How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy by Doing Competitor Analysis

Usually, when businesses are developing their digital marketing strategy for organic SEO they do their competitor analysis. But the truth is, after that they do not get back to it in the future. That is not the correct practice because in most cases, there is a constant update on the business rivals online. by doing regular analysis of the moves of your rival online you can adjust your marketing campaign in the middle and make it perform even in a better manner.

Here we are looking at the main points associated with competitor analysis, that will help you improve your strategy of digital marketing. You should revisit this analysis regularly when your campaign is still running for some time. Here we bring to you our recommendations for the tracking of every channel of digital marketing.

Let us first understand the concept of competitor analysis.

What is competitor analysis?

You can define competitor analysis as the process of analyzing and researching the business characteristics and marketing strategies of the businesses that are operating in a particular industry associated with your business. This process is usually carried out to identify the weaknesses and strengths of other players in the market and define the position of your company about them, estimate your potential, highlight gaps, and look out for opportunities in the industry for you.

Who should you analyze as competitors in the digital marketing strategy?

Competitor analysis usually includes analysis of your indirect and direct competitors. These are the businesses that provide similar or same business solutions to the similar or same category of audiences. Competitor analysis online should include these businesses, plus you should consider one more rival group i.e. your brand competitors. These are businesses that target the same users that you do. They might not be selling the same product or service to them, but they are targeting to gain their attention for sure. How to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy by Doing 

Competitor Analysis

Your competitors are generally directory websites, industry websites, and social media websites. You are not only competing with the brands catering to similar products but with every website which intends to disconnect you from your prospects and leads and then bills you to spend on marketing to them. 

Why should you be doing an ongoing analysis of your competitors for effective digital marketing?

The primary competitors for your business will usually remain the same since the time that you have developed your marketing strategy. But you should constantly monitor it because the general situation and market position of your competitors might change over time. Here are the main reasons to keep a check on your competitors regularly. 

1. To review benchmarks: by monitoring the internal stats of your business, you come to know which marketing channels perform the best. But the issue is what would you do if your competitors can get even better results. You should be aware of it. 
2. To remain updated with the market and industry trends: some trends are seasonal and they occur again and again each year. During these times, there are declines and peaks that you should be prepared for. You can achieve this only if you are monitoring your competitive landscape. So you should always be alert. 
3. To learn about the best and latest marketing practices and mistakes that you should avoid: sometimes it is the best practice to allow your competitors to test new ways and channels rather than trying it out on your own and waste your marketing budget. You can learn from the experience of your competitors and avoid their mistakes. 
4. To keep your marketing mix updated: with the help of digital marketing campaigns you can get important insights about your competition such as the launch of a new product and you can take ideas for the development of your brand. 
5. To make your goals refined: with the changing online market condition, you might need to adjust your digital marketing strategy and also your previously set goals. 

 

How often your digital marketing strategy is reviewed? 

Every industry grows and changes at a different speed, so you may need to make updates less or more often. Normally it is recommended to do a monthly competitor analysis to keep tabs on the changing trends and you can change your campaigns according to it. Quarterly competitor analysis is needed to implement greater changes in your strategy for digital marketing. 

You can analyze and check the metrics of your competitor brands frequently or when you are in a position to make changes to your campaign. 

How to perform competitor analysis regularly: the main points for digital marketing: 

It might seem to be an endless task to perform competitive analysis for marketers. Here we bring to you key aspects of this process and cover insights from the top digital channels. 

1. Updates from Competitors Performance

If you want your online strategy to be your rivals then you need to stay up-to-date with the latest moves for digital marketing and there are also performance comparisons for theirs. When you are analyzing the website traffic then it would be considered as the best assessment.

Let’s take a look at the home décor sites which want to catch up with the rival site online performance for the competitor analysis example. When 5 websites are entered for traffic analysis, then you will see the below:

When the led of the competition is changed then the other will remain at number 1 in the list

Fluctuations will always affect the competition.

Each of the rivals will either grow or lose its popularity over time. You can find out how other websites are attracting their audience:

Which of the digital marketing channels are performing best for them. Which country is proved to be more lucrative in traffic generation.

In the below example you will see who will be winning in these traffic sources and who will get more traffic from Canada than any other competitor. Take a note of the discrepancy from the research of digital campaigns like seasonal trends, views of the niche, and the most sustainable player.

