Digital Marketing for Creatives

A competitor analysis is an essential tool which will tell you a lot about your competitors (obviously) but it will also give you a lot of insights into your own business. Not only that, once you have completed your competitor analysis, you will find that it becomes a crucial part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Knowing a lot about your competitor will allow you to identify ways to outperform them and grow your business. It will enable you to leverage your strengths and minimise your weaknesses. Don’t be put off at this stage, this is a straightforward process.

A competitive analysis in digital marketing means that you are analysing the different platforms of each of your competitors and see how they contribute to their growth.  But firstly, we need to determine our competitor types. You need to split them into two categories;

Primary – These are your direct competitors that sell a similar product or service to your target audience.

Secondary – These are companies that offer a similar product to your product or service but to a different audience. Also, these secondary competitors may be able to switch their offering in the future to become your primary competitor.

Now it’s time to start looking at their products. Take a look at all the products they offer and the quality of the products. Also look at the follow points;

• Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
• Are they working mainly volume sales or one-to-one purchases?
• What is their market share?
• What are characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
• Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick and mortar?
• How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
• How do they distribute their products/services?

Some of these question you might have to estimate, but it will get you thinking. All these questions will really give you a great insight into these companies. Now you need to look at their sales processes. So take a look at your competitors through the lens of these questions:

• What does the sales process look like?
• What channels are they selling through?
• Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage?
• Are they expanding? Scaling down?
• Do they have partner reselling programs?
• What are their customers reasons for not buying? For ending their relationship with the company?
• What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
• Do they regularly discount their products or services?
• How involved is a salesperson in the process?

One of the most important parts of this process is understanding your competitors pricing strategy. If you feel your product offers superior features or aspects to that of your competitors you might consider making your product or service more expensive. Don’t be shy, you’re totally worth it. Alternatively, you might see there is a gap in your market for affordable products. You might aim to charge less than your competitors and appeal to the target audience who aren’t looking to break the bank for a high-quality product.

There are a lot of factors that go into correctly pricing a product or service, so it is critical you stay in touch with pricing within your industry or creative circles, so you are pricing your product or service in a way that feels reasonable with your target audience. Also look at any perks your competitors are offering and see if you can match those perks to compete, or even offer your own perks to compete. These perks could be really simple but look for the extra value you could offer. One thing to definitely not overlook is the shipping costs. One of the biggest reasons people abandon their shopping cart is the shipping costs. So, pay attention to how your competitors are dealing with the shipping costs.

Now, it is time to look at how your competitors market their products. Look at the platforms they are on and look at the type of content they are posting. Also, look if people are responding to the content and how are they responding to it (It is likes, shares, comments etc). This will tell you if your target audience is enjoying that type of content.

Also, look at what their content strategy might be. Are they posting regularly? Are some types of content better received than others? Is the content structured for readability? (Are they using bullet points, bold headings, and numbered lists?) Is their content free and available to anyone or do their readers need to opt-in? Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?) Is there a visible by-line or bio attached to their articles? As you continue to analyse the content, pay attention to the photos and imagery your competitors are using.

Also when looking at the content consider the following;

• Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?
• What content of theirs is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
• Which social media platforms is your target audience using and the most active on?
• What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site, but not yours?
• Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?
• Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?

All of this will help you formulate the type of content you need to be posting on your platforms.

Also, if your competitors are on a platform that you aren’t, do take a look and see if this platforms is working for them. It might work for you also.

So with all of this information you should have an idea on the social media/marketing of your competitors.

Next we need to conduct an honest Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat (SWOT) analysis. I say honest as some of this might be a bit painful to admit to, but an honest SWOT analysis will enable us to get a good idea on what our competitors do well and where we could potentially make some progress on our competitors. Some questions you might want to consider as a starting point:

• What is your competitor doing really well with? (Products, content marketing, social media, etc.)
• Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand/product/service have the advantage over your competitor?
• What could they do better with?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor as a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You’ll be able to compare their weaknesses against your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company, and you’ll start to uncover areas for improvement within your own brand, product or service.

Before you accurately compare your competition, you need to establish a baseline. This also helps when it comes time to perform a SWOT analysis.

Take an objective look at your business, sales, and marketing efforts through the same metrics you use to evaluate your competition.

Record this information just like you would with a competitor and use this as your baseline to compare across the board.

This exercise might seem a little painful at first, however, this will yield some important information about your competitors but also about your business.

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Next time we’ll be looking at the importance of Buyer Personas.