Retaining a loyal customer base is easier said than done, especially amidst the cut-throat competition that exists in the market today. Companies are constantly experiencing a difficult time holding on to their previous customers because the shoppers have so many brands to pick from that they can easily switch from one retailer to another. Still, many retailers outcompete their business rivals.

What Makes your Stand Out as a Retailer?

The answer is your pricing strategy! Unique branding lures the target audience to your website and affects the overall sales. Earlier, the retailers focused on spreading a ‘unique message’ through their marketing campaigns. However, seeing the changing global trends that hint customers really don’t care about the message, companies now focus on optimizing their product prices to move ahead in the race.

This is why it is essential for the beginners to see what their competitors are doing in the Market.

5 Ways to Legally Spy on your Competitors

Spying is bad, but knowing what your competitors are up to isn’t. They might be launching new products, creating new strategies or planning to enter new markets. If you knew, you would get an upper hand on them. Here’s how retailers can ‘legally’ spy on their competitors.

1. Checking their Website

Ideal price tracking strategy would be checking the historical trends of your competitors for specific items and categories. You can have a fair idea by checking when and how your competitors are changing their prices.

2. Extracting Data from Amazon

Using automated data scrapers, companies can extract product pricing and ratings from Amazon on a yearly, monthly, daily, hourly or ad-hoc basis. They also get to know who is moving up and down the ranking list.

3. Check their Employment Ads

Monitoring your rival’s ads on job sites (especially the ‘job duties’ section) tells a lot about their company policies and what they expect their employees to do in the next few months.

4. Visiting their Social Media Profiles

Following a company’s public profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, etc. will give you updates on their product launches and marketing strategies.

5. Using Automated Tools

Automated price comparison tools and data scrapers extract pricing info from multiple sites, compare them and help you formulate an optimal strategy.

Learning everything about your competitors may be a time-consuming task but you get enormous returns on your investment. Also, in many verticals, the pricing difference among retailers is not very large. Therefore, it’ll be easier for you to win the race, provided you invest time and efforts in genuine resources.