Digital Marketing is a vast field. Be it SEO, Content Writing, PPC, or anything else, every aspect of the field requires immense research & planning. This everyday evolving field lets your business thrive but at the same time demands considerable patience, effort, & creativity from your side.
Doing a competitor analysis is one small yet important part of the huge efforts you are going to make in Digital Marketing. The way you execute this part plays a decisive role in giving your online presence a shape.
What is Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing?
First things first! Let’s get clear with the meaning of competitor analysis in Digital Marketing. As the name implies, competitor analysis means studying your competition.
Competitor analysis incorporates analyzing your competitor’s strategy, their workflow, their reputation, the results they have generated, and all other aspects.
However, a point to note here is that doing a competitor analysis by no means implies copying your competition at any stage. Your Digital Marketing campaign will see a big setback if you blindly copy your competitors.
Yes, you can take ideas from your analysis and craft your own strategy and execute it with perfection. But blindly copying your competitors at every step will only push you towards failure.
Importance of Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing
So, what are the reasons that make competitor analysis an important thing in Digital Marketing? Why should you not miss out on competitor analysis at all? Check out the answers to these questions below.
1. It Helps to Prepare a Rough Strategy Outline: As mentioned, competitor analysis by no means imply to copying your competitors. You have to craft your own strategy by using your knowledge & creativity.
However, you get an idea of what are things that would work and the things that won’t. You can brainstorm on these things and see which way will make your journey smooth. A rough strategy outline is a vital thing to ensure a good start to your Digital Marketing campaign.
2. Get Ideas About Keywords: The keywords you incorporate in your SEO strategy, and the way you use them play a decisive role in the success of your SEO strategy.
Doing the competitor analysis gives you a fair idea of the keywords you can incorporate in your SEO strategy, and the keywords you can skip.
Thus before you perform keyword research we highly advise you to go through your competitor’s website and check out the keywords.
3. Understanding the Market Trends: With Digital Marketing, it’s necessary to go with the trends. Going with market trends is what will make your Digital Marketing campaign successful.
And what better than knowing your competitor’s strategy to know & understand the market trends? The chances of your campaign’s success increase considerably if you craft & execute your strategy exactly according to the market trends.
4. Chances of Doing Mistakes Decreases: Nothing wrong with making mistakes, but why not avoid them, especially when you can? When you analyze your competitors, you get a fair idea of what are the things you need to absolutely avoid?
Thus, when you know the don’ts of Digital Marketing, the chances of you doing a mistake decreases to a considerable extent.
Tips to do Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing
Next, how do you perform a competitor analysis in Digital Marketing? Check out the answer to this question below.
1. Check Out the Marketing Channels Competitors are Using: Checking out the marketing channels and analyzing which platforms do your competitors use to market their products is the first step to perform a competitor analysis.
Analyzing the competitor’s marketing channel will help you to be specific, and focus only on the platforms which can actually offer you the growth.
Once you analyze the marketing channels of your competitors, do your own research, and figure out the platforms which will actually work for you.
2. Decide the Metrics: Once you are done figuring out the marketing channel, decide the metrics that you wish to track. Some important metrics are engagement, website traffic, keyword rankings, etc.
Analyzing the metrics will give you an idea about the competition, and the number of efforts you need to invest.
Once you figure out the metrics, you can be more specific with your efforts. Being more specific means getting a step close to success. After all, why would you waste your time working on a metric which doesn’t matter to you and your campaign at all?
3. Analyze Social Media Presence: Social Media Marketing is a vital part of Digital Marketing. Thus, it’s necessary to craft an efficient strategy for the same.
Social Media presence will give you a fair idea about the social media marketing tactics you can go with and craft a strategy for your own social media marketing accordingly.
You can check the things like posting schedule, get the idea about the tone in the captions they have used to make posts inviting, the graphics they have used, etc. Analyzing social media presence will pave your way in terms of crafting a reliable strategy for yourself, and thus nailing the execution.
4. Check Out the Target Audience: Analyzing the SEO strategy is essential, but not sufficient. You need to go to roots to ensure a successful analysis of your competitors.
It’s important to know the target audience of your competitors to figure out your potential target audience.
Start with getting the basic information like age, gender, sexuality, etc. Then, you can go to something specific like strengths, weaknesses, needs, etc.
5. Analyze the Content: If you desire to beat your competitors, the content you post has to be better as compared to them. As simple as that!
Thus, it’s essential that you analyze your competitor’s content and get an idea about the factors like the tone you can use, content length, keyword density, etc.
