Digital business has exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s understandable, considering the restrictions set to lessen physical contact and mitigate the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, this means that more customers and industries have saturated the digital marketplace.
How do you think your company can stand out and maintain your competitive edge in this and the coming year, amid the fierce rivalry? That’s where digital competitive analysis comes in, an in-depth investigation of your competition, their performance, and their and online strategies as compared with yours.
Learn how digital competitive analysis helps you level the playing field and retain your competitive advantage in 2022.
1. It offers data to refine marketing tactics and outperform rivals.
To build marketing strategies that can get you ahead of the competition, you need to know against whom you’re battling and how well you stack up. Using data from a robust competitive analysis tool, you can study and compare your marketing performance with your rivals’.
You can discover the channels (paid and organic) garnering the most traffic and the top-performing websites in every niche. You can also assess each channel’s traffic quality through engagement metrics such as pages per visit, bounce rate, and visit duration.
This data can then serve as a benchmark against which you’ll measure your company’s growth and marketing performance.
Competitive analysis also prompts you to review your rivals’ unique value proposition versus what makes your products different from them. It will even let you identify your competitors’ effective marketing tactics across every digital platform and over specific periods.
Knowing that, you can evaluate your strategies and see if anything needs adjustments to meet industry standards. All this knowledge helps you finetune your next promotional efforts and market positioning, determine how to remain relevant to your customers, and find ways to outperform your rivals.
2. It provides insights for reaching top-notch online visibility.
Digital competitive analysis is part of your overall SEO strategy. It shows you details on how well your company’s content ranks in search engine result pages (SERPs) compared to the content published by others in your space.
You can assess each keyword’s traffic share according to search type, competitiveness, geography, and comparisons between branded and non-branded variants.
Plus, by identifying trending keywords and highest-viewed content, you can keep creating conversion-friendly content that gives your customers what they seek. This results in potentially higher SERPs rankings and increased traffic and engagement.
3. It reveals new partnership-building tactics.
Digital competitive analysis sheds light on your rivals’ strategies when working with their affiliates and other referrers.
You can unearth referral sources’ traffic shares and analyze their performance over time. With insights on these elements, you can find ways to optimize your own affiliate partnerships.
You can even expand collaborative marketing networks by discovering valuable industry partners most relevant to your and your rivals’ business offers.
4. It highlights your strengths vs. your rivals’ weak points.
Through competitive analysis, you can find out in which crucial business aspects your competitors fall short of. For example, if you check out your rivals’ reviews on sites such as Trustpilot, Capterra or Yelp, you can find essential features missing in their products.
What do customers say they wish they could do with that product? Do they consistently experience bugs and other issues when using your rivals’ products? Perhaps their customers complain of their unresponsive customer support, constant delivery delays, or failure to respond to problems.
Whatever that weak point is, use it to highlight your strengths and explore promotional and marketplace opportunities.
You can also uncover your competitors’ poorly performing marketing strategies, steer clear of them, or see if you can improve them. You might even learn and test out new, creative promotional techniques they have not maximized.
5. It shows you how to improve your messaging.
How well does your competitors’ content marketing perform? Are they off the charts? If so, then head to their websites and social media pages and study their messaging strategies.
Let’s say they’re selling premium coffee-based beverages. Do they portray coffee as their customers’ starting morning fuel or for driving meaningful conversations with family and friends? What types of media formats do they use – videos, photos, narratives, or a mix of them?
If you sell the same product, you can follow similar messaging approaches and formats – or convey another idea positioning yourself as an alternative.
If your competitor has frustrating customer service, emphasize that your support agents are available 24/7 and can respond lightning-fast. (Of course, be true to your messages and ensure your process quality supports your claims.)
What about their communication style? Do they speak formally or casually? Consider their target audiences and yours when comparing marketing messages.
Finally, notice their product and service descriptions, including the specific words used. Here, you can integrate SEO-friendly phrases, or elaborate on your initial descriptions with concrete feature explanations. These thorough reviews of your competitors’ messaging efforts can influence and help hone your overall brand messaging plan.
6. It can lead you to your next target customer.
Digital competitive analysis shows you your rivals’ ideal and target customers – some of whom you might not have reached out to yet.
You can find this out from competitive intelligence tools or their websites, social media pages, and other marketing content. Customer testimonials, including reviews on third-party sites, are also excellent sources to fish for yet-untapped markets.
When considering new audiences from your rivals’ target customers, ensure they match your business’ buyer personas. Do this before engaging, or make sure to tailor your messaging to fit these new profiles.
7. It helps you quickly get ahead of trends.
Probing into competitive intelligence can give you clues about your rivals’ new direction or attempts to set a mark in your industry. While first movers definitely do have a key competitive advantage, those who come up from behind also have an edge, as they can learn from the mistakes of the trailblazers.
You can check out your competitors’ press releases, interviews featuring them, or any related insight from competitive analysis tools. For instance, news articles can announce that your rival is developing an enhanced version of their current product. Perhaps they are modifying their business model or creating a unique product line for a specific customer group.
Once you hear about this, get clues about their next moves, and forecast how it will generate high demand, you can better prepare yourself.
You can work on setting a new trend or releasing similar products first to overtake your competitors. You can even strategize to expand to larger markets or supercharge your marketing efforts.
Maintain your edge in 2022 with competitive analysis
Get ahead of your rivals and boost your edge with sufficient intelligence and analysis. Armed with this information, you’ll no longer need to wonder what it takes to lead the pack.