Whatever business you run, there are numerous other companies around you selling similar products or services. They are called competitors. Any business, irrespective of its size and kind, should know who its competitors are and what they do to beat others. This consideration, called competitor analysis, has a strategic approach. The step-by-step competitor analysis approach requires collecting and reviewing all the useful information about the rival establishments.
When you run a website, you have to gain maximum insights on your competitors, offering a similar product or service, to stay ahead of them.
Competitor Analysis: Definition and Relevance
Whatever you sell, people have alternatives other than you. So, you need to explore the marketing activities of those competitor brands. Otherwise, you won’t know how they can create challenges for your business.
Competitor Analysis is accessing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors in business. Analyzing the firms who offer similar services as you allow you to understand your growth opportunities and make appropriate decisions accordingly.
Benefits of Competitor Analysis
Detailed information about the competitive organizations’ operations and other vital factors about the industry. It helps you enhance your business in many ways.
Have in-depth knowledge about the expenditure, market shares, audiences, and utilized channels of the competitors, along with potential overlap.
Competitor analysis actually helps you find your strengths and weaknesses, too, as you compare your business with others. You can thus find where you have to improve further and change your strategies.
3-step Approach to Competitor Analysis
Technological inventions and innovations have allowed marketers to identify their competitors more quickly and efficiently than ever. A trusted digital marketing agency like Obiyan Infotech takes care of in-depth competitor analysis, monitoring and reporting for its clients.
The primary ways to analyze the activities of the competitors are getting data from online databases, news sources, information submitted in public domains etc. Obviously, search engines and several useful tools are there to help.
However, you must go through a proper step-by-step strategic approach for your competitor analysis. The leading agencies, including Obiyan Infotech, followthe below-mentioned steps for the best outcome.
- Identifying the competitors
First of all, you need to identify who your competitors are in a business, as per your industry type. All the companies playing a major role in targeting a similar audience as your business or selling similar services or products are relevant. You may have thousands of competitors if you run a website. There are many useful online tools to help you determine who your competitors are.
You can hire a digital marketing agency like Obiyan Infotech to perform this task on your behalf or hire one or more professionals to find your competitors. Seeking help from search engines and online tools like Ahrefs and Semrush is also helpful.
Competitors are of two types: – direct and indirect. You have to consider this fact as well.
A business with a similar service or product and target audience is a direct competitor.
A business with a similar service or product and a different target audience is an indirect competitor.
You must find them all to look at every perspective and get the best results.
- Gather insights and Analyze
Gather all the necessary insights about the competitors. Firstly, set the top metrics which can create a difference between your business and the competitors.
Some leading metrics are the share of search, channel mix, total traffic share, and target audience.
- You have to probe further into each of the aspects to know which factor can be influencing.
- For SEO, you have to analyze keyword gaps. Moreover, analyze what type of content they are producing and whom they are targeting with their content.
- Enhance your analysis by looking into the types of content and the mediums they use to reach out to the audience
- Analyzing the SEOs thoroughly to understand what you lack compared to others will help.
- An SEO requires much more than keyword stuffing, as search engine algorithms constantly change. You may have to use videos, podcasts as mediums and more useful information in your blogs and case studies to get an edge.
- Social media plays an incredible role in any business. You have to analyze how much social media engagements or online presence your competitors have minutely.How they use those platforms to promote their content/service/product and expand their business is important. Also, check how they utilize the customer satisfaction they gained via social media. An efficient digital marketing company like Obiyan Infotech know all these tricks.
- Additionally, you should know the response your competitive companies are receiving for their activities. Try to track their customer reviews and even interact with the customers.
- Evaluate and Identify areas you have to focus
A proper competitor analysis will make the picture vivid for you. Now, evaluate those insights to know where you have to improve and what the strengths are that you have to keep on.
Evaluate all the gathered data in the context of the overall market situation. Identify the areas where you have to grow further to beat your competitors.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is a recommended method for businesses. The four aspects evaluated in this method are:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
Professional digital marketers like Obiyan Infotech offer a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a company compared to others. They also identify the areas the company can do better and where others remain ahead.
There are several external factors a business should always keep in mind while consisting competitor analysis. Those factors are: –
- Social factors like population growth, demographics, education and lifestyle choices.
- Technological advancement and digitization of the industry.
- Overall economic environment
- Laws and regulations related to the industry
- Political scenarios may sometimes play a crucial role as well.
Competitor Analysis Tools
There are several useful tools which make competitor analysis convenient and reliable. The online tools track your competitors’ activities, analyze their content and SEO to offer a concrete insight. Some of the leading tools are: –
- Google Trends
- Semrush
- Similarweb
- Ahrefs
- AdLibrary
- BuzzSumo
- Oweltter
- SpyFu
As competitor analysis is a complex and time-taking task, it is better using a renowned digital marketing agency like Obiyan Infotech to perform it. It’s the best way your business can outperform others.
