What is the competitor analysis?

Competitor Analysis

What are your competitors doing? If you don't know the answer to this question, you may be missing out on a huge marketing strategy.

If you're not already conducting competition analysis, here's some good news: it's simple to get started. You can learn almost everything about a business and its marketing strategy thanks to the Internet and social media. You may use this competitors' analysis to find what they are doing correctly that you may be doing incorrectly - and vice versa.

What is the competitor analysis?

Using tools for competitor analysis is one of the most effective ways for determining your market position. Once you understand your position, you can develop a marketing strategy to help you profit from it and attract new consumers and audiences.

What actions should I take to do an effective online competitors analysis?

There are marketing strategy types and methods you should use to get all of the relevant information on your competitors.

Identify your competitors

What are your competitors' names? You might recognize one or two of them off the top of your head. However, there are definitely more organizations that do not appear to be threats right now but may take a swipe at your target consumers with a few tweaks.

Make a list of all the businesses that offer comparable products and services, compete in your area, or target similar markets. If this is your first time conducting a competition study, limit the list down to the top 4-5 competitors that pose a significant danger to your business.

As you go, you may want to analyze the marketing strategies of businesses that aren't direct competitors, such as similar businesses across the nation. Although your consumer base may not be similar, their strategies may inspire you.

Use internet tools for competitor analysis to look into their strategies.

You had to go to tremendous lengths before the Internet to learn more about a business. Details weren't generally more guarded, but annual reports, leadership biographies, and other records had to be requested by phone. Then you'd have to wait for those products to arrive in the mail or go to the company's headquarters and facilities.

You may now acquire this information about your top competitors with just a few keystrokes.

Check their websites for further information on their products or services, leadership, and values. Annual reports and news announcements are available for download. Visit their social media accounts to see what they post with their followers and how they engage with them.

In addition to this publicly available information, you may evaluate their websites using tools for competitors’ analysis such as SEMrush. Examine their most valuable pages, the keywords they rank for, and the kind of content they provide.

The more you understand about your primary competitors, the better equipped your company will be to deal with the issues that their operations bring.

Compare them with one another

You should compare each competitor to your business, but you should also compare them to one another. After all, just because these companies compete for your business does not mean they operate in the same ways. Once you've received information about these companies, create extensive profiles that show how they operate and how much of a threat they could be.

A side-by-side comparison is the simplest technique to accomplish this. Include the products and services they provide, business categories, locations, target markets, distribution channels, unique capabilities, and anything else that separates one company from the others. Leave one space blank for a company profile. This will help you with the following step.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

Customers are continually on the search for new venues to get what they need. Even if they are loyal to your company, they are still evaluating it in the context of other companies.

Online competitors' analysis helps you to see your business through the eyes of your consumers, exposing its strengths and weaknesses as well as significant opportunities and threats to its survival. This is the information you'll need to do your SWOT analysis.

Establish the following using the characteristics of your organisation and its competitors:

• Strengths: What does your business improve at? What do you provide that your competitors do not?
• Weaknesses: Are there any areas where your competitors outperform you?
• Opportunities: Are there any developing trends or developments in your competitors that might help your organization in the long run?
• Threats: Which trends or competitor activity have the potential to disrupt your business?

This research will highlight areas for improvement as well as opportunities to utilise in future marketing strategy and branding operations.

Identify your distinct position

Regardless of the obvious similarities between you and your competitors, there should be enough differences between each business that each has a distinct market position. What will be yours?

You now have a better understanding of what your competitors provide as a result of the competitive study. It's time to evaluate your position in regard to them.

Establish what you do that other organisations don't, or what they don't do as well, considering your profiles and SWOT analysis via your competitors’ analysis. This could be a one-of-a-kind product or a larger classification of products. Perhaps it is a one-of-a-kind service, such as customization or free technical support.

Perhaps your company strategy is more in tune with your client's social or environmental values, or just cheaper costs. Whatever it is, make sure it is an honest appraisal based on your competitors' analysis and research.

What Competitor analysis tools are available online?

Optimization for search engines (SEO)

SEO is the process of improving your website's ranking in search results in order to bring more organic visitors to your page. Many businesses optimise their pages to appear towards the top of search engine rankings.

To rank highly, you must first understand who else is ranking and what they're doing to get there. You may monitor how your competitors perform in search results using these tools for competitor analysis:

Ahref

You could use Ahref's Site Explorer to analyze organic search traffic to a competitor's website and assess their backlink profile. You'll learn all you need to know about your competition's SEO strategy. When you utilise Ahrefs, you will receive:

Keyword research

Examine the keywords that your competitors use and rank for in search results. This research provides insight into which pages provide the most traffic to certain websites.

