If you have ever thought, “What are my competitors doing?”, “Are they posting more than us?”, “What type of content are they posting?” Then you have come to the right place. We are going to break down what competitor research is and what to look for when conducting this sort of analysis.
What Is It?
Competitor research is a great marketing tactic that you can use to enhance your overall marketing strategy. This research gives you more insights into what your competitors’ marketing strategies are in your respective industry. You can conduct your research in many ways, some will do a complete analysis looking at everything and anything or they might just look at a specific “topic”. If you choose the broad route, that will entail researching everything that the business does; website, ads, social media, etc. If you choose to just explore a specific aspect, that’ll just be looking at one avenue of their marketing strategy. Either way, the research should be detail-oriented as you will want to leverage it for comparison with what your business is doing.
What to Look For
Website Content
Website content is a great place to start when completing a competitor analysis. When looking at a competitor’s site, see if there is anything that would be relevant to your business. Are you missing a product or service that they offer? How about imagery and content? Pay attention to the tone that they are using to convey their information. For example, if you see they have a blog page and are releasing a blog per month, it may be valuable to start writing some blog content. This will help you SEO-wise as you will rank better organically. Look for those simple supporting pages like “About Us”, “Services”, “FAQs”, etc.
Social Media
As you are exploring their website, you will likely see social media icons in the footer that link to their pages. It is beneficial to go through all their channels to see what types of content they are posting and how they are pushing consumers to convert. Below is a list of items to check for while analyzing these social pages:
- What social platforms are they on?
- Are the pages being used and are they actively posting?
- How often are they posting?
- Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.?
- Are they posting consistently across all social platforms?
- What type of content are they posting?
- Does one platform focus on a certain type of content?
- Examples: Brand awareness posts? Sales-oriented posts?
- How many followers do they have?
- Are they engaging with comments?
Answering these questions will allow you to draw conclusions and adjust your current social media plan accordingly if necessary. Remember, it is important to create a seamless experience for your consumers on your social media.
Are They Running Ads?
There are many platforms available that will show you if your competitors are running ads. Sure, some of these platforms can be costly to use, but the long-term benefit of analyzing this information is a great investment. By reviewing your competitor’s ad strategies, you can start making small edits to your own campaigns. The following are a few examples of what those changes could be:
- Make edits to existing ads
- Test out new variations of ads
- Target new keywords
- Target new audience segments
- Adjust budgets
Customer Reviews
It’s also important to look into customer reviews. Social listening is a great way to see what people are saying about your competitors, both positive and negative. When looking at positive reviews, you can analyze what your competition is doing well and evaluate if your business is performing services to their level. As for negative reviews, studying this feedback helps you gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ expectations and preferences. This allows you to tailor your services and offerings accordingly, which can strengthen your competitive advantage.
Wrap-Up
By reviewing your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you can identify opportunities for improvement, spot gaps in the market, and make decisions that will propel your business. Competitor research is an ongoing process as your competitors are evolving their digital marketing strategy, so it is important to continue to monitor your competition. That way, you are adapting to new trends in the market, and you can refine your marketing efforts if need be. If you want to be at the forefront of your industry, it is valuable to invest the time and resources necessary to conduct competitor research.
Interested to see what your competitors are doing? JH offers a comprehensive look at your competitors so you can decide which areas you want to focus your marketing dollars on most. Reach out today to talk to one of our knowledgeable account managers.
