Knowing your current and potential customers is a foundational piece of information for you to create your unique offering. In the process, not only do you see where you stack up, you learn how competition acts, whether it be how they approach a market or communicate a message. A competitive analysis is a key step to understanding how you can win in an increasingly competitive world.

“Even when you grow, you want to have the financial discipline to keep a tight reign on costs.”

Create A Scoring System

One technique is to make a chart that lays out the top five or 10 values or features of a competitor and scores each on a scale of 1 to 10. Then score yourself. This will give you at least a basic understanding of competitors in their strengths And weaknesses. I have someone other than you do a rating for your company because as we know we are often not objective about our own solution.

What to Include in Your Competitive Analysis

Include each of the following in your competitive analysis:

• Business Strategy. While you’ll likely never know the exact contents of your competitor’s business plan, you can compile as much intelligence possible about how they do business through competitive marketing analysis. The most effective way to do this is through competitor profiling, Factors which should be included in competitor profiling include the following:

• • Segments Served: How does their customer base compare to yours?
  • Market Share: Are they capturing the majority of customers in your industry? Is their customer base growing?
  • Advertising and Campaign Themes:What topics, trends, and concepts are they actively targeting in content marketing?
  • Channels of Distribution: Do they have a blog? Are they on social media?
  • Pricings, Discounts, and Annual Specials: Is this intelligence listed on their website?
• Website Comparisons. A website is the backbone of your digital presence, and it’s critical to out-optimize your competition, particularly in an era where mobile optimization is so important. Competitive marketing analysis of key websites should include a look at the following factors:

• • Number of Pages: Do your competitors offer a wide array of landing pages, detailed information on pricing, and an about-us page?
  • Navigation: Is the website easy-to-use? Was your competition able to match the user-experience to your buyer persona’s level of savvy?
  • Social Integration: Are social media follow buttons included on site pages? Are there opportunities to share content or landing pages?
  • Load Times: Does the website load quickly in all browsers, and on mobile-enabled devices?
• Targeting. Figure out who your competitors are trying to acquire, and pay especially close attention if it’s the same prospect you’re aiming for.While fast food chains Chipotle and Qdoba offer a similar product, Chipotle has effectively positioned themselves as an eco-friendly company.
• Social Media. A company’s ability to monitor, track, and engage in conversations on social media platforms can determine their success among a new type of consumer. Use both quantitative and qualitative competitive marketing analysis to glean actionable intelligence about the following key areas:

• • Platforms: Does your competition stick to Facebook and Twitter, or are they using all social media networks equally? Do they experience better engagement on any given platform?
  • Timing and Frequency: How often does your competition post to their social profiles, and what times of day?
  • Following: While total social followers offer little value on their own, monitoring the growth of your competitors’ social following can give insight into the efficacy of their strategy. On Facebook, pay attention to how many people are “talking about this.”
  • Content: Is your competition heavily promoting their own content offers and articles, or giving equal share to other content creators in the industry?
  • Share of Voice: Are you dominating conversations about your product or services, or does your competitor tend to take control? Share of voice is best calculated manually, by automating “streams” of industry keywords in HootSuite, and determining the percentage mentions of brands in your niche are scoring.
  • Response Times: How effectively are the companies your examining responding to customer service complaints, questions, and compliments? Quick responses matter, and a company that stops monitoring at 5pm can find themselves in a vulnerable position.
• Content Marketing. Providing value through content marketing is a key differentiating factor. You must provide free high value content for your niche. While it’s difficult to objectively measure the quality and effectiveness of someone else’s content marketing from the outside, the following factors can yield rich insights:

• • Types of Content: Is your competitor blogging, or have they mastered a presence with an astoundingly broad mix of content, like webinars, eBooks, white papers, and Tumblr?
  • Frequency of Publication: Do they blog twice a week? How often are they adding free resources and landing pages? Subscribe to their blog to determine whether they have a schedule, and how rigorous it is.
  • Quality: Are their blogs hastily published, or a thoughtful piece that’s worth sharing? It can be challenging to objectively determine the quality of your competitors’ content, but look towards how well-edited, researched, and original their efforts are.
  • Relevance: Are you the only one in your niche newsjacking? Do your competitors work to create content about trending news items and stories that relate to your industry?
  • Audience: Not every website reveals the depth of their blog subscriber base, but if this insight is freely shared, it can be competitive marketing analysis gold.
• Email Marketing. Email still has the highest form of ROI of any kind of marketing. Convert on your competitor’s websites to begin receiving communications, and examine their emails in light of the following factors:

• • Frequency of Emails: Are they nurturing their leads on a monthly, or weekly basis? What times of day do they email?
  • Content: Do the notes include an attractive promotional offer or special, or are they simply using the platform to self-promote?
  • Mobile-Optimization: Do their emails display correctly on both your PC and tablet or smartphone?
  • Sender Score: Are their emails landing in your inbox, or being caught by your spam filter?
• SEO. In many ways, SEO is the easiest area of competitive marketing analysis, because there is an abundance of tools available to quantitatively examine how your website stacks up against others. Further, SEO is an inherently competitive craft. If you want to optimise your website for search engines but would like some more support understanding the world of digital marketing, you might want to consider contacting a freelance lead generation expert. Above all, ensure each of the tools you utilize adheres with Google’s terms of use before you examine the following factors:

• • Keyword Ranking: How do your competitors rank for key terms in your industry?
  • Site Traffic: How many website visits do your competitors receive each month?
  • Website Authority: What is the website’s pagerank and Mozrank, as a limited measure of how established and trustworthy they are in the eyes of Google?

With an understanding of your competition, you are much more well equipped to see how you are going to win.