How to Spy on Your Competitor’s Influencer Strategy Without Getting Caught

Influencer partnerships are probably your competitor’s best-kept secret. They’re enjoying increased engagement, higher sales, and stronger brand visibility, while you’re left trying to figure out exactly how they’re making it happen. Fortunately, uncovering your competitor’s influencer strategy doesn’t have to feel shady or complicated. With smart social media monitoring, solid data collection, and some straightforward digital detective work, you can ethically and discreetly decode their tactics and put yourself ahead of the game.

Why Spy on Your Competitor’s Influencer Strategy?

Before we dive into the methods, let’s first explore why it’s important to understand your competitor’s influencer marketing strategy.

Identify Industry Trends: Influencer campaigns are often the pulse of new trends. By studying your competitor’s influencers, you can spot emerging trends, popular influencers, and customer preferences.

Discover Potential Influencers: You may uncover new influencers or micro-influencers who are a good fit for your brand. By seeing who’s promoting similar products or services, you can build a list of influencers who might be ideal collaborators for your own brand.

Understand Content Strategy: Influencers don’t just promote products; they also craft a specific narrative around the brand. By studying their content, you can learn how your competitors position their brand and communicate their key messages.

Gauge ROI: Understanding which influencers your competitors are working with and the type of engagement they are receiving can help you measure the potential ROI of similar partnerships for your own brand.

Methods to Spy on Your Competitor’s Influencer Strategy

Now that we understand why it’s valuable to analyze your competitor’s influencer strategy, let’s explore some legal and ethical ways to gather insights.

1. Monitor Social Media Mentions

Social media monitoring is one of the easiest ways to track your competitors’ influencer activities. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube provide a treasure trove of data that you can analyze.

Track Branded Hashtags: Keep an eye on any branded hashtags your competitors use in their influencer campaigns. Hashtags are often a telltale sign of specific influencer promotions. By searching for these hashtags, you can find posts made by influencers and see how they’re promoting your competitor’s products or services.

Follow Influencers’ Posts: Most influencers will tag the brand they’re working with in their posts. Monitoring these tags can give you a list of influencers who are currently collaborating with your competitors. Use tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to set up alerts for mentions of competitor brands or hashtags.

• Track Influencers’ Stories and Reels: Stories on Instagram and Facebook, as well as Reels and TikTok videos, are prime spots for influencers to showcase collaborations. Pay close attention to these ephemeral pieces of content as they can often give more candid insights than a polished post.
  

Tools to Use

• Social Listening Tools: Use tools like Shortimize, Brand24, or BuzzSumo to track mentions of your competitors and their influencer campaigns across various social media platforms. These tools can help you keep tabs on real-time conversations happening around your competitors’ brand and campaigns.

2. Analyze Their Influencer Partnerships

Competitors often partner with influencers to boost brand visibility. Here’s how you can analyze their partnerships:

Influencer Platforms: Many influencers use third-party platforms such as AspireIQ, Influencity, and Upfluence to manage their campaigns. If you are aware of any such platforms, you can reverse-engineer influencer partnerships by finding profiles of influencers your competitors are working with.

• Look at the Content: Analyze the type of content influencers are creating for your competitors. Are they using long-form YouTube videos, Instagram carousels, or TikTok dances to showcase the product? The content format will give you insight into your competitor’s content strategy and influencer preferences.
  
• Monitor Campaign Frequency: Observe how often influencers are posting about your competitors. Is it a one-off promotion or a long-term partnership? Consistent posting may suggest a long-term collaboration, which is valuable information to know.

3. Check Influencer Website or Portfolio

Most influencers have a personal website or portfolio that displays their past collaborations and case studies. This information can provide direct insight into the brands they have worked with and the types of campaigns they run. Here’s how to leverage this:

• Portfolio or Media Kit: Influencers often include detailed information about their audience demographics, engagement rates, and previous campaigns in their media kits. Look at the campaigns they have listed to see if they include your competitors.

• Google Search: If an influencer has a significant online presence, you can search for their name along with your competitor’s brand name to discover any collaborations or sponsored posts. This often leads to blog posts, interviews, or other content showcasing the collaboration.

4. Keep an Eye on Sponsored Content

Many influencers disclose when content is sponsored, either by using hashtags like #ad, #sponsored, or through the Instagram paid partnership feature. Here’s how to spot this:

• Hashtags: Sponsored posts often use specific hashtags like #ad or #sponsored. While it’s not always a guarantee, it’s a good indicator that the post is part of an influencer marketing campaign. Searching for these hashtags alongside your competitor’s brand name will help you identify sponsored content.
  
• Paid Partnership Tags: Instagram allows influencers to tag brands in their posts under the “Paid Partnership” section. By checking for these tags, you can pinpoint which influencers are currently being paid to promote your competitors.
  

Tip: Google Alerts is a great tool for setting up automated notifications when your competitors’ brands are mentioned alongside terms like “sponsored” or “influencer.”

5. Use Influencer Analytics Tools

If you want more granular data, influencer analytics tools are invaluable. These tools help you assess not only which influencers your competitors are working with but also the success and engagement of those partnerships.

• Influencer Identification: Platforms like Traackr, Upfluence, and BuzzSumo allow you to search for influencers based on your competitors’ brand names. These tools offer influencer discovery features that help you locate individuals who are talking about your competitors, as well as those who are highly engaged with the brand.

• Engagement Metrics: Tools like Social Blade or HypeAuditor provide metrics on influencer engagement, audience demographics, and overall influencer performance. By analyzing the performance of your competitor’s influencer partnerships, you can better gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns.
  

6. Monitor Your Competitors’ Press Releases and Blogs

Companies often announce partnerships with major influencers or celebrity endorsements in press releases or blog posts. Keeping tabs on your competitor’s website, blog, or press page can reveal the latest influencer collaborations.

• Press Release: Regularly visit your competitors’ news or media section on their websites to discover any official announcements of influencer partnerships.
  
• Company Blog: Many companies use blogs to highlight collaborations, including influencer partnerships. By subscribing to your competitors’ blogs or setting up an RSS feed, you can receive updates whenever they announce new influencer marketing campaigns.
  

7. Conduct a Competitive Analysis with a Spy Tool

If you want to take a more hands-off approach to monitor your competitors, you can use specialized competitive intelligence tools. These tools allow you to spy on your competitor’s digital activities, including influencer marketing campaigns.

SEMrush: While SEMrush is often used for SEO, it can also give insights into your competitors’ digital strategies. By analyzing your competitor’s backlinks, you can uncover influencers who have worked with them.

SpyFu: This tool can provide detailed insights into your competitor’s paid search strategies. By analyzing their paid ads and the influencers they may have paid to create content for those ads, you can gain insights into their influencer strategy.

Final Thoughts

Spying on your competitor’s influencer strategy doesn’t have to be a clandestine or unethical process. By using social media monitoring tools, analytics platforms, and publicly available data, you can gather valuable insights into your competitor’s influencer marketing efforts and apply these insights to enhance your own strategy.