Visualize entering a combat zone where your ultimate weapons are not swords and shields but sharp-wittiness and willpower! Huzzah!
Here, it becomes very vital to decode the next step of your competitor. Every little move could lead to the ultimate victory or transcend the clutches of defeat.
We are marketing landscape where if you do not sharpen your skill sets, you can end up losing your shine to a competitor. To stand out amongst your competitors, you’ll need to sharpen your skills. This can only happen if you are aware of what your competitors are planning ahead in advance.
One way to achieve this is by conducting competitor analysis. We’re not simply referring to decoding your competitors’ next step. It is about making a proper plan of action that can outflank your adversaries by playing the game of business using their rules.
Wish to run a competitive analysis like a pro by transforming your rival’s strength into an unstoppable force for you to reap rich rewards for your business? If yes, check out the steps provided below to run a competitive analysis like a pro for your business.
Before we look at the steps, let us give you a brief idea about what exactly can be termed as a competitor analysis and why businesses should opt for it.
A Quick Overview About Competitor Analysis
As explained above, a competitor analysis is all about investigating the current standings of your competitors. It gives you a holistic view of their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities you can take advantage of, and predict any impending threats.
The scope of competitor analysis involves critically weighing up the rival’s website and their social media platforms. Look at everything from their home page, landing page, and social mdia accounts to examine what content they’re posting and how they’re positioning themselves on various channels.
Tip: Competitor analyses can prove decisive if you have more than a few direct competitors functioning in the same industry as yours. We recommend picking one or two similar size to yourselves, and feel free to also analyze a bigger competitor you admire so you can aim high!
Reasons to Conduct Competitor Analysis
When you perform a competitor analysis for your brand, it can help you make informed business decisions.
Here are some things that you can be sure to achieve for your business by conducting a thorough competitor analysis:
- Helps you to determine and even modify your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and Unique Value Proposition (UVP) by scrutinizing Salesforce forms from a reputed online form builder company
- Assists you to determine the disparities in the market that you can make the most out of to gain the upper hand in the market
- Take advantage of the weak points of your rivals and enhance your product or service to improve your lower conversions or even improve app retention rate.
- Ascertain success strategies and reinforce your promotional campaign
- Decode the business formula for success in your line of business
- You can utilize useful insights to address frequent customer questions by having a chatbot on your website.
Now that we have closely examined the definition of competitive analysis and the reasons for conducting it, we are in a good position to learn the steps to run a competitive analysis like a champion in our next section.
Step-By-Step Process to Run a Competitive Analysis like a Pro
Here’s what you came for! Here is our step by step process to run a competitive analysis! We also recommend checking out our Advertising Institute or small business coaching to get fast results using the competitive analysis steps given below.
1. Zero In on Your Business Competitors
The very first thing as an entrepreneur that you should do is to scout for prime suspects – those contending for your customers. This is where you need to mull over wide-scale industry demands.
This can include the following:
- Brand-new contenders
- Substitute merchandise
- Unintended challengers
All these things can help you get valuable information about changes happening in the market and buyer inclinations.
We suggest you use tools like social media, search engines like Google, SEO tools like ahrefs, and industry reports to determine a piece of all-inclusive information about your business rivals. Or if you’re fancy, you could also look into chatbots with “Reinforcement learning with human feedback” (RLHF) – a machine learning technique that aligns an intelligent AI chatbot that marketing specialists use to their preferences.
2. Gather Competitor Intel
Now that you have prepared a list of “rivals”, it is time to collect more intel on them in terms of strategy, content, and more!
This may include:
- A comprehensive look into their business processes
- Promotional email campaigns
- Product lineup
- Degree of customer satisfaction through effective CRM software
- Position in the market
You can get this information (and even redact sensitive information if you’re lucky) about your competitors by closely reviewing their:
- Website
- Customer feedback
- Engagement happening on their social networking accounts using social media tools
- Accessible bank balance sheets using email verification tools
To track the web traffic and online performance of your competitors, we suggest you use tools like HubSpot and SEMRush to evaluate the performance of their landing pages.
Tip: Do some more recon and take a look at the feedback provided by their customers and maximize important value of feedback to get an unconsolidated understanding of their current standing in the market. What are the pros, what are the cons? If you manage to get ahold of existing or previous customers of your competitors, feel free to offer giftcards for their time and interview them on their experience on your choice of video conferencing platforms to get collect candid feedback. Then, see where your brand offerings can fill in the gaps.
