You have to know precisely what you're up against if you want to get the edge on your competition. That's why completing an online competitive analysis should be a top marketing priority. As a marketer, it's not enough to have in-depth knowledge of your competitor's products or services, you also need to know exactly how they are marketing these and what tactic's they are employing.
You need to get your product or service in front of the right people quicker and more effectively than your competitors. A well-researched and carefully planned marketing strategy and plan is required in order to achieve this and your marketing strategy should be underpinned by a detailed competitive analysis.
Whether you are putting a marketing strategy together for the first time or reviewing an existing one, by starting with a competitive analysis it will help you to :
Here are the most important 9 steps to an effective competitive analysis that will help you plan a much more effective strategy and game plan so that you can get ahead of your competition and grow your business.
Start by making a list of your top 5-10 competitors.
If you offer a number of different core products/services for which you may be competing with different companies for each, then make a list of competitors for each product/service.
Use Google to search for the product or service you are offering to help you identify competitors.
The value you provide with your content should be a key factor for differentiating yourself from other companies. Knowing what content your competitors publish provides great insights and will help you devise a strategy to differentiate yourself. It will also help you figure out what their lead-generation strategies are.
Take a look at the following
When going through their content, be sure to review how high the quality is. Check if they are targeting specific personas and phases of the buyer's journey? How long is the content? Is it structured well? Easy to read and consume? etc
From the results, identify areas where you have gaps and areas you need to improve. If it inspires any ideas for new campaign's etc write them down! All of this information will help you craft a great content strategy.
Your website should be at the core of your marketing strategy. So review your competitor's websites by taking a look at the following:-
It's not just enough to look at their content and what message they are trying to communicate, you need to look at their SEO too to see if their are possibilities or opportunities to outrank them. This sounds complicated but it's relatively easy to get a good idea of what keyword's they are targeting.
Look at the main pages (at the very least) and check the following for clues. Keywords they are targeting, if done properly will at least be in the following:-
Figure out what keywords they are targeting and add those to your own keyword list if you want to be found for these words too and get ahead of them on SERP's.
Look at metrics like their
Believe it or not email marketing is still one of the top marketing tactic's that you could be employing.
To get real insights into your competitors email marketing subscribe to their blog and download their offers. (You might want to use an alias though!). Then review things like...
Reviews are really important and they can make or break a sale. If you were researching a potential purchase from a company wouldn't you want to know what people think? It's easy for business owners to put their best testimonials and reviews on their website because it's an asset they have full control over.
Look outside of their websites. For example, search for the company name on Google and in most cases to the right you will see Google reviews in their business listing. Businesses can't control what customers write here. If someone wants to add a bad review about the business the business itself has no control over that. Look at other sites too like Yelp etc.
You can learn a lot about your competitors from social media. Go through all of the key ones like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc and check the following:
If you have buyer personas in place you should already know what social media platforms your ideal clients are using but this can give additional insight.
If you notice any spikes in dips in social media performance on one channel or all channels be sure to try and figure out what caused them.
What your competitors are doing on paid advertising can tell you a lot, so see if they are running paid ad campaigns and if so look at things like
Remember, not every company will run paid advertising campaigns. Some businesses rely on blogging regularly with well written, useful, optimised blog posts (for SEO) that are targeting the right audience.
Now you have all your research information, remember that 'knowledge is power'. Use it as an input to planning a rock solid digital marketing strategy and putting a plan in place to implement.
Remember though...that you are not your competitor! Some of your competitors may have higher marketing budget's available to them and as such may be able to allocate more resources to their digital marketing efforts. Be realistic. Put a solid process and plan in place that has SMART goals and priorities to address quick wins up front. Monitor and measure results regularly and tweak based on insights.
Our next post will cover some of the best free and paid tools to use when conducting a digital competitive analysis so be sure to keep an eye out for it!
In the meantime, if you need any advice on completing a competitive analysis please feel free to contact me or book a Free Inbound Marketing Assessment by clicking below where we can help you assess your current marketing efforts, gaps and make recommendations for improvements.