Digital Marketing: 5 Things you can Learn From your Competition

November 7, 2015 by Khalid Ibrahim

You have probably heard of the very popular saying keep your friends close, and

your enemies closer? When you find yourself in direct competition with other

businesses, you would find that saying incredibly true.

Since you are competing with other businesses in your industry, you need to know

who’s doing things right, who’s doing things wrong, and what they’re doing to keep

their clients happy.

Competitive research should be an integral part of your marketing strategy to keep

you one step ahead. Having a good digital marketing strategy can boost your blog

traffic by as much as 232%.

If you want your business to have healthy finances like Buffer above, then you have

to really optimize your marketing strategy.

A comprehensive competitive analysis is integral to your digital marketing plan. This

is essential if you want to maintain a competitive advantage in reaching and selling

to your target audience. When you have an in-depth analysis about your

competitors, you stand to gain:

An understanding of how your existing and potential customers rate your

competition.

A positive identification of your competitors strengths and weaknesses.

A mechanism to develop effective competitive strategies in your target

market.

To carry out an analysis of your competitors, you will need to adhere to the following

steps:

Conduct Research

This can be achieved by simply carrying out survey or issuing a questionnaire. This

can provide you with valuable information about your competitors. You have the

choice of hiring a marketing research firm to carry this out for you or you can do it on

your own.

The only problem is hiring a firm can be expensive and therefore difficult for small

and medium sized businesses.

If you do decide to carry this out on your own, these are the questions you should be

looking to get answers to:

1. Who are my top three competitors?

2. On what basis am I able to compete?

3. What are their positive/negative attributes in the eyes of consumers?

4. How can I distinguish my business from my competitors?

5. How do current customers view us compared to the competition?

Here is an example of what your survey should look like. These are the questions

you should look to ask your customers. You can ask the respondents of the survey

to rate the following features of your business compared to your competition as fair,

good or excellent.

Gather Competitive Information

By gathering competitive information I mean going for secondary sources. This is a

good starting point especially for small businesses because this information is readily

available and the general public has access to it. Books, articles published online or

in journals are all secondary sources of information.

Secondary sources are great because they inexpensive and most of the time free.

These are some secondary sources you should really pay attention to.

Advertising

The brilliant thing about advertising is that it not only tells you about a competitor’s

price and other product information, but it provides an indication of your competitor’s

entire promotional program and budget. When examining a competitor’s advertising

campaign, be sure to note the following:

Publication, frequency, special offers, product features and benefits.

Also take note of sudden changes in their advertising campaigns. If you notice that

your competitor suddenly places an advertisement in an industry that neither of you

are currently selling to, it’s a real indication that they’re trying to reach a brand new

market.

It’s also important to notice the design of your competitor’s advertising campaigns.

What kinds of images do they convey? How do your own images compare? Are their

advertisements in color? Even if they’re not, a clever advertising campaign can mean

that your competitor is an innovative, fresh company.

Sales Brochures

Perhaps your competitors have sales brochures. They are great because they

provide a wealth of product information.

You can learn how your competitor is positioning their product and company and the

features and benefits they’re using to sell their products. Try to obtain all new sales

brochures your competitor publishes. Significant changes in the content will indicate

that new strategies and tactics are being employed.

Newspaper, magazine and online articles

Articles in newspapers, magazines and on the internet are a good source of

information you can use to get an idea of what your competitor is planning for the

future, how their organization is run, and what new product information or

innovations they have.

Journalists may also uncover and reveal unflattering information about your

competitor that may prove valuable to you. Be on the lookout for product reviews;

they will reveal a competing product??s strengths and weaknesses.

Analyze Competitive Information

Once you’ve gathered all of the data you need, it’s time for analysis. You should

analyze to determine product information, market share, marketing strategies, and to

identify your competition’s strengths and weaknesses.

Conduct a product evaluation.

You should know from your data and customer feedback what product features and

benefits are most important to your customers. A product’s or services competitive

position is largely determined by how well it is differentiated from its competition and

by its price.

In that regard, make a list of product features and benefits in order of importance and

make a table that shows whether or not your competitor fulfills them. Your analysis

should look something like this.

This is an example a business that sell photocopy machines will look at the benefits

and features when making purchasing decisions.