3. Further Extract Details from the Competition’s Data
Once you have the competitor data ready, it is time to hone in on the finer details from it. The very first thing that we suggest is to evaluate the strength and weaknesses of your competitors.
This is where you need to ask these questions to make a sound judgment in terms of their brand positioning:
- In which areas do they stand out
- In which areas do they remain indecisive?
This will help you dig deep into deep-rooted monitoring to discover a rudimentary game plan and resource optimization. You can think of:
- Replicating the quality of their products
- The strategies implemented by them to price their product
- The way the digital presence of their brand development strategy is looked at by their customers
- The loyalty showcased by the customers
- Their level of industry knowledge or expertise (for example, if they’re a finance product, what content are they producing on their finance blogs?)
- Their programmatic advertising strategy
With the help of these, you’re carefully examining their assets and strategies, while mulling over your own line of work using the observations of these explorations. Lastly, when you collect competitors’ data, you can utilize Excel alternatives to efficiently organize and analyze the information, providing valuable insights into market trends.
4. Pinpoint Right Set of Circumstances and Pitfalls Ahead
With the help of understanding derived from the in-depth analysis in the last step, you can start building an action roadmap for your business. While creating your document, if needed, an AI assistant for PDFs may be helpful for smart suggestions and textual improvement!
Subscribe to their email marketing campaigns with your personal email. This will help you gain the upper hand on your products and services and enhance the customer success process, increasing the likelihood of customer loyalty.
Perhaps you’d come up with a strategy to target an audience segment that hasn’t been tapped into yet (for example Generation Z), or readjust your pricing to be more competitive. By identifyinghe cracks in their service offerings means you can better position your offering and marketing copy.
Let’s say your business is a software application, application performance monitoring (APM) is critical for identifying the specific causes of slowdowns or malfunctions. This process identifies performance bottlenecks by measuring indicators such as response time and resource utilization.
5. Elevate Your Brand by Honing On Your Strengths
Once you get a better understanding of how you shine, you need to make it your unique selling point. You can consider working on:
- Pioneering a brand-new product
- Improving customer service
- Leveraging technology to create better customer experiences
- Embracing a more spellbinding advertising campaign
Always keep in mind that your competitive advantage should be viable and challenging for your rivals to reproduce promptly.
Additional tip if you’re looking to grow your team: finding the right talent requires both attracting strong candidates and understanding who your competitors are targeting. Hiring software and a CRM can streamline your applicant tracking and interview scheduling, while a competitive analysis helps you identify what other companies offer in terms of salary, benefits, and work culture. By combining and these approaches, you can ensure your hiring strategy stands out and attracts the best fit for your team.
6. Executing Plan of Action
Once you’ve scoped out the competitive landscape and have your action plan prepared, it’s time to execute it! We suggest you use the right technology (for example, content marketing tools) to get the maximum mileage for your brand. Here are some of the things that you can do:
- Fine-tuning your marketing strategy
- Making necessary adjustments in pricing
- Continuous optimizations of your product
- Creating content to establish yourself as a thought leader
- Breaking into a new market
Regardless of the course of action you choose, it must align with concrete data and be in harmony with your business’s overarching goals.
Putting your strategy into practice is essential to turning satisfied clients into devoted supporters. By delivering positive customer experiences, you can make sure that every interaction from using your website to contacting customer service is seamless and pleasurable. This will foster loyalty in the long run!
7. Stay Agile
We are living in a dynamic business environment where things change quickly. This is also true with respect to your competitors. For example, look how big box supermarkets had to pivot quickly during the pandemic, offering Buy Online, Pick Up in Store or Curbside Pickup options. Therefore, you must always keep your finger on the pulse of your industry’s landscape, and you must be flexible to cope with change.
Observe closely the latest happenings in your line of business, new players entering marketing, and movements in target audience habits to stay on top of your competitors.
To Sum It Up
In conclusion, it’s healthy for any brand to conduct competitive analysis to stay ahead of the game. By using insights from your research, you’ll be able to fine-tune your strategies, identify growth opportunities, and even mitigate risks!
Remember it’s an ongoing process that requires your diligence and adaptability. With the right tools, you’ll be able to position your business for long-term success and outshine the competition!
