Is it ethical to spy on the competition?
Computers and software have made spying pretty simple. I shall discuss in this brief post, whether that represents a serious ethical problem or whether they are fair game.
This issue is in fact very practical. We have a tool in our affiliate marketing strategy niche that allows marketers to “steal” the keywords and landing pages of the most successful affiliates online. Should we promote such activities?
There are 3 things to bear in mind…
1.Your competition sets itself up in the public domain to be studied. Let’s take McDonalds for example. No one has come close to emulating the success of Mcdonalds. You can study it as much as you like. Mcdonalds was able to build a system none of its competitors has been able to emulate. If your business is easy to spy on and has no factor others can’t emulate, you have a problem. You must make your business unreplicatable. As long as your activities are legal, other businesses are fair game.
2. Do they actually care? Again in the ppc bully example, most businesses would not care for you to study them. They actually enjoy the challange that competition gives. Their success is predicated by the fact they got there before anyone else. By entering their niche, you are promoting their success.
3.Would you be comfortable if your competition did this to you? If your spying is so covert that you would not want others to do the same to you, you might want to think twice about doing it to others.
I am not here to give an ethical conclusion. Like many ethical issues, this requires personal introspection. It depends on the particular situation and the business involved. With regards to ppc bully, anyone who builds a site is doing so in the open. The software just allows you the tools to be able to analyze what they are doing. i do not have a problem with it.
To find out more about the software mentioned above, check out my ppc bully review site.
Small business consulting, the Internet and money