Why Competitor Analysis is Key for Social Marketing
Knowing where your business stands in comparison to your competitors is an essential part of any business strategy. Competitor analysis is an important aid for marketers to use, and there are several tools out there that can be utilized to do this.
What is Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis is a process that companies use to benchmark their performance against others in their industry. This is incredibly important for businesses because it helps them identify where their strengths and weaknesses are, and which areas they will need to improve on to increase their competitive advantage. It is a great aid to identify trends, understand the given market in an industry, and set goals for companies in their future.
Pricing and positioning strategies are some of the important things for businesses to consider when conducting a competitor analysis, but there are several other factors to note that are just as important. The social media presence and website content of another brand are just as necessary to analyze because they help improve SEO, online visibility, and content strategy against competition. Especially with the current market of our world today, ensuring that data is collected in these specific online spaces is crucial in order to conduct a proper analysis.
Why it’s Key for Marketers
To best cater to your customer’s wants, and needs, and increase overall customer satisfaction, a competitive analysis is essential for marketers. Marketing is all about ensuring that your company’s offerings stand out against other brands. The only way to truly do this is to see where your competition benchmarks and find innovative ways to stand out. By leveraging insights gained from this kind of analysis, companies will be able to identify future goal points and achieve them as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Marketers can also utilize this process when they are looking to enter new markets. As companies conduct market research on their industry, they may see opportunities for growth or improvement after seeing where their competitors have failed/ been successful. Whether these be opportunities within the company or possibilities for new market entry, a competitor analysis can open doors for new innovations that companies may have never otherwise known about. Brands can also capitalize on these opportunities to differentiate themselves further. If they are able to see firsthand how they stand against competitors, then they might be able to find new ways to differentiate against them. For instance, it is important for companies like BigStub to conduct this process against competitors in their industry like StubHub so that they can differentiate themselves and find ways to leverage against this similar company.
How to Conduct a Competitor Analysis
There are so many tools and platforms available that can help companies conduct this kind of analysis. SproutSocial is one platform that offers a template that can guide businesses through this process.
When beginning to conduct an analysis, the first thing to consider is what the overall goal is. You want to ensure that you have a key focus and understanding of the space you are working in so that you can adequately determine who your key competitors are, and then work forward from there. After identifying those key competitors, you can compare their business model and insights to your company, and assess where you stand when positioned next to them.
Following your analysis, it can be really beneficial to put all the insights into one organized space. There are several frameworks available that can help you identify what you learned through your analysis, and where you plan on moving from this point forward. Porter’s 5 Forces Framework, PESTLE, and SWOT analyses are all frameworks that can clearly define where your brand goes after conducting a competitor analysis.
When marketers are able to properly utilize this analysis, they will see how beneficial having these insights can be for the future of their company. It is so important to know what the environment around you looks like when deciding where you will go with your next marketing campaign, and one of the best ways to do this is through a competitor analysis. It will be the key to your company’s success!
