Leveraging Competitor Analysis for Better Marketing

Right now, understanding your competitors’ strategies is more important than it’s ever been. Today, we’re going to delve into the critical elements of understanding your market positioning and influence through a competitor analysis. We’re going to explore some vital concepts, and I’m going to offer a comprehensive insight into how we conduct a practical competitor analysis for your business or organisation.

Hi, my name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of digital marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning an intentional marketing strategy.

Today, we’re having a look and we’re going to assess your competitors’ marketing strategies and take a look at their share of market and their share of voice in particular. Now, these two things, the share of market, the share of voice in particular, are two critical measures in marketing. What they do is they’re going to help businesses really understand your actual position within your ideal market and the current market that you’re in as well.

So, firstly, let’s just peel right back firstly and have a look at the share of market first, because this refers to a company’s proportion of the total sales in a specific market over a certain period of time. So what this is going to do is this is going to indicate the level of demand for a company’s product or service in comparison to all of the competitors, and it’s going to directly reflect the company’s competitive position and popularity among consumers as well.

So compare this then to the share of voice, which is where marketing comes into play a lot, because the share of voice is a metric that is, let’s say, traditionally referred to as a brand’s percentage of the total advertising. And in digital marketing, how this kind of differs now is it’s kind of broadened out quite a bit, because it now encompasses all types of different things like brand mentions and engagements, even thinking like impressions across various channels, including your social media, your content marketing, your SEO, and so much more as well. So the share of voice essentially measures the visibility and impact of your brand’s marketing and advertising efforts in general.

And as a KPI, that KPI is really going to help your brand understand its prominence in the marketplace and also the prominence in consumers’ mindshare. So, as I say, today we’re going to talk around analysing this and actually doing a competitor analysis so you can actually start to see what your share of market or your share of voice actually is.

And when we’re working with a client, a competitor analysis really is such an essential portion of the research that we do with a client as part of their strategy. It encompasses literally a large amount of the strategy that we set with the client. And we do this because what it does is it helps us understand various factors in your business’s landscape. And I think even as business owners and as marketing teams, obviously it’s really important for you to also have that comprehensive understanding as well.

And from there, what it does is it allows an external team just like ours to really actually get a comprehensive overview of the tactics that are required for you to build out your overall strategy overall. So that’s why competitor analysis is so important and why it is such an integral part of the strategies that we put together for our clients. And then on top of that, we would always recommend that you should be always assessing your competitors.

It allows you to really pinpoint any market gaps. It allows you to do things like innovate by developing new products and services. It can help you identify things like emerging market trends and enhance marketing and sales efficiencies and effectiveness at the end of the day as well. And all these insights that we collect, they collectively pave the way for your brand success.

So incorporating this comprehensive competitor analysis into your marketing strategy, I see this as a real vital step towards actually understanding your market landscape. And it’s a vital step in it actually allowing you to improve your brand’s performance as well. So what I want to do here is I want to lay out some of the key factors that we suggest that you monitor, that we suggest that you should be analysing and look at, and what really you should be adding to your strategy from right now. And these are some of the things that we’ll look at with our clients.

The first thing with a competitor analysis is pretty obvious. It’s to identify the competitors in the first place. So, firstly, I would suggest you need to actually understand who are your direct and also who are your indirect competitors. So the difference between the two: direct competitors are competitors that offer a product or service that is really similar to yours. An indirect competitor, they may not offer the same product or service, however, they could actually work with the same type of customer or consumer as you. So, again, an indirect may not sell that exact service or product that you have, but they’re still talking to the same audience.

And that’s why it’s really important for us to keep an eye on these competitors, both direct and indirect as well. Because let’s say, for example, an indirect competitor could actually become a direct competitor down the line, and you need to be aware of this. Or market shifts could happen at any time, so you need to be on top of where your competitors are heading, otherwise you could miss the boat if that did happen. So that’s the first thing. Actually understanding who your competitors are, whether they’re direct competitors or indirect competitors, and start to list that out.

The next thing you want to do is actually examine all those competitors and have a look at the actual product and service lines that they actually have. You need to be able to gain a bit of an insight into the range of products and services that they provide as of right now. There’s simple ways to be able to do this as well, going along to even have a look at their websites, seeing if they have online catalogues if you’re in the e-commerce space, literally visiting their physical stores. Service-based businesses, like I say, it’s going to their website and having a look at things like their white papers and their downloads, and really having a look at the different parts of their strategy, which tells you what they’re actually selling.

