Staying ahead of the competition is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. This includes knowing the inside workings and results of your competitors to identify ways in which you can outperform them in engaging and influencing customers.
Digital competitive analysis is an important part of your digital marketing strategy. A digital marketing agency can help you to understand the digital strategies of your rivals so you can use your assets and limit your shortcomings and grow.
So let’s see how we at Sunnyday Consulting analyze a competitor for you so that you can leverage your business’s USPs to gain that critical edge. In this blog, we will cover
- What is competitive analysis?
- Why You Should Do Competitive Analysis
- What is included in the competitive analysis?
- Different types of competitive analysis
- Competitive Analysis Tools
What is competitive analysis in digital marketing?
Competitive analysis in digital marketing is the process of conducting research to identify the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. It looks at the strategies that companies use for marketing, valuing, item development, and appropriation to acquire experiences.
This will help you stay on top of trends in your field and identify digital strategies that will boost brand awareness, customer engagement and, most importantly, revenue.
Why Should You Do Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing?
What is the purpose of competitive analysis? Well, the scope of your competitive analysis depends on what you want to explore. What you analyze can be just about as wide or engaged as you like.
For instance, you can zero in on enhancing your website. For this, you’ll look at competitors’ websites to see their content, UX, and lead generation strategies. What you learn can help you implement new CRO strategies.
Analyzing has many benefits including:
- Identify barriers and opportunities in the market.
- What you analyze can be just about as wide or engaged as you like.
- Feature where competitors are not conveying or have shortcomings.
- Target the most effective digital strategies in your market
- Identify new customers and territories.
- Discover market trends.
- Explore new product or service possibilities
- Lay out a benchmark against which to quantify your performance.
What are the types of competitive analysis?
There are a few sorts of competitive analysis relying upon your company and needs. Each will focus on a specific area that you want to analyze and improve in order to increase goals and KPIs such as leads, revenue and brand awareness.
These are the main categories that focus on key digital marketing channels, but you can also analyze email.
PPC Competitive Analysis
PPC competitor analysis involves finding keywords or phrases that your competitors are bidding on. The ultimate goal is to create PPC campaigns that drive results and outperform your competition!
SEO Competitive Analysis
This sort of examination assists you with figuring out what SEO keywords your competitors rank for. This will help you understand their focus area and figure out how to compete in the keyword battle.
Social Media Competitor Analysis
Social media is a powerful tool for any business to drive customer engagement and leads (especially since social commerce has become more widespread). It is important to know where your audience is so that you can target them effectively on social platforms.
A social media competitor analysis will assist you with seeing what social networks your competitors are on and the quantity of followers and socioeconomics they target.
You should also look at post frequency, when they post, type of content posted like videos, blog links, etc. Also, look at the themes or buckets of their content so you can see the topics they discuss.
Comments can also reveal interactions with users, and engagement rates can help you see which posts resonate most with their audience.
What do you get when Sunnyday Consulting does your competitive analysis?
Competitive analysis in digital marketing means analyzing the different platforms of each of your competitors and seeing how they contribute to growth. Ultimately it’s tied in with benchmarking against your competitors.
We determine the types of competitors you have
Not all competitors should be treated the same. We partition them into classifications in light of their degree of competition.
- Core – These are your direct competitors who sell a similar product or service to your audience.
- Secondary – These companies offer (more or less) the same version of your product or service to a different audience.Tertiary – These brands are related to you but do not compete with your product/service or audience.
When we segment your competitors in this way it will help you see how they relate to your business.
We profile your competitors’ target customers.
By understanding your competitors’ audience we will help you understand who they target and the digital channels they use effectively. The best way to find out about your customers is to see who the brand appeals to. We figure this out by checking out the –
- The mission statement or ‘About Us’ section
- Social media messaging and interaction
- Blogs and free downloadable assets.
- Webinars or podcasts
- Customer reviews or user generated content
By examining your competitors’ goals, content, and interactions, we learn more about their audience. This allows us to help you develop strategies that set you apart from the pack.
We apply the 4 Ps of Marketing.
A complete marketing mix is critical to any digital marketing strategy. It will help you analyze your competitor’s marketing strategies to gain insight into what activities you can pursue
- Products – What are they selling? What do clients like about their product or service? What makes it an effective product or service? What features or products does their product have compared to mine?
- Pricing – What pricing model do they use? Is it a one-time payment or subscription-based? What makes the price point attractive?
- Promotion – How do they promote their brand and offering? Which digital channels are they most active in promoting? What tactics do they use to promote?
- Place – Where do they sell? Might it be said that they are dynamic on the web or do they have physical stores or branches?
We assimilate the data from this cycle, so you can zero in on the areas you need to be aware of. We help you incorporate quantitative information to your marketing strategy.
We find the best practices you can employ
Your top competitors are successful for a reason, they have tested and modified their strategies on digital platforms over time. That means they’ve developed the best ways from which you can learn.
For example, maybe your competitors have seen success by marketing on TikTok. Post our competitive analytics, you can see the digital platforms that has the presence of your competitors and how you should move forward.
Or you may see that several of your competitors have moved up in the rankings on SERPs like Google or Bing. This probably means they are using SEO to improve search and we will be able to point out how you can leverage this knowledge for your benefit.
We use a framework for analysis.
Which method we will employ to analyze your competitors depends on what you want to know.
For example, if you want to discover new opportunities or threats in the market, we will use SWOT analysis after collecting all the data. It will also assist you with distinguishing your assets and shortcomings.
Another framework we often apply is Porter’s Five Forces. It looks at market forces in an industry such as the threat of new entrants and substitutes, the bargaining power of substitutes, competitive rivalry, and the bargaining power of suppliers and new buyers.
We also organize your data for analysis.
We systematically group any data we collect on your competitors. This will help us to reference any data points to go back and gain insights for future digital activities.
This is especially important when collecting data from many competitors as it will help you examine areas of similarity to identify opportunities. The different criteria we analyze include price ranges, social media activities, lead generation strategies, content marketing initiatives, first-time visitor offers, etc.
Do you need to do a competitive analysis in digital marketing? Contact us at support@sunnydayconsulting.com or check our website at www.sunnydayconsulting.com!
