Not knowing your competitors well can lead to a failure of marketing strategies and opportunities. So, let’s find out how to successfully perform an online competitor analysis.
Competitive analysis is an effective solution to determine the position of your business in the market. From the result of this analysis, it is possible to create an effective marketing strategy to reach potential customers.
Fortunately, performing a competitor analysis is not as difficult as many people think. In fact, you can easily learn about a company and its marketing strategies through social media or the Internet.
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What Is the Main Point in Performing a Competitor Analysis?
The primary purpose of competitor research is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Here are the main benefits of this:
- First, help you realize how to enhance the business strategy of your business.
- Second, help you know how your company can outperform your competitors in specific areas.
- Third, give you a competitive edge over others in your field.
In general, there are 2 main types of competitors:
- Direct competitors: Direct competitors are companies that offer the same products and services as you in a similar distribution model. In addition, they are aimed at the same target market and customer base as you.
- Indirect competitors: Indirect competitors are companies that offer the same products and services as you. However, their end goals are different from yours.
5 Essential Steps to Perform an Online Competitor Analysis
To get all the information you need about your competition, all you need to do is stick to these five steps:
1. Identify Your Competitors
When performing Amazon competitor analysis, It is essential to find the answer to “Who are your competitors?”
Start by making a list of all the companies that offer products or services similar to you or target similar markets. If you are inexperienced in competitor analysis, it is best to narrow your list down to about five competitors.
Also, it is a good idea to learn about the marketing strategies of companies that are not your direct competitors. Even though they do not directly compete with you, you can still steal some ideas from their tactics.
2. Use Tools to Analyze Competitor Strategies
When the Internet was not popular, it was complicated to learn more about a business. At the present age, to get information about your biggest competitors, all you need to do is make a few keystrokes.
Specifically, you can visit their website to learn more about their products, services, and values. Many companies even allow you to download annual reports or press releases. Also, it is a good idea to visit their social networking sites to research how they communicate with their followers.
In addition, it is possible to use tools, such as SEMrush and SpyFu, to analyze competitors’ websites. That way, you can see their most valuable pages, the type of content they create, and which keywords they rank for.
In short, the better you know your competitors, the better prepared you will be to compete with them.
3. Compare Your Competitors With Each Other
In addition to comparing each competitor to your business, you should also compare competitors to each other. While these companies share the same goal of winning over your customers, they don’t necessarily operate in the same way. After gathering information about these companies, it is good to find out how they do business and deal with their threats.
The best solution for comparing competitors is a side-by-side comparison. Specifically, you need to compare them on specific criteria, such as:
- Their products & services
- Business Directory
- Location
- Target
- Distribution channel
- Price
- And more
4. Perform a SWOT Analysis
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As mentioned above, competitor analysis allows you to recognize strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats to your business. That’s also the information you need to perform a SWOT analysis.
Use the information of your company and your competitors to analyze the following aspects:
- Strengths: What does your company offer that your competitors don’t? What is your company doing well? What is unique about the company?
- Weaknesses: What does your company need to improve on? In what areas do your competitors outperform your company?
- Opportunities: Are there emerging trends that your company can capitalize on? What changes in competitors could benefit your company?
- Threats: What emerging trends could be troubling your company? How to solve that problem?
In short, performing a SWOT analysis allows you to identify areas that you need to improve and areas that you can leverage.
Read Also: Some decent opportunities to earn money online
5. Identify the Unique Position for Your Business
Your business and your competitors will certainly have similarities. However, your business needs to be different enough from the rest to have a unique market position.
Thanks to competitive analysis, you can get an idea of what your competitors are offering. Thanks to that, it is effortless to find a unique position for your business.
The results obtained after the SWOT analysis make it possible to determine what other companies do or cannot do. This could be a larger range of products or a unique service. Whatever it is, consider offering something that customers can’t find elsewhere.
Conclusion
No marketing strategy can work if you do not understand your competitors well. So, after analyzing your competitors, it is possible to build a plan to make your business stand out from the information you get.
Thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, it’s become a lot easier to research your competitors. However, it may still be difficult for you if you are new to competitive analysis. Do not worry! You can always visit www.olifantdigital.com to get help from a trusted strategist.
