Competition is not a bad thing, but many times your competitors become monsters and eat all your customers and make customer acquisition very costly for you. When this happens, competition becomes a problem for you. In this article, I have mentioned 4 steps to Spy on Your Competitors SaaS Marketing take advantage of your competitor’s loopholes and beat them.
Let’s dive into 4 proven tactics to spy on your competitor’s effectively.
1. Analyze Their SEO Footprint with Intent Mapping
Many SaaS companies fail to attract the right traffic because the content they create doesn’t align with their potential audience needs. Understanding the exact needs of potential customers helps you in tailoring your SaaS product to address specific pain points. You can bridge this gap with intent mapping.
The buyer journey generally consists of four stages:
Awareness Stage:
This is very first stage of the marketing funnel. Where people identify their problem but have no idea of the solution. For example, a company’s team is not able to meet deadlines. They are frustrated but don’t know which product or service can solve this issue. At this stage, they are trying to understand their problem. In this stage, people search for keywords like:
“Why teams miss deadlines?”
“How to manage team deadlines?”
“What are common productivity issues for teams?”
Your goal should be to make people aware of their issues and problems and Tell them that the problem they are facing is very common and everyone faces it. Create curiosity among your audience so that they read more of your content and consider your brand.
Consideration Stage:
Consideration is the second stage. In this stage, people research different solutions to solve their problem and decide which option to choose. First, it’s very important to understand what your audience is going through. You need to understand your audience’s problems and then frame your content around those problems.
Decision Stage:
This is the last stage of the marketing funnel, where your potential buyers have made their decision of buying your product, and now they need to make their final decision. The goal of marketers in this stage is to make their product the best choice for their buyers. Make sure to offer a free trial and live demo of your product to those of your audience who are at this stage. Moreover, offering time-limited offers and discounts also encourages customers to make a quick decision.
Retention Stage:
The retention stage is the stage when your audience has already used your product, and now your goal should be to turn them into loyal customers. This stage is very important for any SaaS business because here you engage your existing customers and motivate them to return and use your product for a longer period. You should create content that explains advanced use cases of your product in different scenarios. For example, if your SaaS tool is for project management, you can write blog posts that explain how to “Create advanced workflows for your team” or “5 power tips that will take your project management to the next level.” This type of content will make your product more useful to your customers and give them more value from your product. You can also share stories of your successful existing customers who have solved their business challenges using your product.
How to Actually Do Intent Mapping?
Every user who searches for something online does so with a specific intent. This could be to learn something, finding a solution to a problem, or purchasing something. The first step of intent mapping is to identify the keywords related to your industry. For this, you can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
Create different content for each stage of the buyer’s journey based on their intent:
- Awareness: Write blogs and guides that highlight problems.
- Consideration: Create comparison articles and case studies.
- Decision: Focus on free trials, testimonials, and pricing.
- Retention: Use advanced tutorials and webinars.
2; Spy On Your Competitors Saas Marketing With Linkedin Ad Library;
I think the LinkedIn Ads Library is a great tool for marketers and B2B SaaS companies. If you want to understand the ad copy your competitor is running on LinkedIn or if you want to see their targeted keywords, you can do that as well. However, the purpose of checking competitors’ ad copies should not be to copy them. Instead, you should aim to create better creatives than theirs and always write better than them.
First, log in to your LinkedIn profile and search for the page of the competitor company you want to compete with using the search bar. Visit their page and go to the “Posts” section. Click on the “Ads” tab under the posts section to see which posts the company is running as ads.
Beyond this, you can also directly visit https://www.linkedin.com/ad-library/. The best thing about the LinkedIn Ads Library is that it not only provides the “search by keywords” functionality but also allows you to search by company or advertiser name.
Use Competitor Blogs for Content Ideas
One of the simplest ways to gather inspiration and understand your competitors’ strategies is to analyze their blogs. Blogs reflect a company’s voice, priorities, and the topics they think their audience cares about. By reviewing the blogs of competitors in your SaaS niche, you can identify gaps in their content or opportunities to dive deeper into underexplored topics. For instance, if their articles focus heavily on technical aspects, you can create content that balances technical details with user-friendly language or adds visual aids like charts and infographics.
To do this, subscribe to their newsletters or set up Google Alerts for specific competitor names. Tools like Feedly can help you track updates from multiple blogs in one place. Note the themes, tone, and publishing frequency of their content. Then, assess how your content can add unique value. Whether it’s by targeting a new segment of the audience, expanding on existing ideas, or presenting alternative viewpoints, the goal is to position your brand as the go-to resource for insightful information.
Keyword Research;
In this section, I am going to show you a secret that very few people know, and it is an extremely effective method that delivers 100% results. I am not talking about generic keyword research, but instead, I will explain a step-by-step process for high-level keyword research. This method will help you find keywords with different intents, high search volume, low competition, and relevance to your niche.
Let’s say you’ve developed an auto repair software, and your direct competitor is Auto Leap. They are ranking on many high-intent keywords and giving you a tough time. To beat them, you can try this method.
Open SEMrush and enter your competitor’s website into the tool. Then navigate to the Top Organic Keywords section. Here, select the difficulty filter as Very Easy, set the search volume filter to 100–1000, and tick the option for First Position Ranking. After applying these filters, press enter. The keywords that appear can be categorized based on their intent, and you can create content targeting them. This approach gives you a 100% chance of ranking on the first page.
If you don’t find any low-difficulty keywords from your competitor’s website, don’t worry. Visit relevant subreddits in your niche, copy the URL, and implement the same process. This way, you will discover hundreds of low-competition, high-search-volume keywords that you can target effectively.
Conclusion;
Spying on your competitors SaaS marketing is not just about copying their playbook, it’s about using their strategies as a learning opportunity to refine your own approach. The more you understand their strengths, weaknesses, and customer interactions, the better equipped you’ll be to create a product and marketing strategy that truly stands out. By combining these insights with a customer-centric approach, you can outperform the competition and position your SaaS product as a leader in the market.