iSpionage

Successful digital marketing strategies are composed of several elements, one of which is competitive intelligence. What makes this element so important is that, in leveraging reliable competitive intelligence, an advertiser is empowered with actionable insights that can then be applied to help expand their brand’s visibility, refine and enhance their messaging, improve their users’ experiences, and optimize conversion rates across their initiatives.

The key, though, is finding a reliable tool that offers insight into one or all of these areas—and one of our favorites at Hive Digital is iSpionage, which is why we’re including it as a Tool Spotlight within our Digital Marketing Toolkit Series.

What is iSpionage?

iSpionage is a competitive intelligence and campaign monitoring solution that touts itself as a means of helping you “steal your competitors’ traffic & uncover their conversion strategy.” They do this by offering a variety of features that empower advertisers with insight into top competitors (including those competitors’ top ad copy, landing pages, keyword portfolios, share of voice, and estimated budgets), additional PPC and SEO keyword research data, and functionality that allows advertisers the ability to monitor campaigns and set alerts. The features are designed to help advertisers accomplish three goals:

  • Drive targeted traffic
  • Generate more leads
  • Increase conversion rates

Who uses iSpionage?

iSpionage is designed for both digital marketing agencies and in-house digital marketers, and celebrates the fact that their solution is used by over 35,000 PPC advertisers and agencies, including Microsoft, Autodesk, AdKnowledge, Marin Software, and GroupM. They also have solid testimonials from reputable brands like Unbounce, Thomson Reuters, and Wordstream.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Testimonials

 

For digital marketing agencies, iSpionage promotes both its abilities to help agencies win more sales and improve the performance of their clients’ paid and organic initiatives. Suggested use cases for the tool include enhancing proposals with insight into prospects’ competitive landscape and opportunities, benchmarking and monitoring clients’ competitive positioning, and boosting client retention with conversion optimization successes gained from the actionable insights made available within the tool.

For in-house digital marketers, iSpionage promotes its abilities to help teams uncover competitor paid and organic strategies, leveraging the data such that advertisers can discover new opportunities, monitor their positioning and that of their competitors, and better understand their users’ conversion journeys.

How Does iSpionage Work?

Upon creating an account (for which there are free and paid options), you are then offered the ability to leverage the following features:

Competitor Research

Keyword & Domain Research

Conduct research using either a keyword or domain, with the ability to select preferred country (current options include the US, UK, CA, and AU).

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Keyword & Domain Search

 

Top Competitors

Quickly see top competitors, segmented by PPC and Organic, along with stats pertaining to their budgets, history, positioning, and keyword portfolios.

Top Ads

Review top ads for ad copy considerations, links to landing pages, ad history details, competitors’ other keywords triggering the same ads, and more.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Top Ads

Related Keywords

See related keywords, relevancy scores, search volume, and cost-per-click (CPC) estimates.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Related Keywords

Competitor Alerts

Monitor URLs and keywords, setting up alerts that trigger when new information is to be gained from competitors.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Competitor Alerts

Competitor-Specific Data

Review data specific to your individual competitors, including top keywords, their ads and landing pages, their list of competitors, and their users’ journey. You can also compare this competitor against others with iSpionage’s comparison tool.

Monitoring Projects

Set up a “Watch Project” that monitors competitors and your own assets, and create reports and alerts that can help create additional efficiencies in the management of your digital marketing efforts.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Campaign Watch Projects

PPC Landing Page Gallery

Review landing pages specific to your industry for ideas and insights.

Image Credit: iSpionage.com, Landing Page Gallery

Other Considerations

iSpionage also has an additional offering: an abundance of guides and tutorials that are made available to account holders. For advertisers new to digital marketing competitive intelligence tools—and, more specifically, those who have the time and resources to read and watch each tutorial asset—this can be incredibly helpful in learning how to use this tool and interpret the data made available within it.

iSpionage: Why We Love It

With all of its offerings, iSpionage provides a lot of useful information about one’s competitive landscape that can then be used to improve PPC and SEO campaign performance, making it easy to see why it is a favorite within the Hive Digital arsenal of digital marketing tools. In leveraging iSpionage, our team is equipped to efficiently collect and analyze data that would otherwise take hours upon hours to do manually—data that has helped us to find new opportunities that expand brand visibility for our clients; better understand consumers, their conversion behaviors, and their options among competitors; monitor both brand positioning and shifts within the competitive landscape; and, ultimately, better arm our clients with stronger digital marketing strategies and tactics.