How to Do a Digital Marketing Analysis

The internet has changed competitive marketing analysis as we know it. While analyzing other organizations previously required some sneaking around akin to espionage, the growing importance of a web presence means that virtually everything you need to know about other companies in your industry can be found online.

“While analyzing other organizations previously required some sneaking around akin to espionage, the growing importance of a web presence means that virtually everything you need to know about other companies in your industry can be found online.” 

Here are a few tools to help you with competitive analysis:

• Compete. It’s not free, but Compete is one of the most comprehensive tools for competitive marketing analysis available to businesses of all sizes. The software specializes in competitive marketing analysis, including automated searches of how your company website stacks up against 1500 competitors, and insights on the behavior of the customers you’re trying to attract:

• Marketing Grader. HubSpot’s Marketing Grader draws from a comprehensive overlook of web presence, which includes blogging, social media, SEO, lead generation and mobile optimization, to provide a score of how you and your competitors are doing online. Receiving your own marketing grade is free, but being able to see how you stack up against others in your industry requires a subscription to their software.

• Moz. While the product is still in Beta, Moz (the software formerly known as SEOMoz) promises to blend all of the SEO brilliance of the company with a new, comprehensive look at competitive marketing analysis. Not only will you be able to determine the strength and authority of your website, your analytics are displayed in conjunction with other websites in your niche, so you can ultimately determine how their content is performing, and the modes of content promotion that are bringing the best results.

• Raven. One of the most popular all-in-one SEO tools available, Raven uses 30 different factors to determine key opportunities for gaining SEO share in your industry. You can examine their backlinks reports, gain insight on any site performance issues, and quickly access a comprehensive view of keyword ranking and on-page strategy, including anchor text. It’s simple to shift your own strategy and gain insight into how your competitors are guest posting and optimizing their blog articles with this competitive marketing analysis tool.

• Simply Measured. Social media competitive marketing analysis can be a seriously big job, and if you’re willing to commit, Simply Measured will automatically perform all the analysis you need. Reports automatically-generated by the software can include social traffic reports, objective measures of all major social platforms, as well as up-to-date insights on follower demographics and geography. If you’re not able to pay for the service, the company offers a number of free reports which can be incredibly helpful in competitive marketing analysis, although sending a Tweet is required to unlock the intelligence.

• Market Samurai. This tool does one thing extraordinarily well, which is SEO analysis with a strong look toward keyword ranking. Market Samurai’s automatic analysis can help you determine which keywords to incorporate in your own marketing strategy, with a look towards relevance, as well as terms which offer little opportunity for ROI. The competitive marketing analysis comes in the form of advice on the steps needed, which could be 3 blog articles or 1 new page, to score other companies top keyword rankings.

• BuzzStream. Buzzstream software is built to achieve one key result: helping you gain the attention of digital influencers before your competition does. A SMB’s success can depend on their ability to connect with and leverage digital influencers for content promotion. Not just any individual with a social following has the potential to explode their business, however. Finding and building relationships with the right people can yield remarkable results. The program identifies who you need to connect with, and allows you to monitor their conversations with other brands for the sake of competitive marketing analysis.

Moving past a SWOT analysis and leveraging the right platforms to gain intelligence can allow you to quickly obliterate opportunities and improve in real time.