You know the ins and outs of your business, what drives your customers to your site, and what kind of problems you can help solve for them. But can you say the same thing about your competitors?
Knowing what they do and how they help their business achieve success can seem daunting, especially when you consider that their data can be hard to get. You may worry that, in the end, you’ll be left with more questions than answers. But it doesn’t have to be.
Conducting a competitive analysis—a deep dive into major competitors to learn about their products, sales, and marketing tactics—can give you the information needed to identify opportunities to outperform them and grow your client base. On top of that, it will also help you stay up to date on industry trends, uncover holes in the market, and ensure your work is meeting (and, hopefully, exceeding) industry standards.
While the reasoning makes sense, you may still be asking yourself how you actually conduct competitive analysis. Don’t worry; we’re here to show you how.
This seems like an obvious first step in your competitive analysis, but as with anything, there are some caveats to keep in mind. Make sure you’re looking at direct and indirect competitors. While direct competitors conduct work or provide services that mirror yours, indirect competitors may be solving a customer’s problem with a different product.
You’ll also want to consider who your aspirational competitors are—the businesses or organizations in your target market who you think really get it, who you want to be more like. Diving into their business will help you learn the lessons you need to steer any future strategies you create down the path to success you’re looking for.
There are a few different tools that you can use to conduct this research (like Semrush for their top ranking keywords), but oftentimes, you’ll get the best idea of their work and tactics from just browsing through the site. This way, you’re putting yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer to get the full user experience of the site. What offers do they have (if any)? How often are they publishing new content, and how helpful is it?
Some of the things you should look at and the competitive analysis questions you should be asking yourself are:
By looking at these business characteristics holistically to see how they all work together, you’ll be able to better understand what works and what doesn’t.
One of the last steps you’ll take is summarizing all of your findings. You’ve probably done this to some extent, but now is the time to dig in and determine what’s working and what isn’t. By doing so, you’ll start to create the foundation for your new strategy and put what you’ve learned into play. You don’t want to copy exactly what others are doing, but building a strong bridge between your customer’s needs and your services will allow you to market to them better.
With your new strategy in hand, you can start making the changes you need to meet your marketing goals. Other tools will help you get started as well. At Raka, for example, our free website grader will give you insight in seconds on what you should focus your time and energy on. From there, you’ll have the option to meet with our team of digital marketing and web development experts to receive actionable next steps to improve your website based on your scores.