Analyzing your competition helps you figure out what makes you the right choice for your customers or clients. It can help you identify gaps you can fill, see where you have an edge, and identify things you need to improve. It also helps you stay up to date on industry standards, pricing, and processes. Here’s how to get started:
- Know who your competition is. The first step is to identify your competitors. Try to go beyond the obvious. For example, if you own an ice cream truck, you will want to look at both ice cream shops and food trucks. Think about your customer base: is it local, online, or a mix of both? How do you deliver products and services? Take these things into account as you identify your competition. If you run a local restaurant, a restaurant 800 miles away is less important than the one next door, even if the one farther away has a more similar menu. If you provide office supplies to corporations around the United States, you will care less about the local print shop that sells paper but specializes in wedding invitations and more about how you compete with Staples. Pretend you’re your own ideal customer. What do you search for online and who comes up in that search? Who do you ask for referrals or suggestions? To really identify your competition, you should look online, ask around in your networks, set up Google Alerts, and read the trade publications for your industry.
- Look at their paid marketing efforts. Once you know who you’re competing with, see how they’re spending their marketing dollars. Are they outsourcing or do they have a marketing team? Where are they advertising? What do their Google Ads look like? What is their paid search strategy? Are they on TV or in printer on podcasts? Are they using influencer marketing? Are they doing PR? What is their messaging like? If you know where they are spending, you can either get an edge in those spaces or direct your attention elsewhere if that makes sense for your customer base. If most of your customers come to you through social media and your biggest competitor is spending their money on TV ads, you have the opportunity to do better simply by being elsewhere.
- Assess their reputation. Look at their online reviews, check their Google Business profile and any other sites relevant to your industry (yelp, amazon, etc.). Look for both what they are doing well and what people complain about. You can emulate or even improve on things your competitors are doing well. You can also fix problems your competitors aren’t fixing. Sometimes you will see the same complaints for all of your competitors; these are common customer pain points and they’re a great place to start differentiating your business.
- Do a deep dive on their websites. A company’s website can tell you so much about their business. Usually, it is the best place to find information about their products and services. If they sell products directly online, you can also experience the sales process from the customer’s point of view and find exact information on pricing. User experience makes a huge difference in whether customers will return, so you should check out the setup and implementation of any e-commerce solutions. How easy is it to buy things or do what you came to the site to do? Even if they don’t sell products or services directly on their site, you can get a feel for how they get leads, what their sales funnel looks like, what processes are in place for consultations, what kind of content they provide, and what tone and style they’ve chosen for their messaging. Look at what they are promoting and see if you can identify their sales strategy. You’ll also get a feel for their branding and whether it’s consistent across all their channels. See if your site can be designed better or if you can provide more engaging content or a better user experience. Identify what keywords they’re trying to rank for versus what keywords they’re actually ranking for. You can also try doing a competitive analysis on a site like Semrush to get more insight into their site’s performance.
- Subscribe to their mailing list. The easiest way to see how companies communicate directly with their customers and potential customers is to get on their mailing list. What is the tone of their emails? How customized or personalized are they? How segmented are their lists? As someone who hasn’t made a purchase, are you receiving the same emails as someone who has? How often are they sending mail? How much of it is sales related versus how much is educational content? Can you identify their marketing funnel and where you are in it based on the messages being sent? If you’ve been creating email marketing strategies of your own, you should be able to gauge your efforts against theirs.
- Spend some time on their social media. What kind of content are they producing? Is their content branded and consistent? Is it delivered on a schedule? Do they appear to have a content strategy or are they posting somewhat willy nilly? How is their engagement and follower count? Do they seem to be growing? Are there areas where you can beat them at the social media game or stand out from all your competitors?
- Take your research out into the real world. Attend networking groups, conferences, and industry events. Visit booths, watch presentations, and talk to your competition. Look at their marketing materials, including their signage, brochures, promotional giveaways, and even their business cards. See how they present themselves, how people talk to them and about them, and how they close deals in real life. What’s working for them? Make sure you’re learning more about what to do and not to do.
After you research your competition, do a SWOT analysis (define Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) on your business, comparing yourself to the competition. This should help you develop a clearer strategy for becoming the best choice for your customers.
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