Perhaps your brand blows all your competitors out of the water. Or maybe there are a handful of businesses that have much better blog posts or videos than you do – or so you think. Comparisons with your competitors are not the place to rely on hunches, feelings or the results of a couple of their killer marketing campaigns you’ve casually reviewed.
To truly know how you stack up against your competitors, you need to know the facts. Those facts can come out of a competitive analysis.
Regularly conducting a competitive analysis can arm you with important information that helps your brand thrive. It can help you:
Now that you know the value of conducting a competitive analysis, it’s time to get busy with the specifics.
Identifying your direct competition is the first step, since that’s where you’ll want to focus. Direct competitors are companies that provide similar offerings across the same geographic areas that could substitute for your products or services. A good example would be a desktop computer company and another desktop computer company.
Indirect competitors are those that provide products that aren’t the same as yours but could fill the same customer need. An example here would be a desktop computer company and a company that sells laptops.
Head to your competitor’s website and make a list of the types of content produce and where it resides on the site. While you may find the bulk of the content through the top navigation menu, don’t forget to poke around other areas of the site to ensure you have all the content covered. Content types may include:
Review content types, quality, topics and publishing frequency. Determine what types of content seem to get the most attention, how in-depth they go on various topics, and what topics they tend to cover.
Read More: Content vs. Advanced Content for Your Inbound Marketing Plan
Looking at the SEO structure in your competitor’s content can give you additional insights as to why they may be excelling where you’re not. Here you want to review the use of keywords in elements such as:
Review the SEO structure as well as the types of keywords being used, whether they’re keywords with high search volumes or long-tail keywords with a narrower focus.
Social media can play a major role in marketing efforts, and you want to check out how your competition is integrating it into their overall plan. Determine what platforms your competition uses, along with the frequency and type of information they post. Also look at the number of followers and quality of interactions with those followers.
Read more: Why No One Likes (or Reads) Your Tweets
Evaluating what you find can include performing what is known as a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and making note of these four aspects can help you uncover areas where your own company could improve.
One more step in the process is to evaluate your own company using the same process you used to analyze your competition. This gives you a baseline to compare across the board.
Once you see where you stand with regard to your competitors’ content, you can decide what you want to do to match and eventually surpass them. It’s important to look at all areas of marketing, as they’re all interrelated.
Taking the time to conduct a regular competitive analysis can help ensure your company doesn’t lag far behind your competitors, or even fall off the map completely. You’ll consistently discover key areas where you excel, could improve, or can otherwise focus your resources and efforts to keep your brand ahead of the crowd.