And what I would suggest you need to be answering are questions like, how do they position themselves? And do they position themselves as, let’s say, budget-friendly? Or do they position themselves as a premium provider? Are they, I don’t know, primarily focusing on bulk sales? Or are they going for individual transactions in the e-commerce space, for example?

Also asking questions like, what percentage of the market do you think that they currently have? Do they have any traits or requirements that define their target consumers that you can see? Do they, I don’t know, apply varying pricing tactics for digital purchases compared to in-store sales? So are they actually doing different tactics for when you go in-store compared to what you see online? Also having a think about what sets that company apart from the rest of its competition, and also looking at the different methods of product or service distribution as well.

So those are all the things that, along with actually determining what they sell, is kind of examining that whole line about how they’re also selling it as well. And that also comes in nicely to the next thing I wanted to discuss, which is really sitting down and investigating your competitors’ sales strategies and also their outcomes as well.

Because I believe that you really do need to get a really good understanding about how your competitors are actually selling their products. What are their sales channels? And what are the results that they are likely to achieve by going through these sales channels as well? Obviously, this can be really tricky info to get, but it can also be really powerful.

And the questions that you’re needing to answer here is thinking things like, what are their sales processes? From what you can see about this business, how can you see that they sell their product right now? What channels are they using? What channels seem to be the best channels that are working for them? What advantages do they have as well? So, for example, do they have large stores or do they have multiple locations? Maybe they’ve got a really large team and they can use that as an advantage to their sales strategy currently.

Also thinking about, are they discounting their services often? Are they using price sales tactics to get new consumers and new customers across the line? Are they even using a sales team? You may be from a smaller business, a founder-led business, and you’re kind of running all the sales yourself. And you’re up against competitors who have got fully-fledged sales teams. So those are the things you need to work out and to determine.

And you can find all that info about a sales strategy from different sources by having a look at their websites again and trying to get a feel for the size of their team or the size of their business and their operation and their organisation. You can also find the information from your current customers or clients that have started with you and have come to you from your competition. It’s a great opportunity for you to ask them, why did you make the switch? Why have you started shopping with us? Why have you started using us for this product or service? And asking yourself those questions.

And you can also become a customer. You can become a customer of your competition and think about how you can experience their sales process firsthand. Obviously, it’s much easier to be able to achieve that as an alias on a website. So it’s an e-commerce store, or on a business that primarily take their enquiries and do lead magnets on their websites. It’s obviously much easier to do that as an alias there.

But actually becoming a customer of the competition, experiencing that sales process yourself, thinking about all those emails that you get after you sign up for a lead magnet and what happens after you become a customer. How do they make you feel good? How do they continue and introduce you to the brand? All those different things that are really important part of your sales process that could actually open up a lot of weaknesses in yourself or in them and also a lot of opportunities as well. And we’ll go to the SWOT analysis coming up shortly as well.

The next thing I’ll get you to have a think about is actually evaluating your competitors’ pricing and additional benefits on top of that. Now, we did mention this just a little bit just before, just talking about their sales strategies, whether they use discounting as one of the key ways of finding and selling to their customers and their clients right away.

So with the pricing and additional benefits, what you want to do is you want to study the competitors’ pricing structures and how they’re currently laid out. You want to see, is there a gap in the market? Maybe it’s a gap for more affordable options in your market, or maybe customers are actually looking for a much higher priced premium product, and that’s where the gap is at the moment. And so you want to be able to adjust and look at your pricing and be able to compare your pricing to remain competitive in the market for the product that you’re actually solving as well.

Obviously, there’s a lot that goes into pricing, so this is just a bit of an overview, and it kind of gives you a bit of an indication of how you can be looking into your competitors to help with your own pricing structure. But it’s a great chance for you to actually research and look into not only the pricing, but also the additional benefits that your competitors are actually providing to customers on top of the pricing to lure new customers and new clients.

And they may be offering things like warranties. Maybe they have no contracts if it’s a service-based business. Maybe they offer risk-free trials. And you want to look at those, and then you want to, if that fits with your brand, consider matching, or even better, beating those added benefits and those perks and those incentives for your chance to try and lure new customers in at the end of the day as well.

Also, this is the bit that I really get into and I really enjoy, is the part where you can actually start to scrutinise your competitors’ marketing techniques. So this is where you really want to think about how you can assess how your competitors are promoting their products or services. And the best way to do this is pretty obvious. You want to go to their website. You want to go and check out their website and see where they currently place their marketing efforts. Where are they currently investing their time and investing their money into their own marketing techniques, essentially.

These are the questions you need to be asking as well as, are they offering lead magnets? Are they investing time and building and developing lead magnets? Do they maybe have a really in-depth FAQ section, which would tell you that there’s a lot of customers come to them with a lot of questions about the product or service that you’re in. Maybe they use case studies or testimonials really prominently displayed across their website, which is going to tell you that being able to share those stories has worked well for them in the past.

