Competitive online marketing starts with research. If you want to know what your competitors are doing, you need to do as much research as you can.

Even a few thousand years later, Sun Tzu's words from The Art of War still ring true: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Even though he had no idea that watching our enemies was just a matter of clicking a mouse button, competitive research and online marketing lets us know our customers and even learn how their customers are.

Competitive online marketing doesn't mean sabotaging your competitors though. We want you to beat your competitors because you're providing good products or services at fair prices, and are treating your customers well, not because you wrecked their opportunity at earning a livelihood.

What does your competitor's online marketing look like?

One way you can improve your online marketing is to find out what has made your competitors so successful. Find out what kind of language they're using to appeal to their customers. Can you improve on it? Can you make your marketing copy more interesting, more effective and appealing than theirs? Don't copy it, just make yours better.

Check out what kind of online marketing tools they're using. Don't be afraid to use those same tools. If they're using Twitter and Facebook to reach their customers, then you should be there too. Just do it better. Work to make your customer network bigger than theirs.

Can you appeal to your competitor's customers with your online marketing?

Many companies will often list who their customers are on their website, and we're always torn about whether this is a good idea or not. On one hand, if you're providing great service and value to your customers, you should be more than willing to put them on your website, because nothing and nobody can take them away from you.

On the other hand, if you publish your customer list, people may go after them. They're going to try it anyway, because any good salesperson is going to call on everyone who seems like a good prospect, whether they were on your website or not. But that doesn't mean you should make it easy for them.

Still,  if your competitors list their customers, there's nothing in the Marquis of Queensbury online marketing rules that says you can't at least study this list. (Whether you pursue those customers is up to you.) But you can at least see how your competitor appeals to them, and whether it's something you need to start doing for your online marketing efforts. That's the essence of, as Sun Tzu said, "knowing your enemy and knowing yourself."

Push your online marketing efforts when your competition isn't.

Sometimes your competitors aren't even using social media and online marketing. They've still got a basic brochureware website, and nothing else. They're not on Twitter, they're not on Facebook, they're not on LinkedIn. That's too bad, because their customers are. If you make social media part of your online marketing campaign, your efforts will be much more productive and successful their anything your competitor can put together in time, because you'll have gotten there first, and created a bigger, more successful network.

Research is important to knowing what your competition is doing. And thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to find new customers, grow your network, and communicate with them quickly and easily on their terms and their turf. Thanks to online marketing, you can do all of these things without ever catching your competitors' attention.

Or, as Sun Tzu said, you can "be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby, you can be the director of the opponent's fate."