You can begin to tick which features your competitors currently have as they are

pretty straight forward. You either have the feature or you don’t. You can also begin

to compare the other features and benefits

Determine Your Own Competitive Position

Once you have followed the above steps, it should be pretty clear to you where you

stand be it a market leader or a follower. Knowing about your competition and where

you stand allows you to do three things:

1. Identify key areas of competitive advantage and review the competitive

landscape for your products and services

2. Summarize the major problems facing your business and the appropriate

actions that need to be taken to rectify the problems.

3. Integrate demographic analysis with your marketing strategy to strengthen

your position in the market.

Peeking over at your competitors can be an effective, if unexpected, way to improve

your own digital marketing. Here’s how to take a creative look at your market to

improve your understanding of your audience and find new ways of reaching out to

them.

Now that you know how to conduct a proper competitive analysis, it is time to put it

use. Just because your business is competing with other businesses and battling for

the same customers, it doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.

Start with your indirect competitors

You already know who your main competitors are. Maybe you already keep tabs on

what they’re up to both online and offline.

But what about your indirect competitors? You can learn a lot of things about digital

marketing from them. An indirect competitor is a business in your industry that is

marketing to the same audience as you, without selling the same product.

In that regard, here are 5 things you can learn from your competitors regarding

digital marketing.

1. Reputation management

Whether you are online or offline, your reputation means everything. What people

think of you can make or break your business.

What you can do is research other companies in your industry and read their online

reviews. You can compare their reviews to yours, and see if you can pull inspiration

from their customer base to make your customers happy.

They could be doing something simple that you can incorporate in to your customer

service process

2. Social Media

It is surprising that some businesses do not realize that social media can be an

indicator for a business’s success. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter

can be great tool for your business.

Comparing your social media pages to your competitors should be done consistently

on a weekly basis.

Take a look at all the different social networks they’re using, and the type of

customers they’re targeting. If they have a lot of followers and are constantly

updating their pages, you should also incorporate that into your strategy.

Taking their lead and engage with your customers. You will boost your online

presence as well as build a loyal customer base.

What type of content is getting the most and least engagement on your competitors

social media channels? How long does it take for them to reply to interactions? What

kind of content do they share?

What you want to do is use that information to your advantage and do the things

your competitors are not doing. Don’t just look for the things getting the most

traction. Sometimes the best way to learn is from other peoples mistakes.

3. Website

Your business’s web site is important because its your first line of defense. The first

thing a potential customers does as soon as he hears about your business, is to

Google and research as much information as they can about it.

Next to reviews online, and social media, your web site is next in line as far as

importance and value to your customer.

Take some time to look at your competitors website. Really focus on their layout,

images, navigation and the general aesthetics of the website. If they seem to be

getting more traffic than you do, try figuring out what they have on their site that you

don’t.

Taking ideas from their web site will help you design an informative and visually

appealing site for your visitors.

4. SEO

When you type your business into Google, what comes up? Does your business

appear above, or below the fold in the organic results?

Are you on page one, or page four? Where does your competitor rank in comparison

to you? The way your business ranks online is important because if a customer cant

find your web site, you probably wont get a lot of business.

If your competitors rank above you, It means you have to invest time in to your SEO

strategy. You should also ensure that your website is properly optimized. Also figure

out what keywords they’re outranking you on.

There are multiple key word tools you can use to your benefit including Google

keyword planner. You can enter your competitors URL and find their relevant

keywords

5. Back links analysis

The first step to link building is to use high-quality, relevant and engaging content

that’s appealing to your target audience.

All link building campaigns start with good content worth linking to. Before you craft

your own link building strategy, Do some research and find out your competitors

links. You’re likely to find some potential link opportunities for your own business too.

If you can build high quality links to your website, it can thrust your business far

ahead of your competitors in search engine results. You should also use the

opportunity to look out for broken links. If broken links are left unattended, they can

accumulate and affect the user experience of your website.

Conclusion

Now that you have a clear idea of some of the valuable information you can gain

from competitive research and analysis, you should start right away.

Schedule a competitive analysis on a regular basis. Depending on what industry you

happen to be in, it could be every two months or once a year. It is also important to

note that competitive analysis is not a one time thing. It never stops. Only when you

now your competition can you really evaluate yourself.

Knowledge is power. With the knowledge of what your competitors are doing well,

and not so well, you can improve your marketing strategy and overtake your

competitors and gain the upper hand.

Do you know any other things that you can learn from your competitors, let me know

in the comments below.