How to meet attacks of competitors: useful tips

Evil competitors are not asleep, and every day they think about how to do harm someone else’s business. And the owner of the company, in turn, suffers from the loss of customers and prohibitively high costs for an advertising campaign.

Before you get excited and engage in a desperate battle with your business rivals, you need to carefully analyze everything, understanding what you can do for your company in such a situation. There are several peaceful but effective ways to save your business.

Dealing with online competitors in honest ways: Technical guide

Technical knowledge of cybersecurity and electronic marketing can be used to combat competitors.

Think over your advertising campaign

Think about launching defensive PPC-ads. Some companies may not openly copy your products and services, but instead they use almost identical keywords, phrases, and even names. Thus, part of the traffic that is intended for your brand flows to the competitors.

On notice! Don’t rush to change your strategy. It is better to continue using the former search queries. Some traffic goes away anyway, but the ads, due to the frequency of requests, will not cost so much, and visitors will still visit the website every day. The same cannot be said about low-frequency search queries, since they are simply unpopular among the target audience.

How to protect yourself from cyber squatting

Block similar domains. It is important to identify sites in time that copy your web design and the name of the official site, trying to redirect traffic in order to entice your customers. The main difficulty is that such resources are rarely caught in plagiarism, since their creators are smart enough to avoid litigation. But such copy-sites can be removed with using subdomains.

You also need to understand that in order to choose the domain name correctly, you need to contact competent webmasters. 

Fighting Content theft

Search engines fight against obvious plagiarism quickly and harshly. However, you can settle all disputes with competitors directly by asking them to delete the content by themselves.

Pay attention! Algorithms do not always manage to identify such copies. Then you’ll have to become a kind of paranoid and check some information manually.

Set up SEO

Use the capabilities of SEO settings and special tools that will allow you to conduct a competent analysis of the situation, providing specific data on consumer purchasing behavior and the position of your competitors in the market.

How to get closer to the target audience

The following actions will allow you to attract and ensure customer retention.

1. Reviews. Feedback plays an important role and strongly influences the opinions of clients. Therefore, some companies will not fail to use dirty methods, for example, using custom reviews that discredit your reputation. In this case, your IT-team can use special algorithms that regularly record the flow of angry comments. Then you can react quickly and use reviews that positively affect the company’s image.
2. Reviews of real customers. This method can be used in conjunction with the previous point. Only reviews should be really truthful. Moreover, the more sincere the description is, the better.
3. Hidden tactics. Some competitors use obviously unreliable information in their advertising, and they do not hesitate to overstate the capabilities of the product. So, you and companies with similar goals are at a loss. At the same time, dishonest marketers don’t even have to say bad things. It’s easy to deal with such behavior: a comparative review of several brands, emphasizing the advantages and strengths of your product or services, will be enough. In case of aggressive comparison by competitors, it is important to make an honest comparison, indicating the aspects of the difference. The main thing is to remain honest.
4. It would be good to have a staff of a lawyer with knowledge of e-commerce. So, at a difficult moment such a specialist could defend the interests of the company and competently state the entire chain of events, putting forward convincing arguments.
5. Start a blog for your business so that your customers are always in touch. Thus, the trust of the target audience will be higher.

Dangerous techniques

Some competitors may go so far as to start passing off their creation as your brand. Ultimately, this sometimes leads to the collapse of the business, as dishonest players send complaints, and your resource may be blocked due to copyright infringement. That’s why it’s critical to notice the danger in time.

For the record. It is very easy to identify such companies: they do not respond to emails and do not try to resolve the problem directly. The recovery period is sometimes very long, so the company often incurs large losses.

If you are in resale, then evil sellers can pretend to be the owner of the brand and catch you in violation of their rights. In this case, it is necessary, firstly, to contact the owner of the product using official contacts.

Be especially vigilant with the sale of unbranded goods. The main danger here is an incorrect product description. Hackers can manipulate listing. As a result, customers see your product description, but the product itself belongs to competitors. After that, your business receives a flurry of negativity and complaints about the inconsistency of the picture and its description, or vice versa.

Another nasty tactic is stealing email IDs. Hackers use advertisements or coupons with bonuses for this.

Important! The crucial thing is keep moving! Of course, it is not worth ignoring the attacks of competitors, since the situation can get worse at any moment and go too far. Remember this and remain vigilant.

It is essential to continue to develop your business for the better, adding advantageous characteristics to your product and improving the quality of services. In the end, buyers still intuitively understand who is imitating whom.