It's a brilliant tool for assisting you in identifying potential keyword prospects for your organization.

Backlink analysis

Backlinks are crucial for boosting your site's rating in search results. You may use Ahref's backlink checker to see which websites connect to your competitors and to assess the quality of their link profiles. This tool can help you analyse the strength of your competitors' link profiles and discover new opportunities to gain links.

Paid traffic analysis

This tool may be used to assess sponsored search advertising alongside organic traffic.

You can check if your competitors utilise sponsored search and where their purchased traffic comes from, such as Google Advertisements or Facebook ads.

With Ahrefs Site Explorer, you can better understand your competitors' organic presence and utilise that knowledge to design a more effective SEO strategy for your business. Ahrefs is an excellent online competitor analysis tool for businesses interested in learning about their competitors' search engine performance.

Mozbar 

Mozbar is a free competitor analysis tool for evaluating your performance to the competition if you want to see how your business compares to the competitors in search results. This tool provides stats on a page as it is being viewed. This extension may be added to your browser to display scores while you search and view pages.

MozBar has a feature called Domain Authority (DA) score, which runs from 0 to 100. Essentially, they determine a company's DA score based on Google-relevant characteristics such as the number of links and connecting root domains. While a DA score does not inherently define where someone will rank in search results, it may help enterprises in predicting where they are likely to rank.

You may use MozBar to:

View the DA score of your competitors.

It's critical to know your competition's DA score so you can evaluate how you compare.

This tool shows you whether you have a higher or lower domain score than your competitors in search results. MozBar provides useful data that enables you to raise your DA score in order to outrank competitors.

Analyse your competitors' link profiles.

Links are essential for helping your site rank higher in search results.

You could use MozBar to discover how many people connect to a competitor's page. You may monitor who links to your competition and discover new link opportunities for your company.

Analyse significant page metrics

When you browse a competitor's page, you could compare analytics such as link metrics to observe how they compare to yours. It gives you valuable information about your competitors and shows you how you might outperform them.

MozBar provides an amazing chance for you to examine your competitors and discover techniques to outrank them in search results.

MozBar could be the answer to your SEO monitoring needs if you're seeking a basic, free online competitor analysis tool.

Online competition analysis tools: Content marketing

You must create quality content if you want to attract visitors to your company's page. Content marketing drives qualified leads to your business while also improving your SEO ranking. If your competitor develops material, you must monitor the sort of content they produce and how well it performs for them.

Consider the following two online tools for competitor analysis for your content marketing strategy:

Ontolo 

Ontolo is a data mining tool that allows you to analyze every part of your content. You may analyze page traffic statistics, track backlinks, and more. This programme has some SEO capabilities as well, although it's great for content.

Ontolo allows you to:

Obtain useful information

Ontolo searches the internet for information on your competitors.

This information allows you to understand more about your rivals and the kind of content they provide. You can check what they're publishing and when they're going to be published.

See who is interacting with competition content.

Ontolo allows you to observe how prospects interact with competition content. You'll know who is following your competitors and what content attracts and interests them.

Ontolo gathers and organizes your social profiles.

Quickly look through a list of prospects

If you've got a list of prospects from your competitors, you could upload it and search through it easily. It enables you to rapidly upload your prospect list from any source and search through it to locate the brightest prospects.

Ontolo is simply one tool for evaluating your competitors' content marketing strategies.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is another content marketing tool for competition analysis. This tool assists you in locating content on relevant topics.

When you use Buzzsumo, you'll find:

Content-related topics

Buzzsumo can help you identify ideas to write about. You might examine the themes covered by your competitors and discover fresh prospects for generating content.

See the shares

You can observe who is sharing the content of your competitors on social media.

It provides you with the option to learn how you could earn shares on your work.

Identify the best-performing topics and competitors.

You can discover who is performing well for a certain content topic if you have one in mind. This tool helps you learn who is competing for certain keywords and how you can outrank them.

Buzzsumo is a good option if you’re searching for a competitor analysis tool that delivers you with in-depth information about competitors that publish content like yours.

Tools for online competition analysis: Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective strategies for keeping prospects and encouraging them to interact with your company. Because people get emails from hundreds of firms, you must develop an email marketing approach that encourages leads to open and connect with your material.

You could use online tools for competitor analysis to determine how your email marketing campaign compares to the competitors. Here are two tools for monitoring your competitors' email campaigns.

Mailchart

Mailcharts is a competitive analysis tool that collects email addresses from your competitors. You could use their campaigns to get ideas for your own emails. It's one of the greatest tools for studying your competitors' email marketing and understanding what they're doing.

