Competitive analysis as a way to differentiate yourself in a competitive market (2023)

Competitive analysis in marketing is not a new concept and has been used by marketers for years to gain valuable insights into how companies compete and where they need to improve. Competitive analysis used to mean digging up old newspaper clippings, important events and sometimes even hiring a private investigator! Nowadays it has become much easier with the implementation of various tools that are available online.

These tools analyze a website's backlink profile, code quality, social media activity, and other metrics to decide if there are significant strengths and weaknesses to consider when designing a website and developing a marketing strategy. We've come a long way in the last few years and are now able to analyze our competitors in more detail than ever.

What is a competitive analysis and why is it important?

Competition in today's markets is fierce. To be heard you have to be seen. Any business that wants to make money should not stand still. You should always think about growing, gaining market share and differentiating yourself.

If you want to be successful in business, the first step is to know your competition in order to surpass your successes. This may seem very simple, but it is not. Knowing your competitors doesn't mean watching what they're doing and then simply copying them.

What exactly is competitor analysis?

• It's a way to identify your competitors and analyze their strategies and opportunities to gain insights into your own business. By knowing who your main competitors are and what they are doing well, you help your business stand out from the crowd. Competitive analysis in marketing includes identifying external and internal factors such as products, services, distribution channels, and pricing strategies.

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Along with startup owners, product managers, and marketers, why do companies spend their hard-earned time researching competitors?

• Competitive analysis is important as it is like a roadmap that guides us through the business journey. It gives us a better understanding of the world we live in and helps us focus on the most important tasks based on what the competition is doing. By understanding the competitive landscape, you will be better able to develop a competitive strategy that maximizes your strengths/advantages and minimizes your weaknesses/vulnerabilities.

Why do?

• To develop your unique value proposition

When you have something resembling a business, you have competition. So of course you need to know who these people are and why they are better than you. Differentiating yourself from the competition has more to do with your unique value proposition than the product or service itself. At the heart of every EIA is a benefit or group of benefits that are key to the company's differentiation. This means that what customers really value about your product/service is what separates you from your competitors.

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• Find gaps in marketing, HR and sales strategies.

Competitive analysis involves researching competitors' marketing strategies, recruitment, sales strategies, advertising and other activities. It helps us know what we need to improve and gives us the opportunity to learn from the best strategies.

What have they done well? What did they do wrong? By conducting a competitor analysis, you can see what your competitors are doing well and what isn't working for them, enabling you to make smarter business decisions, put your competitors' strengths to work for you, avoid your weaknesses, and fill in the gaps . This is how competitive analysis works!

• Discover market segments that competitors don't fully serve

Conducting a competitive analysis is an excellent strategy to discover market segments that are not fully served by competitors and to better understand opportunities for products or services that are not currently on the market. If you want to make your business more profitable, it's important to see how you can improve what your competitors offer. You can identify what's missing from other companies' services or products and make it available to your users.

What belongs in a competitive analysis?

1. Identify your competitors

When entering a new market, it's important to ask yourself who your competitors are. Are they established or just getting started? Do they have competitive advantages such as higher profile, larger budget or access to customers through additional sales channels?

The first step is to find out who you are working against, i.e. companies that are selling the same or similar products or services to you. There are marketing tools like SE Ranking to help you find your competitors online and analyze their advertising efforts (we will cover this in detail later in this article). You can examine what they do, how your customers find them, and how you can beat them.

These can be direct competitors, indirect competitors, and potential competitors that can show how new entrants can impact your business. Direct competitors are companies that offer exactly the same products/services as you. Indirect competitors include companies that may not offer the same type of products/services as you but are related in some way.

2. Analysis of products or services

A competitive analysis should provide more information about competing products and services. A thorough understanding of what you offer your customers versus your competitors can identify areas of weakness or opportunities you can capitalize on.

An effective competitive analysis includes information about the company and its products/services, what they charge for them and how much money they have. This allows you to compare the value of your solution with that of your competitors.

Plus, you don't just have to look at competitor prices and other key numbers. While these aspects are important, you should also consider product quality, inputs and changes over time, and the overall offering. You should also consider how long it will take for your business to gain a competitive advantage.

When conducting a competitive analysis, you may also want to ask yourself other questions such as: B. which business models the competitor has. How old is your company's target group? What current technology are you using to build it?

3. Marketing

The most critical part of any competitive analysis is examining competitors' marketing tactics. This allows you to identify what drives traffic and how it intends to reach customers. You can get a good start by looking at your website's traffic analysis. The two most popular methods of getting traffic to a website are SEO (organic traffic) and advertising (paid traffic).

