Running a business requires always being one step further from your competitors and making your company stand out from the crowd. However, it is not rare for business owners to focus all their attention and efforts on determining their business’s strengths and weaknesses, failing to measure their competitors’ reach and, therefore, being unable to prepare accurate business forecasts.
Moreover, conducting a marketing competitor analysis should be an integral part of your marketing plan – it allows you to keep up with the latest industry trends and choose the most effective marketing strategies for your business so that you are in front of the competition.
This article will shed some light on what marketing competitor analysis is, along with some valuable tips on how to do it right. Continue reading to ensure that your competitors won’t have an advantage over you.
What is Marketing Competitor Analysis?
Marketing competitor analysis is a process of collecting, analyzing, and organizing data on your competitors’ marketing strategies to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business in relation to them. To put it more simply, it is an analytical look at how you are doing against your competitors.
To start with, you will need to figure out who your main competitors are. What industries are you competing in? What companies are you competing with? Who are your customers?
Then, you will need to identify and analyze their marketing strategies through competitor analysis techniques to find out what they do well and how you can improve your marketing strategies to create a competitive edge. You can get in touch with an analytics agency such as https://bravogroup.us/ if you need help.
When planning to conduct a marketing competitor analysis, make sure that you cover the following three key aspects:
Product or Service
Start by writing down information about your competitors’ products or services, such as their features, benefits, price, availability, and target audience. Doing this step first will help you identify the essential features of the competitors’ offering, which will be helpful in future steps.
Marketing Mix
Work out an overall summary of the competitors’ marketing mix – the combination of five different components that form the core of a company’s marketing strategy: distribution channel, communication channels, customer relationship management, pricing strategy, and promotion strategy.
This will help you understand how effective their marketing strategies are and adapt your own to improve your marketing performance.
Competitor Analysis
Now that you understand your competitors’ products or services and marketing mix, you can start evaluating their marketing effectiveness. This means creating an objective analysis of their strengths and weaknesses and creating a list of the most important marketing strategies.
Tips for conducting a Marketing Competitor Analysis
Now that you know what marketing competitor analysis is and why it is important to conduct such a study let’s look at some valuable tips on how to do it right.
Use the right tools
To gather a complete picture of your competitors’ marketing strategies, you will need to gather as much information as possible. However, analyzing data from multiple sources can become quite time-consuming, especially when you are just starting with your business and have limited resources.
That is why you should use the right tools to help you make the most accurate predictions.
For instance, if you are looking for tools to help you conduct a marketing competitor analysis, you could use sales and revenue analytics software.
Such tools allow you to collect, analyze and organize data from various sources – social media, emails, web traffic, and more. It can process enormous volumes of data in real-time and quickly provide you with the information you need.
Or, if you would prefer to gather information manually, you can use pen and paper or spreadsheets. However, while this might be cheaper, it will be less accurate and much more time-consuming.
Identify your competitors’ strengths
Before you start conducting a marketing competitor analysis, take a moment to write down all the strengths of your competitors’ products or services that come to mind. Doing this will make it easier for you to identify their weaknesses later on. Then, rank these strengths in terms of importance and determine how they can be used against them.
You could also ask your friends and family members who have previously bought your competitors’ products about their experience and whether they recommend the product to others. The answers you receive will help you determine your competitors’ strengths and work out what areas of your own business you should focus on to increase your sales.
Determine your competitors’ weaknesses
Now that you know what your competition does well, it is time to find out what they don’t do so well. To do this, ask your friends and family members who bought your product or service about the weaknesses of their experience with your business.
You can also conduct research by asking them what improvements they would like to see in your product or service.
Asking people you know personally is preferable because they are more likely to tell the truth than anonymous customers or social media followers. However, while they might be honest in terms of identifying the weaknesses of the product, they might not be able to describe the actual causes behind them.
Thus, if possible, do not rely solely on feedback from friends and family members – instead, use other research methods to obtain broader results.
Create a competitive edge
Marketing competitor analysis allows you to evaluate your own marketing strategies in relation to your competitors’ marketing strategies. As a result, it will allow you to find out what makes your business unique from other companies in the industry and how you can improve your product or service to win over more customers in the future.
One way to create a competitive edge is by focusing on the product or service features that differentiate your business from competitors’ offerings. You could also add extra features to attract customers who are not satisfied with your competitors’ products or services.
Another way is by focusing on customer satisfaction – always ensure that your customers are happy with their purchase to gain repeat sales in the future. Moreover, if customers are happy with their purchase, they will be likely to share their experience with others – this will help boost your sales even further.
Analyze your competitors’ Marketing strategies
Once you have gathered enough data on your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, it is time to analyze their marketing strategies and determine their effectiveness. To do this, make a list of the most effective strategies and rank them in terms of importance.
For example, you could start by looking at what makes your competitors stand out from the crowd. Then, you could determine what communication channels they use to advertise their products or services and how they use these channels to increase their reach.
Once you know this, you can compare it to your own marketing performance and work out how you can improve your communication methods to achieve better results.
How can you use this information?
Marketing competitor analysis is a powerful tool for businesses – once you have done the necessary research, it will help you identify your business’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Then, once you have developed a solid understanding of your competitors’ marketing strategies, you will be able to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly to create a competitive edge over your competitors.
For instance, after conducting a marketing competitor analysis, you might realize that certain features of your product or service are not as effective as they could be. By taking action to improve these features, you will be able to attract new customers and retain existing ones even more.
Moreover, if some of your competitors’ weaknesses are specific to certain industries, then this might give you an opportunity to expand your business into new industries where your business is more likely to succeed.
The bottom line
Marketing competitor analysis is an essential step for any small business owner who wants to achieve long-term success and stay ahead of the competition. However, because small businesses often struggle with limited resources, it is easy to overlook the importance of marketing competitor analysis.
Yet, if you are looking for ways to gain a competitive edge over your business rivals without spending large amounts of money on advertising campaigns, market research, or other advertising methods, marketing competitor analysis is a great way to achieve this goal.
In fact, if you conduct a marketing competitor analysis at least once a year, you will have essential data on what your competitors are doing, which will allow you to determine whether you need to improve your marketing strategies and make the right decisions for your business.
