Recently, the global transportation technology giant Uber, popularly known for its cab-sharing app, found itself in a messy legal soup. One of its former employees has claimed that the company has assigned a special team the task of finding and ‘stealing’ trade secrets from other companies to gain competitive advantage.

Well, who knows what the outcome of this allegation would be, but it does point out how fierce the competition is for companies to go to extreme lengths. Every company wants to grab the largest pie of the market share and gain customer loyalty. However, it takes a lot more than a good product, excellent services and brand reputation to attract customers.

Every individual has been wired to stay competitive whether it is regarding grades in the school, securing admission in a top college or climbing the career ladder in the organization. So, the DNA of businesses is also structured the same way. They want to beat their competitors by stealing their customers. In fact, there has been enough scientific proof that competition is good for business.

However, competition is always good as long as it is healthy and ethical. Are you wondering how? Then, read through the following ways you can steal the customers without denting your brand image.

1. Study Your Competition

What are your competitors doing right? Do they really have an excellent product in the kitty that meets or surpasses the expectations of customers? If yes, then you need to improve your product, innovate it or at least incorporate features that customers find useful and attractive. In case there is hardly any feature dissimilarity between your and competitor’s product, find out what is making their customers tick?  It could be low prices, free delivery, freebies, contests or good customer service.

2. Understand Your Customers

This is so important! Don’t forget your loyal customers in pursuit of others. Do a survey of your customers to find out what they like about your company and what they expect more. This will give you a fair idea about your strengths and weaknesses to focus on and design your marketing campaigns for new customers accordingly.

3. Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open

Attend networking events or ask your spies to do the digging. Sometimes informal conversations give you enough scoops about your competitors. In his book ‘Work Like A Spy: Business Tips From A Former CIA Officer’, the author J.C. Carleson mentions that the gossips and events such as award dinners hold a lot of merit in discovering competitor’s offerings. You may pick titbits to help you make better offers to their customers.

4. Take on the Digital Marketing Battlefront

Digital marketing could be your most useful tool in stealing the customers from your competitors. If you can draw their social media followers, it the most powerful business advantage you can have. But, before that, it would be a good idea to station the right person or team on the digital marketing firing line. Ideally, it should be someone who has a digital marketing certification or rich experience in the field. You can target your competitor’s customers through these methods:

• Target your competitor in Google Adwords. You will come to know which keywords the customers are using to search your competitor’s brand. You can then use the same keywords to lead the potential customers to your sales funnel.

• Check out the testimonials of customers for your competitors. This tactic is a two-edged sword. One, you will come to know what customers like about your competitor. Second, most testimonials appear with the company and person name. Viola! All you have to do is extend a friendly hand to these customers. It may take a while to break their loyalty towards the competitor, but good relationship building and patience may yield results.

• Did you know that 30% of leading brands have separate Twitter feeds for customers? Browse through the competitor’s Twitter accounts to find out details of customers who follow them and vice-versa. Once you pull out the customer names, you can start targeting them.

• Analyze the competitors’ activities on Facebook. You can delve into their posts, videos, images, contests and any other information they are posting on their walls. It will also give you insight into how they are engaging their audience. There is also a tactic called Facebook Interest Targeting using which you can show your ads to customers who ‘Like’ the competitor’s brands.

• Use Influencer Marketing to attract customers. Influencers are people who are like internet celebrities in their domains such as beauty, travel, parenting, startups, marketing, etc. They are also thought leaders who have a considerable fan following and people trust what they say. Hence, brands leverage these influencers to reach out to competitor’s customers.

There are several tools which can make it a breeze for you to target competitors through digital marketing. However, it calls for expertise. So, it is imperative that you or your team have extensive knowledge of digital marketing. If not, then online digital marketing courses could get you started immediately.

Now, remember that your competitors may also be snatching away your customers. So, you need to keep eyes on all sides of your business.