• Paid Ads - You can only get this type of traffic if you create a campaign, include relevant keywords, and pay for it. The most popular advertising platform is probably Google Ads, which provides direct access to your website through the search engine when consumers are looking for products or services related to your business.

• Organic Traffic – These are visitors who come to your website from organic (non-paid) search results. This is the most lucrative type of traffic, but your website needs to be relevant and optimized for what users are looking for on search engines like Google.

• Because analyzing your competitors' paid ads and organic traffic can give you insight into their strategies for reaching your audience, you need to find a robust approach to understanding exactly what your competitors are doing. The easiest way to find out is by using marketing tools such asSE ranking competitor checkerwhich simplifies this process tenfold.

You can start by entering your domain into the tool and get a list of your organic and paid competitors. This will be your starting point. Then look at each of the top competitors separately: how they approach SEO and paid advertising.

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By entering a competitor's domain, you get access to their organic and paid traffic analysis. You'll see data like estimated number of clicks per month, traffic cost, and your own top-performing keywords. There are two tabs: Organic Traffic Search and Paid Traffic Search, where you can get details about your SEO or Google Ads campaigns, including keywords, page traffic, and top-performing ads.

Above all, it is important to understand exactly how a competitor is entering the market, what their target audience is looking for and to examine what activities each competitor is involved in. Most likely, your competition is based on various associations. with influencers and other partners. You should also be able to see what type of content they post, their pricing strategies, and how they promote their products or services.

4. people

In order to win the race for an early market, it is important to first conduct a competitor analysis before taking any action. When analyzing a competitor, it's important to understand their company culture and business philosophy, as this will help you know how similar or different your company is and what steps they will be taking, both in terms of products and marketing. 🇧🇷 Understanding corporate culture and processes will also give you a good idea of ​​what the future holds.

If you know your organizational structure, you can also understand your decision-making processes. This helps you make strategic decisions and moves based on the data gathered from your competitors' approaches. If you know when a competitor might do something that will negatively impact your own business, you can plan ahead and take advantage of those opportunities before someone else does.

5. customers and conscience

When it comes to analyzing your competitors' business models and strategies, you need to do your research. Talk to customers, find the brand voice and focus on the target audience. The analysis you perform should be based on several factors such as: B. the value your competitor brings to your customers, how it differs from other brands in scope and product line, and how it creates brand awareness for its products.

The value that your competitors bring to your customers is a crucial aspect of your competitive analysis. Competitors are like a mini-funnel that starts with the simple question, "Who am I competing with?" You know your customers best, but it can be helpful to note the point at which people start hearing from competitors and brands.

Also, it would be a good idea to find out what your customers know about your competitors and negative aspects of the companies and their products. All of this can be based on research and representations by your customers.

Example of a competitive analysis

If you're just starting out in a marketing startup and want to know what the competition is like in your niche, it's always a good idea to do a competitive analysis to predict how successful your competitors are and how to outperform them. It can be divided into several steps:

Step 1 – First, you need to create a list of specific keywords that you want your website to rank for and thoroughly research who your competitors are by typing these keywords into the search bar. Use marketing tools to get more detailed information about all your competitors: direct, indirect and potential.

Step 2: After that, you can use competitor websites or SE ranking platform to dig deeper into your product/service, marketing strategies, traffic analysis, etc.

Step 3 - After analyzing all your main competitors, you can now focus on your own business. Running aSWOT-AnalyseThis will help you assess all your strengths and weaknesses.

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Step 4 – Finally, you can create a chart to visualize the obtained results and see clearly who your main competitors are, what direction your business needs to take and what steps you need to take.

This will make it much easier for you to come up with an effective strategy to get the result you want.

Conclusion

In short, competitor analysis is a popular and commonly used business strategy to gain a competitive advantage in the market. It allows you to define and analyze your competitors to gain a competitive advantage over them and also identify areas for improvement. This leads to an understanding of a competitor's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In addition, a comprehensive competitive analysis gives you an overview of your industry and helps you to gain valuable insights into how others are improving their products and services.

A competitive analysis should be an informative report about your industry and your competitors. It will help you define top competitors, understand your position in your niche, identify your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, etc. It will also allow you to get a better idea of ​​how your product or service compares beats the competition, which in turn helps you focus on what needs to be done to make your business stand out. A competitor analysis is a great start to developing an effective marketing strategy that will bring you phenomenal success!