You want to have a look at even what they’re advertising. Are they advertising just online? Are they advertising offline? Do they appear to be going to lots of networking events and doing lots of expos or trade shows or things like that as well? Really look at their advertising and what type of techniques they’re using there, both online and offline. Are they doing Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, or are they doing social media content, SEO, those type of things? Also, going on their website and thinking, do they use things like videos on their site as well?

Those are all the things you can see. Try and think about all the different marketing techniques that they’re potentially using and think about how you can either, again, find some weaknesses that they have throughout that and also some of the things that they’re doing really well. And if they’re investing a lot of time and a lot of money into those things, you get a pretty fair indication that it’s clearly going to be working for them. And once you actually see what you’re doing and you see how much effort is going into each route that the competitor has, then you’ll be able to ascertain whether that’s a piece, a technique maybe that you should be taking away for your own strategy as well.

So as a bit of an example, let’s just say that a competitor is running Facebook ads, and maybe it’s just one ad that they’re running or maybe they’re testing multiple versions. So if they’re just running one ad, it may just be something that they’re just trialling or they’re just playing with. But if they’re testing multiple versions of ads, this is going to show a significant investment both in time and in cost of actually running those ads, which is telling you that clearly they’re getting some great results from Facebook ads. Because they’re investing the time and the money into not only just chucking up one ad and giving it a go, but they’re testing multiple versions. So it is one of those techniques that you may want to look at a bit more seriously.

The other thing to think about is when you’re assessing, you really want to assess all these different marketing techniques, because not all of them are going to tell you that something is doing well. They may be trialling a few different ways of reaching their market. So we can’t take everything that we see as part of your competitor analysis as something that is working really well for that competitor.

So ways we can tell this is having a look at their website and thinking, okay, when was their last article published on the website? Let’s say you go to a website, they’ve got a blog, which is great, and they see that the last time they published was back in 2018. If the content’s not up to date and it’s not accurate, then clearly they’re not investing the time or the money into that. So clearly it’s a route that they’ve trialled in the past, but it’s not working for them. It didn’t stick, so they’re not investing in it anymore. So that might be something that, again, could be a great opportunity for you, or it could be a risk, because it could be something that’s not connecting with your audience, your shared audience in your market at the moment.

Having a think, checking over the website, seeing are there any spelling mistakes, grammatical errors. This could tell you that there is insufficient thought being put into some of those pieces of content, which, again, is a surefire way for us to see that something’s not actually working. Thinking about whether our competitors are investing in custom images and custom videos to really convey their messaging, or are they opting for more quick ones using stock images? Assess where they’re putting their investments into their content.

And if you review the type of content your competitors produce and their content themes and the frequency of their publishing across their website and stuff like that, you’re going to start to get a bit of an understanding of the content that’s clearly starting to work well for them in the areas where you can also take the lead. And I think that’s the big thing here, is we want to assess where your competitors are and think about how can we do this 10 times better at the end of the day.

And that’s where the next stage comes in, because I’ll get you to actually think about how you can measure that engagement on your competitors’ content. So this is where you’d really want to sit down and determine how well your competitors’ content actually resonates with the audience. And we do this by analysing metrics like their likes and their shares and their comments and their time spent on the website and things like that. So there’s heaps of different tools and data that we can have a look at.

There’s great tools like BuzzSumo, can be really good. Similarweb can be a little bit punchy in price, but you can get some great data out of it. We use SEMrush. It can be a great tool for us to work out how well they’re doing on organic, whether they’re ranking on organic search terms, whether they’ve clearly got an SEO strategy that they’re working towards, and you’ll be able to have a look at things like how much traffic they’re getting from an SEO strategy. And you’re really going to be able to measure some of that engagement.

But otherwise, without those tools, again, you can literally go to social media pages. And like I say, look at the likes and the shares and the comments. You’ll start to see what their audience resonates with most. There may be specific content that is doing better than others. And if so, what is it? Jot it down. We actually have spreadsheets. We put it down. Why do you think it resonated with that audience? And also then taking it that one step further and thinking, what can you do better on top of that as well? So really measuring the engagement of your competitors’ content is another surefire way of being able to see exactly what’s potentially working well for them.

And then while you’re on social media, while you’re on the topics of social media, we also need to be having a look at their social media strategy, and in particular, looking at the preferred platforms that they’re looking at. What we’ve just been discussing moves nicely into the study of your competitors’ presence on these different social media platforms. Here, I would be looking with an eye on the strategy that they’re using and the platforms that they’re focusing on.

