Competitor Analysis for Digital Marketing Strategies: How to Do It Right?

Competitor Analysis for Digital Marketing Strategies_ How to Do It Right

Performing a competitor analysis online is the first step before designing and implementing a digital marketing campaign. When looking to have a digital footprint on the Internet and generate more sales, the goal is to achieve a presence in front of customers. The basic objective is to position ourselves where our potential customers are.

Competitor analysis gives an understanding of what the competition is doing, how they are doing it, and how we compare ourselves to them. Good competitor analysis is responsible for identifying competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and, at the same time, of our own company to design a strategy that allows us to compete more effectively.

1. Website analysis

Website analysis allows us to compare and contrast the company’s page and its 5 main competitors, giving a specific diagnosis of how each website is doing in terms of technology, marketing, content, code, and speed. If it feels safer to hide your identity while doing the research, using a VPN online to change your IP will be a great option. After knowing the areas where we are doing very well, we will identify the ones that will cost us a little more work to reach the prospect and position ourselves above competitors.

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2. Organic positioning analysis

We want to know the position and traffic that our site generates compared to those of our competitors. It means the organic position in which results appear when no payment is made. Such analysis also provides us with other important information: it allows us to discover which keywords our prospects use to search for similar products and services in order to implement them and increase traffic.

3. Paid positioning analysis

Most sites that follow a professional traffic and demand generation strategy use search engine advertising models to appear in searches and attract traffic. It is essential to know, as with organic search, what keywords to use when setting up Internet advertising campaigns and what keywords our competitors appear with. We must have an estimate of how much they are investing in the keywords they use in their advertising. Having a sense of which topics dominate organic search in the area is essential because the results that come up on the search engine’s first page draw 92% of organic traffic.

4. Social listening and reputation metrics

It is not enough to know what kind of content our competitors are publishing and what kind of reactions they are generating on their profiles; it is also necessary to know what people who use social media think, in general, about their product and brand.

These people are not followers of the competition; they simply use social media to express an opinion or a feeling about a service, product, person, political party, or event.

Enter the network, lift a lot of data and do social listening. Identifying what people are posting publicly gives enormous value because it allows us to know what they think of a certain product or brand, how much they talk about it, who they are, and what sentiment they express.

Social listening is a way of understanding the reputation of each brand and each product according to the emotions found in the comments on social media.

5. Social media positioning analysis

This looks into the social media strategy of each of the competitors and compares it to our brand’s strategy if there is already one. The goal is to improve our presence on social media. Competitors are surely present on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and most probably Instagram, so it is important to know what they are doing: who they talk to on their profiles, what they post, which kind of topics they post generate more interest and reaction, which ones generate more interaction, how many followers they have, how long they have their profile, how often they post.

All this information allows us to understand how to design a social media presence strategy that considers what our potential clients seek from our competitors, which audiences we want to reach and design content for, and what we should publish on social media.

6. Conversion architecture analysis

Now we are left with the important task of attracting the prospect to the website, where it is captured to initiate a purchase process.

In many fields, this is called “UX” or User Experience; others call it “Customer Journey.” Simply put, the conversion architecture defines what we want the customer to do when they come to the site and how we get them to do what we want them to do.

A conversion architecture analysis looks at how the prospect is led to complete an action and what obstacles are in the way that might make life more difficult.

A company that seeks to make a serious digital marketing strategy should always start with a competitive analysis to know where to invest time, money, and effort. This information holds the key to business success. A well-focused strategy can overwhelm the competition, so it’s high time you take the law into your own hands and conquer the web.