Gathering data is crucial for staying competitive, especially when it comes to staying current on pivotal industry trends. Most social media platforms offer analytics for business owners and marketing managers to analyze their content, which is similar to the Metigy Content Publishing Toolkit.
Rather than relying on your performance over time, you need to gain a competitive advantage by leveraging competitor data and comparing it to your own.
A competitive analysis is a strategy involving identifying your direct competitors and gathering research on their sales, products, and marketing strategies. Conducting competitive research helps you to identify your product’s unique value proposition, which is what makes your product or service different from your competitor’s.
4 ways to use competitive insights to beat your competition
Gathering and update industry competitive data allows you to create benchmarks and business goals that inform your marketing strategy. Building a competitor analysis is a business strategy that can increase your market share by helping you learn from your competitors. But how do you find your competitor’s data, and what can you do with it to make your marketing campaigns stand out? Let’s take a look at four steps you can take to build a competitive analysis to enhance your marketing plan design and content strategy.1. Pinpoint your competition
Before you can conduct your analysis, you need to take a look at the competitive landscape. Make a list of competitors who are actively marking a product or service similar to yours. Chances are, you already know who your direct competitors are. But to build a thorough competitor analysis, you need to add your indirect competitors to the list as well. Look for competitors in your industry who use social media as a significant cornerstone in their marketing strategy. These are the brands that will offer you the most learning opportunities and benchmark data. The best way to identify your competition is to use a search engine like Google. Search for the SEO keywords that consumers would use to find your business. Keep it simple and try different variations. Also, take a look at the social media platforms you are using to promote your business. Search with your SEO keywords on each outlet to find companies and start-ups with a similar product or content marketing strategy to your own. As you find the names of your competitors, add them to a spreadsheet. There are competitive analysis templates out there to help make data sharing easy. However, this process is incredibly time-consuming, but being thorough will help you gain better information.2. Gather data for a competitor SWOT analysis
Once you’ve compiled a comprehensive list of your competitors, you will go back and gather data for a SWOT analysis. This method targets your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your marketing strategy. To gather the correct data, focus on these critical elements:- The website and user experience: Analyze your competitor’s website’s language, graphics, and overall user experience. Compare it to your own to see how you can improve.
- Pricing: Learn what your target market is willing to pay by seeing your competitor’s products are priced. This will help inform your own pricing strategy when determining the cost of a new product.
- Competitor’s customer reviews: Check out what your target audience is saying about your competitor. This will give you insight into your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses.
- Shipping costs: Identify how your competition handles shipping. Because shipping costs are the #1 reason for cart abandonment, see if you can offer competitive pricing on shipping costs. Not quite there in your budget? Think about other ways to gain an edge.