Competitor analysis does more than reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the brands in your space. In fact, by taking a deeper look at the competition, you can advance your own marketing, which saves you time and effort.
In this post, we’re talking about what to look for from the competition to boost your marketing productivity.
TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:
[00:56] Introduction
[02:03] Choose Your Competition Wisely
[03:16] 1) Marketing Tactics
[05:28] 2) Marketing Frequency
[07:31] 3) Marketing Topics
[08:34] 4) Audience Engagement
[09:31] 5) Market Positioning
[10:47] What to Do Once You’ve Performed Competitor Analysis
[12:06] Bloopers
[Meghan] You’re probably familiar with the term “competitor analysis.” Often you hear this term in reference to analyzing the competition’s strengths and weaknesses. But this activity is so much more than that.
By paying close attention to your competitors, you can speed up your own marketing. And, I find that to be fairly awesome!
[Theresa] It’s like that saying about standing on the shoulders of giants. There’s a lot to learn from those who have gone before you and those who have more established brands.
[Meghan] Exactly. Competitor analysis advances your own marketing by reducing some trial and error. And, it fast tracks your efforts since you’re using the competition’s examples and experience to move you farther ahead faster.
[Theresa] So, what can you learn from your competitors when it comes to marketing? What things should you be looking at to increase your marketing productivity? That’s what we’re talking about in this episode.
And, by the way, this information is useful whether you’re a new business or if you’ve been around for a while.
Choose Your Competition Wisely
[Meghan] Before we jump into how to use competitor analysis for your marketing, let’s talk about identifying your competition.
You don’t want to make decisions based on the wrong data, you know? So the tip here is to choose the competition wisely.
When you’re looking at competitors to help your own marketing, choose the ones that sell similar offers AND that have a similar audience to you. That’s the winning combination.
If you don’t align those two, then you could collect information that doesn’t quite apply to your business.
[Theresa] That’s right. Here’s an example. Some of the content topics that we cover in the podcast are also covered by Hubspot. If you don’t know, Hubspot is a marketing, sales, and customer service software focused on growing companies.
So while we do compete with Hubspot’s content a little, we don’t sell software and we aren’t trying to attract companies looking for software that supports a business.
We really overlap in content topics only. So, gathering a lot of data from what Hubspot does in a marketing sense could point us in the wrong direction.
Discover 5 things that you can learn from the competition to fast track your own marketing.Click To TweetCompetitor Analysis that Moves Your Marketing Forward: Pay Attention to These Five Things
[Meghan] Okay, so once you’ve got a few competitors identified, now it’s time to check out their marketing. Let’s talk about some of the areas where competitor analysis can help you with your marketing.
[Theresa] And, be sure to get out a pen and paper to write your findings down as you go. Trust me, you won’t remember after the fact.
1) Marketing Tactics
[Meghan] You definitely want to capture this research somewhere!
The first thing to pay attention to is tactics. Which marketing tactics is your competition using? What tactics aren’t they using? You’re looking at tactics such as:
- Advertising
- Social media
- Content like blogs, videos, podcasts, eBooks, etc.
- SEO
- Freebies and lead magnets
- Sales funnels
- Discounts and coupons
And that’s a short list. The point is that by paying attention to what marketing tactics the competition uses on a regular basis, you gain insight into what is working since most businesses will keep doing the things that are giving them good results.
For example, you can go to a competitor’s Facebook page and look up their ads to see if they’re using them consistently. Or, you can go to their website to see if they publish a blog post consistently.
[Theresa] On the flip side, businesses will stop using tactics that don’t work.
For instance, if a competitor used to be on Twitter but hasn’t tweeted in six months, then you can assume that there was a reason they stopped. And that reason is often that the tactic wasn’t delivering the results they wanted.
Make a note of anything and everything you notice about what the competition is doing or not doing with their marketing tactics. Why?
Because their experience can answer the questions you have about whether or not to use certain marketing tactics in your business. And that can save you time, money, and effort.
2) Marketing Frequency
[Meghan] Next up is paying attention to the frequency of the competition’s marketing.
Get on their email list and follow them on social media. You want to know what they’re doing. It feels a little like snooping, but you’ve got to know. The competitors are talking to your potential customers, and you want to see what that looks like.
- Are they publishing content weekly?
- Do they run ads quarterly or sporadically?
- How often are they posting on social media and emailing their lists?
- When do their emails come out?
- Do they have a YouTube channel and how often do they launch new videos?
- When do they run campaigns? (holidays, monthly)
You’re looking for the frequency of their marketing tactics.