Read the content your competitors have published, note down the important points, figure out the things they have missed, incorporate them in your content, and craft content that is delivering more value as compared to them.
The better your content is, the more are the chances of your Digital Marketing campaign being a success. After all, content is the king.
6. Analyze Graphics & Site Design: Graphics are the things that work as a side-hero of any Digital Marketing campaign.
When you do a competitor analysis in terms of your graphics, you will get a fair idea about the graphics that will complement your niche and your content.
Next comes site design. Making your website look attractive will be a key to your success. And how do you make your website look attractive? By your creativity. And the more you will see & appreciate other people’s creativity, the more your mind will produce creative ideas.
Thus, analyzing your competitors’ website graphics & designs will pave a way for your mind to produce some excellent ideas and thus give your website excellence.
7. Don’t Ignore Traditional Marketing: Agreed, traditional marketing isn’t a part of Digital Marketing. But what if you get some great ideas for your Digital Marketing campaign from your competitor’s traditional marketing?
Thus, spare some time to study the traditional marketing of your competitors. You might feel it’s worthless, but the step is extremely important.
8. Record your Analysis: Okay, you have concluded competitor analysis on a positive note, now what? Keeping a record of analysis in an organized way is essential to ensure that you are able to access them whenever you require.
Thus, make a sheet of analysis or make your notes and save them in whatever form you wish to. It is an important step of your competitor analysis.
The more organized your information is, the easier it will be for you to access the records of your analysis.
9. Use Right Tools: Using correct tools is of extreme importance when it comes to successfully complete the competitor analysis in Digital Marketing.
If you are confused about the tools, we have listed some of the best tools you can use to analyze your competitors below.
10. Prepare a Conclusion: Lastly don’t miss out on preparing your own conclusion regarding the analysis you did. It will clearly make crafting the content strategy easy for you. Thus, the last step of doing a competitor analysis; prepare your own conclusion.
Top Competitor Analysis Tools for Digital Marketing
So, what are some of the most reliable tools you can use to do competitor analysis? Check them out below.
1. SEMrush: SEMrush is one of the best tools to do competitor analysis. This tool primarily helps you to do an analysis of four things: Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, Site Audit, & Backlink Analysis.
The tool is extremely easy to use. Also, the accuracy of the tool can be trusted. Thus, the first and the most reliable tool to analyze your competitors; SEMrush.
2. Ubersuggest: Nothing better than Ubersuggest when it comes to digging dip into your competitor’s strategy. Ubersuggest not only gives you clarity about your competitor’s strategy but also gives you an idea on you can win the race.
To use the tool, just submit the competitor’s website URL in the search box and hit Submit. You will see every metric about your competitor’s website in a list form. Thus, the tool is extremely simple to use.
3. Ahrefs: Ahrefs is the most popular tool when it comes to analyzing competitors. This tool primarily helps to get information about the backlinks your competitors are getting. Thus, if you are looking to devise a link-building strategy by analyzing your competitors, Ahrefs is your best bet.
Things like the number of referring domains, the organic traffic, etc. are the best parameters that this tool provides insights into.
4. SimilarWeb: SimilarWeb is a tool that is primarily used to dig dip into a website, app, or any other platform. This tool is one of the best and the most accurate tools to get insights about a website.
To get started with this tool, select one from “website” or “mobile apps”, and submit your competitor’s URL.
SimilarWeb provides you an amazing feature of comparison. You can compare the traffic statistics of two or more websites. SimilarWeb tool is free to use but to use an enhanced functionality of the tool, you can upgrade to the premium version.
5. Alexa: Alexa is a tool by Amazon which allows you to analyze your content and ensure that your content is up to the mark and understood by everyone.
Alexa is a great tool for Content Strategists to collect the behavioral data of the users and craft content accordingly.
Competitor Analysis comes with immense importance alongside it. To ensure that you nail your strategy without any hiccups, it’s necessary that you are clear with each and every step you take in your Digital Marketing campaign.
We hope that these insights would help you to know the importance of competitor analysis and also execute it with perfection. However, if you face any issue in analyzing your competitor or if you are looking for a reliable companion to craft the success of your online presence, do reach out to Pat’s Marketing – a Toronto SEO Consultant & Digital Marketing expert.
To connect with our digital marketing team in Toronto, call us at 888-488-7287 (toll-free). We will thoroughly go through your requirements, analyze your vision, perform a competitor analysis meticulously, and deliver the best.