle with Volkswagen but in the end, Volkswagen agreed to pay General Motors, the parent company of Opel, $100 million and place an order for over $1 billion’s worth of car parts. Volkswagen still refused to apologize, though, showing that even multinational car companies can be as stubborn as 5-year-old children and can undertake corporate espionage dishonestly.

    IBM Vs Hitachi

    It’s a bit old case of corporate espionage, but the importance of the case in the computer world is enormous. In 1981, Hitachi mysteriously came into possession of an almost full set of IBM’s Adirondack Workbooks. As a matter of fact, the document contained IBM design documents full of IBM technical secrets and was prominently marked FOR INTERNAL IBM USE ONLY didn’t prompt Hitachi to return them. The technical staff of the IBM and FBI went through nail cracking investigation to find the culprit. After the arrest of numerous IBM officers, the culprits got caught and Hitachi settled out of court and paid $300 million to IBM.

    Avery Dennison Corp Vs Pin Yen Yang (Four Pillars)

    Pin Yen Yang, President of Four Pillars, a Taiwanese company that makes and sells pressure-sensitive products, and his daughter Hwei Chen Yang, were arrested and charged with a smorgasbord of offences related to industrial espionage against Avery Dennison Corp, a major US adhesives company. They were arrested for paying $1,50,000 to one of the Avery Dennison employees and which caused a loss of $10,000. That was indeed sticky.

    Waymo Vs Uber

    Waymo filed a complaint against self-driving truck startup Otto and its parent company Uber for patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. Anthony Levandowski was an employee at Waymo and Waymo accused Levandowski of using a flash drive to steal 14,000 files (designs, blueprints, and testing documentation) containing highly confidential information before his resignation. Otto was founded by  Levandowski. Otto and Uber are using key parts of Waymo’s self-driving technology, specifically related to its light detection and ranging radar.

    Conclusion

    The business is indeed a dirty game or we can say some selfish people made it dirty. Some people have a viewpoint that with the copyright act and other security tools, corporate espionage has been reduced but no one can be sure of it. All these corporate espionage tales are to alert all aspiring entrepreneurs so that they know the depth of the upcoming danger. It is better to practice healthy and fair business activities, as there is plenty of room for all of us in this corporate world.

    FAQs

    Is corporate espionage illegal?

    Corporate Espionage is an illegal as well as an unethical practice.

    What is Corporate Espionage?

    Corporate Espionage is gathering secret information about the different companies by dishonest means.

    What are the types of Corporate espionage?

    There are different types of corporate espionage and they are:

    • IP Theft
    • Property Trespass
    • Hiring away employees
    • Cyber Attacks and Hacking
    • Wiretapping