See what your competitors run, and where they beat you

When someone searches for what you sell, your ad is not the only one they see. Somebody else is there too, often the same few businesses every time. Growomat now shows you who they are, what they are saying to your customers, and how often they get seen before you do. Then it helps you answer them in your own words.

You probably have a hunch about who your competitors are. You may even have looked at their ads once or twice. But the ads change, new names turn up, and nobody has time to check every week. So most businesses find out the slow way: fewer enquiries, a higher cost per click, a customer who mentions a cheaper quote.

This is the part of advertising that used to need an agency. Now it is a page in Growomat.

What you get

Every competitor you follow gets one page that answers four questions.

Who keeps showing up next to you? Growomat already sees which businesses appear alongside your ads. It suggests them to you, with the reason in plain words, such as "Shows up next to you on 42% of the searches you appear for". You decide who to follow. Nothing is tracked until you say so.

What are they telling customers? Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok each publish the ads businesses run, in public archives anyone can search. Growomat finds your competitors in those archives and shows you their ads in one place, including the ones that have stopped.

What are they leading with? Some competitors compete on price. Others lead with speed, reviews or a guarantee. Growomat reads every one of their ads and tells you in a sentence, for example: "Northside Pipe Co leads with price in 4 of 7 ads." It also pulls out their offers, like "£59 fixed call-out" or "20% off boiler service", and keeps a record when an offer changes.

How often do they get seen before you? This part comes from your own ad account, so it is about you, not guesswork. It shows how often you both appear for the same search, how often they appear above you, and whether that is getting better or worse over the last three months.

Finding them is our job

You give Growomat a competitor's website. Growomat does the searching.

That sounds simple, and it is not. Search the public archives for a well-known name and you get a page of lookalikes, unrelated companies and people who happen to share the name. Growomat checks each one, looks at whether their ads actually point to your competitor's website, and only attaches the ones it is sure about.

When it cannot be sure, it says so: "Not found". You can paste a link if you know where their ads are. We would rather show you an honest gap than fill your page with somebody else's ads.

What your market is saying, and what you are not

Once you follow a few competitors, Growomat compares what they say with what your own ads say. If every competitor is talking about price and none of your ads mention it, you will see that in one line:

Every one of your 2 competitors leads with price. None of your 3 active ads argue it.

That is not an instruction to cut your prices. It is a fact about your market, and you decide what to do with it. Before Growomat makes a comparison like this, it checks that it has understood your own ads correctly, and asks you to confirm them if it is not sure.

Answer them, without copying them

From any competitor's page, you can ask Growomat for new ads that answer what they are saying. If they lead with price, you get drafts that make your own case on price, in your own voice.

What you never get is a copy of their ad. Every draft is checked against your competitors' ads before it can be saved. If a draft comes too close to one of theirs, or mentions their name, Growomat will not save it, and shows you which ad it was too close to. Copying a competitor makes you sound like them, and naming them in your ad can get you into legal trouble. Their argument is fair game. Their words are not.

The check is careful about ordinary words. If a competitor is called something like "Leeds Plumbing", you can still use the word "plumbing". Only the names a competitor actually trades under are off limits, and you can see and edit that list.

It keeps watching for you

You do not have to remember to check. Growomat looks at every competitor you follow each day and tells you when something worth knowing happens:

• They launched new ads. One message, not one per ad.
• They changed what they lead with. For example, from price to reviews.
• They changed their main offer. With the old and the new wording side by side.
• They are turning up next to you much more often. A jump from one week to the next.

You see these in Growomat straight away. By email, they come once a week, so your inbox does not fill up with someone else's news. You can change that in your settings.

What it cannot tell you

We would rather be clear about this than have you find out later.

• It cannot tell you how well their ads work. Nobody publishes that. Every page in Growomat says so: "What they published, not what worked."
• It does not guess what they spend. No public source has that number, and a made-up figure is worse than none.
• Some platforms have no public archive. Microsoft Advertising, Reddit Ads and ChatGPT Ads do not publish their ads, so Growomat says so instead of showing an empty page.
• Meta only keeps some ads. Its archive keeps ordinary business ads only where they were shown in Europe and the UK.
• Google needs one extra step. Google does not hand over the "who appears next to you" figures automatically, so you download one file from your Google Ads account and upload it. Growomat shows you where to find it.

And who you follow stays private. No other Growomat customer can see that you follow a competitor, even if they follow the same one.

Why it works this way

Plenty of tools will show you a competitor's ads. We built this one around four ideas.

Their ads and your results belong on the same page. Their ads tell you what they said. Your own results tell you whether it is working against you. Either one on its own is half the story.

The tedious part is ours. Finding the right accounts, reading every ad, noticing when something changes: that is the work you would pay someone to do, so Growomat does it. When it is not sure, it tells you.

Fewer, better messages. Four kinds of alert, one at a time, weekly by email. The aim is that when Growomat writes to you about a competitor, it is worth opening.

Your ads stay yours. You take their argument, not their words, and the words that describe your trade are always yours to use.

Following competitors is always your choice. Keeping an eye on them is Growomat's job. Nothing goes live until you say so.