When you use Mailcharts, you will collect data on:

Subject lines

Analyse what your competitors are publishing to attract their readers.

It will inspire you to write subject lines that will attract your viewers.

Frequency

You may use the frequency statistics to compare how frequently you and your competitors send emails. It lets you know if you're on track to create an engaging email campaign, if you're sending too many emails, or if you need to send more.

Timing

Sending emails at the correct moment is essential for your success. Mailchart can provide you with details on when your competitors send emails, allowing you to identify whether there is a better time to send emails and engage your audience.

Mailcharts is a simple online competitor analysis tool that may help you develop a better email marketing strategy than your competitors.

Owletter

Owletter seems to be another competitor analysis tool that enables you to gather and analyse the emails of your competitors. This tool captures key emails and notifies your business when your competitors send significant emails. It's an excellent resource for learning about your rivals' email strategies.

When you use Owletter, you will be able to:

Owletter lets you observe what your competitors are up to with their email campaigns. You can monitor when they send emails, how regularly they send them, and how effective their campaign is.

Analyse your competitors' performance.

Owletter allows you to analyze your competitors' performance and discover how they drive outcomes over time. You may identify trends and chances for your company to send emails and outperform the competition.

Keep track of your competitors' emails.

You don't have to dig through your inbox to identify useful emails for reference.

Owletter allows you to record and keep emails on their server indefinitely. These communications are also available to your team at any moment.

Owletter is one of the alternative tools for competitor analysis that will watch your competitors' email marketing. This tool informs you about your competitors' email marketing strategy, allowing you to generate better emails and get better digital marketing achievements.

Tools for analyzing competitors online: social media

Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways for communicating with your target audience on a one-on-one basis.

Your competitors use social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn to engage with your audience and spark their interest in your business. If you want to observe what your competitors are doing to engage their social media followers, you could use the following social media analysis tools.

Keyhole

Keyhole is a social media competition analysis tool that allows businesses to view information about their competitors' social media components. You could compare your own performance to that of your competitors on social media networks.

You could use Keyhole to:

Learn about advanced hashtag analytics.

You can track hashtags used by your competitors and see how people use them. This tool allows you to observe if your audience uses your competitors' hashtags and in what context.

Discovering influential people.

If your competitor partners with influencers, you could track their performance.

You could observe how influencers connect with your competitors.

Keep track of brand remarks.

Do you want to discover what other people think about your competitors? You could use Keyhole to track what people say about your competitors and how they react to their brand. It helps you in understanding how consumers see competitors in comparison to your company.

Keyhole will help you in monitoring your competitors' activities on social media.

Social Mention social media

One of the greatest online competitor analysis tools for evaluating what people are saying about your competitors on social media is Social Mention. This tool allows you to search for keywords as well as topics connected to your competitors and observe the context in which consumers discuss that brand, their products, and other issues.

When you use Social Mention, you will see:

What people think about competitors

This tool will let you learn how your competitors' audience sees them. You could learn from your competitors' mistakes and see both positive and negative comments about them.

Metrics for top keywords

You could use Social Mention to search the platform for top keywords and obtain vital analytics on such keywords.

If your target audience uses specific keywords, you could use Social mentions to analyze how they are used on social media.

Valuable audience information

Social mentions help you in understanding your own and your competitors' audiences. You can find out what topics they discuss when they interact with postings and other information. It shows you how to reach out to your competitors' audiences and spark their interest in your company.

Social Mention is the solution if you want one of the best insightful tools for evaluating your competitors.

This tool will help you in understanding how people engage with your competition so that you can develop a better strategy and entice them to interact with your company.

How do you compare to your competitors' Analysis?

A marketing strategy cannot be developed in a vacuum. You must know what your competitors are doing through your competitors’ analysis in order to design a strategy that will set you apart. Although the Internet has made this data more accessible, it can still be challenging if you are new to competition analysis.

Brightery can help you get an in-depth look into what others in your business are doing and use that information to strengthen your own approach! Contact us today to talk with a strategist about how our Internet marketing team can help your business thrive by performing competitor competitors’ analysis.

If you're running multiple campaigns, you'll need a variety of online tools for competitor analysis to track each strategy. It can become massive and cause you to spend a significant amount of time watching various channels. While co-tools for competitor analysis can help your company understand its competitors, gathering all of the data and making sense of it can quickly become time-consuming and challenging.

What if you could monitor all of your tactics and channels without having to raise a finger?

You can take the effort off your plate while still getting the advantages of competition monitoring by teaming up with a digital marketing agency like Brightery.