In this day and age of fierce competition, it is essential to stay competitive by setting the right prices. For e-commerce businesses, there is nothing more important than monitoring the market trends and offering competitive pricing for their products. However, it can be challenging to manually track the prices and it is here that the competitor price monitoring tools come into the picture.
What is Competitor Price Monitoring?
Competitor price tracking is the process of the monitoring competitors on a day-to-day basis to gather insights into their prices, products, strategies, and promotions. There are tools to monitor competitor prices which can help in keeping an eye on the competitor prices along with stock availabilities. You get updates in real time and learn how frequently they are updating the prices.
How to Monitor Competitor Prices?
1. Set Market Positioning
Market positioning is the first component of monitoring strategy. The price data should be used in a way that helps in preserving the brand and its value proposition. Market positioning places the brand at a point in terms of quality, exclusivity, price, etc.
2. Study the Competition
The next step is to identify the competition and study it. Having a detailed list of competitors helps a business get access to actionable data. Putting similar competitors in a group makes it easy to identify patterns. Studying the competition at a granular level offers insight into competitive behavior in the market.
3. Identify Competitor Sites
With the help of automated tools you can identify the competitor sites and choose the products you wish to monitor the price for. The software collects pricing data with other data that you might be interested in reviewing such as product descriptions, reviews, shipping fees, and product images.
4. Test Pricing Data
You must test the pricing data and you can begin the same with a subset of data. It will help in verifying if the strategy is offering the right data which you can make use of. If you are happy with the data quality, the tool can be applied to the entire product catalog.
5. Adjust the Strategy
After testing the price monitoring strategy, a business might encounter some issues to which they need to adjust their strategy. Evaluating and adjusting the price monitoring strategy helps in keeping the data relevant. It enables you to look at the fresh data at regular intervals such as a week or two. It helps in determining how the store must price the goods and fetch maximum benefits.
Competitor Price Monitoring Software
The process of competitor price monitoring can be simplified and automated with the help of price monitoring tools and software. These tools not only automate but also add accuracy to the monitoring process.
The competitor price tracking software offers invaluable insights into the competitor’s pricing along with overall business strategies. It is worth investing in a robust tool for any big and small business. A business simply needs to ensure that the price monitoring tool fits the business needs.
It must be robust enough to track all the major competitors on various channels and the marketplace. The tool should enable a business to generate more sales and revenue and contribute to the growth of the business. It must help increase the market share, stay competitive as well as improve the brand positioning.
How Price Monitoring Tools can help your e-commerce Business?
1. Competitor Price Monitoring
Competitive price monitoring helps a business get an insight into the average price of the product along with where the competitors stand. It helps you adjust your pricing strategy. These tools collect data from e-commerce brands and marketplaces and offer them on a single pricing dashboard. This enables a business to compare the prices and decide accordingly.
2. Price Intelligence
Competitive pricing influences buyers when shopping online. Hence, it is essential for your business to track, monitor, and analyze the competitors to make accurate pricing decisions. Competitor price monitoring tools use AI along with data mining to analyze consumer reactions to price changes. It helps you decide the ideal pricing for each product.
3. Dynamic Pricing
Ecommerce businesses change the prices of products several times a day. Not keeping up with the competitor’s price can lead to a significant loss in revenue. With the help of competitor price monitoring tools, your business can respond to price changes as you get instant alerts. With a well-planned pricing rule, you can stay competitive without compromising the profit margins.
4. Catalog Intelligence
As a growth-minded business, it is crucial to keep an idea of the competitor’s inventory. It helps identify profitable products and maintain a sufficient stock even during a sale. You can find prices, descriptions, stock, barcodes, SKUs, and MPNs on your dashboard.
5. Price History
With the price history report, it gets easy to get an insight into how often the competitors update the pricing and how much. You can see how often the prices fluctuate and compare the historical trends of the last few years.
Advantages of Competitor Price Monitoring
1. Boost Price Changes
Buyers are always attracted to sales, deals, and promotions. E-commerce brands influence buyers by changing the prices frequently. To stay competitive, it is important to react to the changes quickly. With the help of e-commerce competitor price monitoring, you can scan several websites automatically within minutes and receive price alerts as soon as there is a price change. It helps a business respond to the change by updating the price.
2. Stay Competitive
Customers are looking for the best deals on their purchases. They often explore multiple marketplaces/ websites to find the best deals. Hence, marketplaces optimize prices based on customer demand, events, and several other factors.
Right tools help in staying competitive automatically with the help of competitor price monitoring. It helps in maximizing sales and profits and witnessing significant growth in revenue.
3. Outperform Competitors on Holidays
During New Year, Christmas, Cyber Monday, or Black Friday, e-commerce sales increase during the holidays. E-commerce brands compete to get their share in the profit. With the help of competitive price monitoring, you can get an insight into the competitor’s inventories, product assortments, pricing strategies, and more. Price monitoring tools help you set the prices automatically and stay competitive on holidays and weekends.
4. Industry Insights for Increasing Revenue
With the help of monitoring tools, you can get access to huge data which acts as a competitive advantage. It enables a business to make informed decisions. You also get insight into how competitive your pricing is in your industry. It helps you come up with creative strategies to compete on product quality instead of price or by offering excellent customer experience.
Take Your Business To The Next Gear with Competitor Price Monitoring
Competition is here to stay in every field, which is not under our control. But how to stay updated and make our businesses grow with that is in our control. PriceIntelGuru is there at every stage of your business growth. ROI’s are scalable in dynamic business landscapes only with the right tools and strategies. And if pricing uncertainties are holding you back, then it is the perfect time to make the shift towards the next step of automated pricing tools like Price monitoring. Book a demo to revolutionize your business growth!
