How To Do Competitor Analysis and Improve Your Digital Marketing

Every experienced marketer knows that digital competitor analysis is a valuable tool for those who aim to improve their digital marketing strategy. Competitor analysis helps you find information related to how customers view you, your products and your competitors. If you’re trying to develop a new marketing strategy that will help you boost sales and reach your target audience, it’s essential to pay more attention to your competitors and their strategies or behaviour.

 

Unfortunately, many business owners tend to start competitor analysis when trying to develop a new marketing strategy but fail to review it from time to time and determine what else can improve visibility and performance. Therefore, we suggest you learn how to actively conduct competitive analysis and improve your digital marketing strategy from scratch. Here’s what you can do:

Set new business goals

Regular competitor analysis helps businesses understand the market better, identify mistakes and learn about their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. In today’s world, businesses will do anything to get attention and boost sales, so if you want to stay in the game and dominate your business niche, it’s essential to be aware of what other businesses are up to.

 

With that being said, it would be best to set your business goals and determine how to benefit from competitor analysis. For example, maybe you need to improve your existing digital marketing strategies because your target audience doesn’t like the content you share on social media. In that case, learning about your competitors and their interaction with customers or clients can help you create content that appeals to your audience.

Decide which metrics you will track

There are many ways to conduct a competitive analysis. For instance, tracking your competitors’ performance by analysing their keyword rankings or social media following is a great way to learn how to create a profitable digital marketing strategy. However, it’s worth noting that you need to decide which metrics you want to track before conducting a competitive analysis. That way, you will know how to use the information you’ve gathered to improve your performance and avoid common digital marketing mistakes in the future.

 

There are other ways to analyse your competitors’ performance. For example, you can monitor their customer reviews, updates on social media and social media mentions. Try choosing relevant metrics and searching for a few different combinations instead of focusing on tracking only their customer reviews or following on social media.

Create a list of your competitors

We’ve established that you need to decide which metrics to track if you want to conduct a successful competitor analysis. But, it’s also critical to determine who your competitors are and how you can benefit from learning about their brand, digital marketing strategies, and target audience.

 

More importantly, you should wisely choose a list of your marketing channels. For example, if you want to invest more in video marketing or increase traffic to your website, it’s necessary to determine how your competitors handle these opportunities and, more crucially, how their target audience responds to these marketing channels. Then, if while conducting a competitor analysis, you learn that, for example, email marketing is worth the investment, you should find a way to run a brilliant and successful email marketing campaign.

Analyse and compare

Making your own report is another critical aspect of your competitor analysis. To compare results and determine why your competitors are more successful, you need a starting point. Firstly, determine how to handle customers, what needs to be improved, how your brand and company culture affect your sales and what your customers need at the moment. Secondly, it’s essential to analyse your customer satisfaction, your social media performance and website traffic.

 

Those who want to analyse their competitors before starting a business don’t need to create this report. However, if you’ve been a business owner for a while now, the analysis of your own business will serve as an excellent example that will help you conduct a successful competitor analysis. In addition, you’ll also be able to determine how to boost sales and what strategies to implement to keep your business alive and flourishing.

Initiate changes in your marketing plans

If you’ve developed a marketing campaign that can’t help you reach your business goals, don’t be afraid to inspire your team members to rethink your strategy and find new ways to stand out from the crowd. Essentially, this is the main purpose of your competitor analysis. If you aren’t willing to use all your resources to develop something new and unique, why would you try to understand your competitors in the first place?

 

In today’s world, it’s easy to learn everything about your competitors and their mistakes. Use that to your advantage and develop a new marketing strategy based on the information you manage to gather. When conducting a competitor analysis, the data shows you which marketing strategies work for your competitors, so don’t hesitate to follow their example and get more attention from your target audience.

Take a look at their audience

Your competitors’ target audience can tell you a lot about their business practices. By determining whether their customers are satisfied with the service or how well they respond to the marketing strategies, you can discover your own potential and find new ways to elevate your brand and communicate your business message. As mentioned before, visit your competitor’s website and analyse their customer reviews. What do their customers have to say about their products? Are they satisfied with the service? How long does it take for your competitors to respond to negative feedback, and how well do they handle it? These are some of the questions you need to ask while conducting a competitor analysis.

 

In addition, it’s essential to find out the basics such as age, gender, location, education, and occupation if you want to analyze your competitors’ target audience successfully. That way, it will be easier to examine the data and compare it to your own report.

Check up on traditional marketing strategies

Some may say that traditional marketing is dead, but that is far from true. When combined with digital marketing, it can do wonders and help you elevate your marketing campaigns. Therefore, be sure to check your competitors’ traditional marketing strategies and use that as an example of what you can do to grow your business.

 

For example, if your competitor's analysis shows you that direct-mail marketing is a great opportunity for your business, you have to give it a try and see how this marketing strategy can help your business.

Analyse website traffic and SEO

Although it’s up to you to determine how you want to analyse your competitors, we're here to remind you that SEO strategy analysis is a great way to learn a lot about your competitors. Luckily, you can find a variety of competitor analysis tools that will help you get the information you need. For example, you can try to determine how many website visits do your competitors get on average? Next, what do comments on their website say about their business? Last but not least, which keywords do they use and can you find their website on the first page on Google?

 

Once you’ve gathered the information you need, it’s essential to determine how to improve your rankings and use better keywords that will help you improve your search strategy. If you don’t know how to improve your site’s ranking, it would be best to use a free SEO audit that helps you find flaws that may affect your site’s ability to rank higher on Google. An SEO audit is essentially a tool that helps you identify foundational issues on your website and analyse how well your strategies affect your web presence. By using SEO audit tools, you will get a complete list of errors that are causing your Google rankings to drop.

Talk to your competitors

Competitor analysis is an essential part of running a successful business, but you also must understand the importance of building new business relationships. For example, you can learn about your competitors by talking to the owners or attending their events. Of course, not every business owner would want to share their secrets with you, but it’s worth giving it a try.

 

Talking to other business owners is not an integral part of competitor analysis, but it can help you in the long run. After all, you won’t lose anything, but you may get a lot in return.

Conclusion

If this is your first time conducting a competitor analysis, we suggest you share your ideas and realisations with your marketing team. Additionally, don’t forget that you should analyse your competitors every once in a while, preferably every time you notice drastic marketing shifts or new marketing strategies.

 

Be sure to use the information you gather wisely, and at the end of the project, you will manage to put purpose back into your marketing strategy and find new ways to deliver better results.