For a better understanding of the market, you may want to check up on more than five players. In market explorer, you have to enter the website in the search field and the tool will conduct a complete competitor and map for you. 

This tool can help you with:

Map the competitive landscape in a very comprehensive form in the growth quadrant

This will also qualify the competitors with the current size and the market potential

You can switch from the industry competitors to the organic competitors and this will reveal to you the closest rivals in the online market share and research. You can study their digital marketing strategies further from there.

You can check out the abilities of the market explorer for market and Traffic analysis for competitor analysis.

2. Analyzing SEO efforts of competitors

When other companies are outranking in the organic search, they are also getting more clicks, gaining more revenue, and generating more leads, by this tool you will be able to monitor the website search visibility. You can also continue the model analysis and see how the website is doing the organic search.

You can discover the things below:

The total number of keywords of the target website with organic positions are presented visually

Monthly organic traffic expected from these keywords

The estimated price of the organic keywords in google ads

Estimated non-branded and branded traffic

You can get into more detail on your competitor keywords and let them take the top positions on the organic search:

You can discover the most successful keywords

You can see their popular pages which user have found out from organic search

You can get the idea from the customer behavior on the frequency of the search

You can also outline the initial ideas on how to optimize the campaign for increasing the rankings and the conversions

There are two ways for gaining a deeper understanding of the SEO competitors

Find the gap in the rival coverage by the backlink tool. You will analyze the subdomains, root domains, or URLs. A good way for using this intelligence would be to reach out to the resources which are linking to the competitors but not to you.

Enhance the content marketing strategy with the keyword gap. The tool will allow you to perform the side-by-side comparison of the competitor of the keyword portfolios for up to the five domains at once.

If you want to gain more insights into the rival’s organic performance then you have to see the dedicated guide on how to do SEO competitive analysis here.

3. Get Marketing ideas from recent online Ads

There is no universal formula for success in advertising. Still, there are so many things to learn from looking at the rival’s strategies like which to avoid, which to adopt, and what has to be forgotten.

For analyzing the advertiser use the advertising research toll and switch the reveal tabs:

Estimated traffic from these keywords

Number of the keyword the domain is bidding

Other websites to which target rivals are competing with

Historical data for uncovering the competitor’s preferences in seasonal advertising is very interesting and it has been a while since you checked up the ads of the competitors.

It was decided to dig deeper into the model research and clicked on the blue cell in the report of Ad history. You will see the actual ad of the product which was running at a particular point for the time. The possible step is to adapt this ad to the business, let it run, and then you will be able to see the performance.

You can also focus on Google shopping or the ads which are displayed in the competitor analysis. You can also use display advertising and PLA research accordingly. In the PLA research, you will be able to see the listing of the product and the other market players who are promoting in various countries. In the display advertising, you will be able to analyze the distribution of the company GDN ads around the globe and then you would be able to measure the advertising activity of your rivals and you would be able to understand the market targeting and its performance. 

There are other things to look at on the landing page like analyzing specific likes and competitors’ campaigns. These are the ads that are pointing to the landing page on the site at a particular time. This is a very good way for discovering the rivals and the items on which they are focusing. It will also encourage you to start a competitive analysis of the product.

In this step, the analysis of competitors is done. You would be able to analyze the pricing in the target segment by the PLA ads and also you would be able to optimize the creative ad in terms of titles, keywords, and pictures. And in this way, you would be able to spend the maximum ROI.

4. Rivals activity in Content Marketing and PR

In this step you will invest very little effort in researching the relevant topics and the media will mention you or they will place you in backlink.

Tracking online Mentions of the words and the phrase which are related to the rival’s product name, brand name, motto, product category, or anything else. You will be able to research all of these with the brand monitoring tool. The report will help you in:

Find mentions on the forums, web, Instagram, or Twitter

Estimate the reach of each mentioned and then determine the platform with the largest coverage. 

Highlight the popularity and the strength of the mentioner’s domain and the website traffic.

In the previous steps, research about all these aspects. When you are interested in the traffic driven by the referrals, go to the traffic analysis for insightful research.

Study the rival backlink profile in detail and then monitor the new and the lost backlinks.

Use the backlink analysis reports to see the pages that will link to the competitors and the actual pages that traffic from backlinks target URLs. Also, consider the authority score for the analysis.