Every business needs a marketing strategy to improve and be successful. And every strategy implies many essential elements, such as defining the brand identity, personality, brand tone, details of the audience, what kinds of social networks and advertisements to use, and what goals the company needs to achieve, among many other things, including the analysis of the competitors.
So, let’s see this last one in a more detailed way.
First things first, what is a marketing competitor analysis?
Basically, to run an analysis of our business’s competitors is to do research for our company, including details about:
● All those brands that offer similar products or services to the ones our brand offers (direct competitors).
● All those brands that create content to gain the attention of the same audience as ours (indirect competitors).
This research aims to build a plan and strategy that allow our brand to improve.
This analysis should include: assessing the strengths and weaknesses of our rivals, their possible threats, and opportunities, the elements that make them different and similar to other brands, how they reach their audience, etc.
So, why should you pay attention to your competitors?
Whether you belong to a big company or are the owner of a small business, taking your time to make a competitor analysis is a significant part of running a business.
● Allows you to learn how your competition works: what they offer and how they talk to their audience.
● Helps identify potential opportunities for your brand: how can you out-perform them; how can you improve or change an idea or strategy?
● Enables you to stay atop of industry trends and critical factors.
● Shows you what your competitors are doing right or wrong, so you can get inspired or avoid doing the same.
● Provides you with an idea of what customers think of their products and how they interact with other brands.
● Allows you to see your strong and weak points compared to your rivals.
Finally, how should you analyze your brand’s competitors?
Step one: Identify each of them
To be able to gather all the information you need to know about them, you should keep these things in mind:
● Are they direct or indirect competitors?
● What are the differences and similarities between their offer and yours?
● How much market share do they have, and how big of a threat are they to your brand?
● What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they the same as yours?
● How do these strategies affect your business?
● What makes them different from the rest?
Step two: Pay attention to where and how they interact with their clients
For this, you should use quantitative and qualitative analysis to see:
- If they have a website or an App for their brand.
- What social media do they choose to use, and how do they use each?
- How is the volume of their social community? (number of followers, interactions, and comments).
- What kind of content do they post, and how often? (chosen formats, grade of creativity, content categories).
Step three: Analyze their target audience
In this case, you should pay attention to:
● How do they address their audience? (choice of language, tone of voice).
● What are the comments and reviews they receive?
● How do they interact with the audience? Do they solve their problems or answer their doubts in a fast way?
And this is just the beginning of the right path.
Remember that this marketing competitor analysis is just a part (an essential one, though) of the plan strategy you will need to help improve your brand and business. Gather all this information so you can learn what your next steps should be to be able to organize the content, ads, and activities you will have to do to make your brand a very successful one.
