Competitor Analysis – How to do it?

In my last post I had discussed – why it helps to do an online competitor analysis of your competitors. In this post – I share with you some techniques you can use to get a competitor analysis done -

1. Competitor Website

Your competitor’s website is the best place to start your analysis, especially if you are a B2B company, there is a lot of information you can get about how to showcase your product and how to differentiate it from other players in the market.

Things you should take note of on the competitor website -

- The kind of content and the different formats used ( Videos, podcasts, whitepapers, case studies etc.)

- Any social media networks they are part of

- Their Newsroom – Check out the kind of media coverages they have received and the different topics for which they issued a press release.

All this will give you a fair idea on how your competitor is trying to position themselves in the market. The media people who cover your space and the kind of story and news angles that interest them.

2. Social Media profiles

Check out the social media company profiles of your competitors – on twitter, facebook, linkedin etc. What you should look out for -

- The  kind of content they post on their profiles – This will tell you how they engage their followers.

- Who do they follow and who follows them – These might be the same set of people who might be relevant to your business too – so you have a ready list of people to follow and engage with – from the start.

3. Corporate blogs

If you plan to have a corporate blog of your own, studying the blogs by your competitors can help you with the following information -

- What kind of topics and categories do they cover – this is important because it will help you ensure that your blog follows a different set of categories of similar categories with a different approach

- How have they positioned their blog? – This is important as you need to ensure your positioning is different, only then can you expect your own set of regular readers.

- Which are the blogs they have link backs to and which blogs link to them – You can try approaching the same set of bloggers to start with for blog roll exchange.

- Any sites they have syndicated their blog content with – you can also explore these syndication sites as they might be looking for similar content.

4. Backlink analysis

Banklink analysis of your competitors site will give you a basic idea of where they are getting their links from. For this you can use sites like – Yahoo Site Explorer or Open Site Explorer. They show-up upto 1000 backlinks for free and even more if you use their paid version. Once you have your competitors backlink data – this is what you should look for -

- Directories they are listed in – these are places you should also list your company website

- Backlink  analysis often throws up sites where your competitor might be running his ads – the links give you information on some of these popular sites(remember they did some research – gain from their knowledge) and then you can research further if these sites are useful to your ad campaigns as well

- Any other media or blogger coverages which was not mentioned on the website (no one puts up all their coverages on the website) – You can see your media and blogger list falling in place

- If your competitors issued a press release – check the different news wire services they used and the kind of impressions they got. While this is not conclusive evidence – still it can give you a fair idea on which news wire service gives better results, this is important and can save you a lot of money.

5. Google search and Alerts

Yes, in the end don’t forget to run a google search on your competitors. Things you can look out for

- Links other than their website which pop-up on the first few pages of google. This is important because these are the pages which google sees as more important – probably in your space – getting on them should be part of your marketing action plan.

- Any other information and important insightful link which might have been missed in the above processes

- Also, you can set google alerts to know, when someone is talking about your competitor and if there is an opportunity to pitch in

Internet is hardly a secret keeper and it takes little effort to dig out all the dirt on anyone. Nobody expects it, but everyone does it! Also, before you start – don’t put anything there you don’t want others to read, once out the best you can do is watch your back….what you do unto others is what others will do to you!!

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Learning from your competitor – your first step towards marketing success

Getting a peek into your competitor’s online activities helps!

Marketing your business and its offerings to your target customers is critical to its success. Creating awareness about your business offerings is not an option but an absolute necessity for your survival as an entrepreneur.

You might already be aware of this truth, but where do you start? Today there are a thousand options and channels to promote and market a product, advertising, public relations, trade shows, SEO, SEM, Social Media – the list is getting denser everyday and  so is the confusion.

A quick search on the net will throw-up a lot of unsolicited advice from various experts and bloggers, including me – but how do you know, what will work best for your kind of business?

Bingo!! the answer is simple – see what your competitors are doing. Agree or not – today online marketing is an aspect companies can rarely ignore, in fact there are companies who market themselves only on the Internet channels. And in the realm of the internet there are no hidden secrets..

In the offline world keeping a tab on your competitors and their activities can cost you a bomb, you might have to hire an agency to monitor your competitor activities to know on how they are promoting their business. Online this can actually be done for free, with the help of some tactics and tools. Thanks to the search engines like Google, Yahoo and others – our footprints online are all securely stored in their huge databases and its legal to access them

In a two part blog series I will cover two aspects of doing competitor analysis, answering two very important questions – Part I -Why do it? and Part II- How to do it?

Part I -Competitor analysis – Why do it ?

Competitor analysis can help you and your short – staffed marketing team in many ways.

1. Clears the confusion

If you think your competitor is doing better than you, when it comes to creating awareness and brand recall, then this is the best way to check out the channels they are using, the influencers they are engaging with, the directories they are promoting themselves on and more.

You and your competitors have similar offerings and the customer profiles you want to reach out to, is also quite similar – in such case, a competitor analysis can give you a head start on the areas you need to cover to reach your potential customer base. Channels you can use, websites you can use for advertising your product, media you can use to pitch your product story to, social media channels used by your target segment and ways to engage them.

This is the best way to get information on tried and tested methods that work for your industry. You will have all the info you want, without actually digging the dirt yourself.

2. Gives you Direction

How did your competitor Launch their product, what story angles did they pitch to the media, what kind of messaging did they use for their ads, all is great information to have, especially if you and your team are new to this space.

Hiring an agency or a marketing professional does not always solve the problem – to give instructions and get the best out of your vendors – you yourself need to know what you want for your business.

Going through your competitor’s body of marketing work – will give you a lot of idea on how you want to position your offerings in the market, which are the product features you will highlight to establish your supremacy. Most importantly, it will tell you how to showcase yourself differently from those already existing in your market.

3. Provides you with a Benchmark

From day one – you will know what you are up against, where do your competitors stand and the brand recall they enjoy. This will help you in setting your own goals, it could be anything acquiring x number of customers in next 12 months or increasing the number of coverages by x numbers for your company in the next 6 months or acquiring a higher ranking for a critical keyword on google in next 3 months, whatever be your goal or set of goals – competitor analysis can provide you with a benchmark for success – vis -a-vis your competitor.

But before you start analyzing your competitor’s body of work – remember competitor analysis should not be used to blindly ape what your competitor is doing. If you do that – you are bound to jeopardize the future of your business.

No two business’ are the same, the set of people driving them are not the same and the talent pool at each ones disposal is not the same – hence it is good to be realistic in your approach – competitor analysis should only be used as a guidance for your own marketing plan. It helps you do away with the ambiguity and provides you with a set of actionable items for your  plan – which should be customized as per the needs of your own business.

To know how to do competitor analysis and how to keep a constant tab on your competitor for more useful insights – watch out this space for my post next week – Part II – Competitor analysis – How to do it?