What are the platforms? Are they using Facebook or LinkedIn? Are they using TikTok or Instagram? How are they connecting with their audience? Thinking about what is the content that they post? Is it well-liked content? Are people engaging with that content? Are they also sharing original content that they’re producing? Or are they simply resharing other articles? Are they focusing on community-building content? Or are they just going for sales-focused content? Just going for the stuff of: buy now, grab this discount, come in the store and grab this.

Where are they focusing their content? What’s resonating best with their audience? Really focusing down on that content and seeing what’s working and being able to take some of those ideas back to your own strategy as well. Thinking as well, do they interact with their commenters? Are they really trying to build that community? Or are they literally what I’d call a “post and a ghost”? They’re posting and then kind of disappearing and not really engaging with their audience after that initial post goes out.

So really sitting down, collecting an overview of that data is going to give you a really good insight into the platforms that are resonating best for them as a business, along with what’s actually resonating with them as an audience as well.

And the final thing I wanted to touch on was really just to conduct that SWOT analysis of your competitors. It’s pretty obvious. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. And using an analysis like this on your competitors is going to allow you to gain a real holistic understanding of their strategic position. With a SWOT, when you’re talking about your competitors, I’d always start by asking some of these key questions like, what are they doing well? What are they doing not so well? Looking at all the data that we’ve looked at so far. What’s their weakest area? What’s the area that they currently have got an advantage over you? What could they do better? And then what could you be doing better?

What areas do you see them as a threat right now? Looking at everything that we’ve discussed so far. Where are they the biggest threat to you right now? And how can you overcome that threat? And also thinking, have you identified any new opportunities in your market that you haven’t yet considered? Because going through this whole step process, there’s bound to be so many opportunities or content ideas or things that you can say, actually, this seems to be resonating so well with the audience. It’s a similar audience to what we have. So we need to be thinking about how we can also be sharing similar content and trying to build up a community of people who are also engaging with content like that as well.

So hopefully, the above is going to provide you with a really solid start to researching your competitors. I know we’ve gone through a lot. Now, I have detailed all of what we’ve spoken about on our website. It’s on our blog, donebynine.com/blog. And you’ll be able to get the full transcript of today’s podcast. But also, it’ll kind of detail everything that we’ve spoken about as a bit of a checklist of things that you should be looking at in terms of your competitor analysis at the end of the day.

Because now, more than ever, due to the current economic uncertainty, understanding your share in the market and your share of voice can actually provide insights into the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, despite if you’ve got a few tightened budgets there as well. Because a well-crafted and clear strategy is going to help you identify where to actually allocate potentially limited resources to make sure you still have maximum impact and maintain or even improve your brand visibility, even when your overall spending may be reduced slightly.

So it’s about keeping on track and on brand and always moving that 1% closer to a larger share in your overall market. And this is why having that marketing strategy include your competitor analysis is so critical. Because it can sometimes present some unique opportunities for you and your business and show a real understanding in the gaps in the market that competitors maybe can’t cater to due to their financial limitations. And that’s going to allow you and your business to actually fill that void and make sure that you’re staying ahead.

And because your competitor analysis strategy could also actually uncover and highlight some cost-efficient marketing techniques that competitors are utilising effectively right now, which your business can then actually adopt to make sure that you’re maintaining visibility without, again, straining that budget. Or even better, you can 10x your competitors’ content and their strategy for a more significant percentage in market voice as well.

Because a well-crafted competitor analysis, when we are facing budget constraints, will equip businesses just like yours with the insights that are necessary for you to be able to make strategic decisions. And it’s going to help you optimise your resources more efficiently, it’s going to help you lessen risks, and also really just allow you to seize unique opportunities for sustainability and growth overall.

Look, and if you do need assistance building your competitor analysis, it’s actually a core part of what we do. It’s kind of what I said at the start of this podcast, it’s a big part of our marketing strategies. Before we work with a client, we’re always working with them to ensure that we generally understand who their business is, what their business does, and their place in the market. And we analyse the tactics that they need to adopt to be able to stay ahead of their competitors as well.

You can find all the details about our marketing process on our website, it’s donebynine.com. Or feel free, send me an email if you’re interested to learn more about a competitor analysis. My email is jordan@donebynine.com. We’ll see if we’re even the right fit to be working with each other as well.

And as always, thank you so much for following and listening to this podcast or reading our blog each week. And I do hope, again, that you’ve been able to take away some valuable information that’s going to help you build a sustainable marketing strategy in the long term. We’ll see you again next Thursday on the Marketing Mindset podcast.