[Theresa] So, what does this data tell you? It helps you figure out what’s working for businesses in your space. And, it helps you decide about your marketing timing and frequency.
Just to give you one example, frequency could be an area where you can differentiate your brand. You could discover that your competitor has a super popular YouTube channel, and they publish a video once a week. So, that tells you that:
- your audience really responds to videos on YouTube; and,
- you could possibly stand out by publishing two videos a week.
[Meghan] Think about this for a minute. Their audience is your audience. And, the frequency of your competitors’ marketing indicates how often they attempt to get in front of YOUR prospects. So, you’ve got to consider that and guide your marketing accordingly.
[Theresa] From a productivity perspective, you’ve got to carefully consider frequency because it often directly affects your workload.
So, a little competitor analysis in this area could prevent you from overdoing it and wasting time in places that won’t be effective.
You could also find out that you don’t have enough bandwidth to compete in certain areas of marketing, and that information also keeps you from wasting time and effort.
3) Marketing Topics
[Meghan] Another thing to pay attention to is the competition’s topic. What are they known for? You’re looking for the subject they spend time talking about and what your audience already considers them the expert in.
Why? Because if a brand is already known to dominate a specific area of expertise, you could face an uphill battle trying to compete in that area. And if they have an entire marketing department or a big team, that could be a losing battle.
TIP: Choose a different area of expertise, subject matter, or angle than your competitors to focus on. This will help your brand stand out.
[Theresa] Also, competitive analysis reveals what topics are of interest to prospects. You could then choose a broader or a more specific topic to focus your marketing efforts on. Determining the competition’s topics helps you set your sight on alternative but related topics.
That’s what I did. I mean, productivity as a topic is super broad. Not only that, but it’s also got a ton of competition with some fairly big brands. So, I got more niche within the productivity topic so that I could differentiate myself and attract a more specific audience.
4) Audience Engagement
[Meghan] A word to the wise! Before you use the competitor analysis to make any decisions on your marketing tactics, frequency, and topics, be sure to analyze your competition’s audience engagement on those things.
Audience “engagement’ refers to how people respond to the marketing that your competitors are using. Take a look at:
- Comments (blog or social media)
- Views (blog posts, videos)
- Shares (social media posts or blog posts)
- Reactions (what specifically people are saying or clicking)
[Theresa] Engagement helps you gain audience insight. You’ll get a feel for your prospects’ preferences and the popularity of certain marketing tactics and topics.
Obviously, you don’t want to invest a lot of time and energy into marketing that is overly risky.
Competitor analysis can reduce some risk as well as time spent on trial and error. And that helps with productivity.
I’m not saying not to take risks. You will need to take some risks! Risk is a part of marketing and of business. However, doing some research on engagement can reduce your trial and error with marketing, and that’s a huge productivity win for you.
5) Market Positioning
[Meghan] There’s also a lot of insight that can be gained by looking at your competition’s positioning and recurring themes throughout their marketing.
Often the competition’s marketing will emphasize specific customer pain points or struggles. For instance, your competitor’s ads, website, blog, and branding tell you more about your avatar’s challenges and preferences.
That’s worth a lot! Because understanding your avatar’s viewpoints and perspectives improves your marketing. It helps you position your own marketing. If you had to start from scratch to figure that out, you’d use up a lot of time.
[Theresa] By the way, this is another opportunity to figure out how your products or services differ from other brands.
If you have no clue as to your mission or value proposition, now’s your chance to analyze what the competition is saying about themselves. This can help you to figure out what makes you unique and why anyone should choose you over the competition.
And side note: coming up with this stuff is really hard! But it’s important since it can drastically improve your marketing. So, let competitor analysis inspire you and assist you in defining more about your marketing AND your business.
What to Do Once You’ve Performed Competitor Analysis
[Meghan] Alright, I feel like we could go on, but that’s already a ton of info!
So, after you’ve taken the time for competitor analysis, be sure not to stop there. Use the insight and knowledge to formulate your own strategy and guide your own marketing decisions and direction.
[Theresa] Definitely take the next step! Don’t just stick all of that intel inside of a drawer and forget about it. Analyze the information and put it to good use.
You know, competitor analysis is sort of like cutting in line. You’ll make marketing progress faster since you’re taking advantage of what others in your niche have already done. This is especially true if you’re starting from scratch with your marketing.
[Meghan] I do find it really useful. And my clients always love the competitor analysis part of the content strategy that I do since they learn so much.
What I love about competitor analysis is that it takes the unknown and helps you form a more educated guess. And that will save you time with your marketing in many ways (especially content marketing).
Okay, that’s it for today!
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