Research and analysis are integral parts of marketing. You must dig deeper into every strategy you implement and see what works best. But did you know that you could also learn not only from focusing on your own content? Taking a peek at what your competitors do could also provide you with insights that could help your business.
Competitive analysis is a way to assess your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses by looking into what they offer and how they promote their products and services on social media and their websites. When you dig deeper into what they do, you’ll be able also to spot their weaknesses and help you avoid doing the same with your brand.
How to conduct a competitive analysis? Focus on four things: their target market, their business profile, their products and services, as well as their social media pages.
Target Market
Just like how you determine your target market, you can assess your competitors’ target reach by determining the following:
- Age and Occupation. What are the age demographics of people who engage in their brand? Are most of them students or working young adults? What industries do they commonly belong to? Knowing this will allow you to determine the approach your competitors are using when creating their content.
- Strengths and Weaknesses. Determining both the pain and pleasure points of their target market will let you know how you’ll be able to help your target market. Since they are direct competitors, it will give you an edge on what to offer and what strategies to set aside when reaching out to your potential customers.
Business Profile
It is also worth knowing about your competitor’s business profile. You may have your own mission, vision, and core values, but looking into theirs would allow you to discover what’s unique about your business.
Take time to know about the people working around their brand. Do they belong to a community that will increase their brand awareness? Are they connected with well-known influencers? How are they projecting their brand on social media? Ask these things and thoroughly research them.
Products and Services
Aren’t you noticing that when a brand launches a new product, its competitors also release a new one after a day or two? So when a fast food chain, for example, offers its new spicy chicken sandwich, a brand in the same industry also offers a similar product. That gives their potential consumer an option to choose between the two.
You don’t need to copy their entire menu or product listings. You just need to know the benefits of each product and how it will impact your sales. If you aren’t sure about pricing, checking on them will also give you an idea of the proper retail price you can offer your target market. You can also learn what promotional deals work best for them.
Social Media Pages
What are the brand personalities of your competitors? How do they create their ad copies and social media content? If your having a hard time creating captions, taking a peek at your competitors’ social media pages will help you know what to write about. Again, you shouldn’t copy their entire content; just collect a few ideas, create something new from it, and match it with your brand’s personality.
After conducting a competitive analysis, outline the insights you learned from it. Then, you can start comparing each of your competitors and discover what makes you different from them. Your goal is not to be like them but to know your unique selling point. This will help you improve your marketing strategy and product offerings, eventually increasing your brand awareness and generating more sales for your business.
You may also like: Competitive Positioning: An Approach to Get Advantage over Your Competitors
Image source: Pexels.com
