What Advertising Competitor Evaluation Is and Learn how to Do it
You don’t need a business degree to know your business needs a marketing plan.
Successful startups devote months to developing a strategy for conversions and online visibility. They run focus groups and do market research to guide their execution, but they don’t stop there.
Niche businesses are also no longer so rare. Everyone has someone to compete with, someone to lose customers to. Therefore, it is vital for any company, large or small, to conduct a competitive analysis of its business competitors.
It’s not enough to know the customers – you need to know the competitors. Without careful consideration of your competitors, you run the risk of losing great business opportunities.
Know your rivals, know each other
What is competitive analysis?
Well, it’s not rocket science. As the term suggests, it is just a descriptive report from your business competitors.
The analysis contains information on strategies, services, shortcomings and performance of a competing company. It can be made up of more material like customer reviews, SEO rankings, and sales reports if you can get your hands on those details.
All of this information comes together to help you reevaluate your own strategies and services. Everything in the report is designed to help you improve your growth marketing.
A thorough, comprehensive competition analysis will reveal opportunities and risks.
Regular market analyzes without a focus on your competitors only provide information about the current supply and demand chain in your industry. It does not point out the differences between wholesalers or the reasons customers choose one brand over another, but rather a competitive market analysis.
Knowing your competitor’s brand, their success rate, and the way they are promoting themselves can help you develop aggressive tactics to attract their customer base.
How To Use Competitive Analysis To Help Your Business
Competitive analysis will help you develop better promotions and marketing techniques than your challengers. It’s an excellent tool for predicting trends and avoiding customer dissatisfaction.
Think about it: if you have access to your competitor’s business plan, you can compare services and prices, and maybe even find a better course of action.
Had Blockbuster used competitive market analysis to guide its business strategies, they might have recognized the threat posed by Netflix when it launched streaming services. These reports allow your company to study trends and industry projections to help your brand stay at the forefront in an ever-evolving world.
Let’s say you run a frozen yogurt shop, but there is an ice cream parlor just down the street. They are your main competitor, and your analysis shows that they have a punch card promotion that gives customers a free scoop of ice cream with every tenth purchase. You can use this information to design your own special that is a lot more enticing.
Your yogurt store may offer happy hour prices every weekday to compete with the less common ice cream parlor promotion.
Think ahead and let data guide your business decisions.
Create a competitive market report for your brand
Fortunately, you can learn how to do a competitive analysis without being a marketer. As long as you understand your industry and your own company, you can analyze the contradiction in a way that benefits you, your profits and your customers.
If you know your competitors, you can beat them. There are several competitive analysis tools that can help you better understand your business competitors, even if you are not officially trained in data analysis.
Word of mouth is carried over virtual channels these days, so you can’t afford to ignore the internet. Chances are every one of your competitors is online. While this will increase your battle to stand out, it will also give you access to information to aid you in preparing your competitive market report.
First of all, you need to identify your rivals. You can be a direct or indirect participant, but consider both when preparing the report. Find and study their websites, their apps, anything that advertises their brand.
As you research your rivals, ask yourself what they are doing to make this work. What does not work? Have you had any major PR incidents?
Are your competitors offering more than you? How are your customer ratings?
The answers to these questions will help you level the playing field and ultimately take advantage of your competitors.
Your employees need to know how to conduct a competitor’s analysis in digital marketing and apply it to other departments. Depending on the age of your company, you may need to get your strategies up to speed to survive in today’s marketplace.
Conclusion? Competitive analysis is for everyone.
No matter how well your business is doing, you can always learn from your competitors. There is still room for improvement.
Author: Alex Lysak
Follow @lysak_aleksandr
Alex Lysak is the CEO of ScanTeam. I have been working in online marketing since 2011. My main areas of expertise are marketing research, social media marketing, and SEO. In 9 years of experience I have helped many products and startups to develop marketing strategies and … Show complete profile >
