When starting or scaling your business, there are a number of things to consider and keep in mind. Some may be mere preferences, while others are essential to ensure that your company can keep up with competitors and hopefully even surpass them online. Therefore, one thing that businesses do to keep up with their competitors is to use competitive analysis.
As suggested by its name, competitive analysis refers to the act of analyzing your business’s competitors. You use various tools and methods to explore their business offerings, identify their strategies, and figure out new strategies to get ahead of them!
However, with anything in life, preparation is key, and covering all your bases will significantly impact the future of your company. Therefore, let’s dive in to understand what competitive analysis is and why it’s important for your business.
Do you know why competitive analysis is important for businesses? Why do marketers and more pay so much attention and money in competitive analysis?
Competitive analysis has various benefits that always elude the minds of commoners. Therefore, some of the biggest benefits of competitive analysis are:
It may not be your first instinct to check out what the competitors are up to. This is because your focus is always going to be primarily on your own business. Therefore, it’s in line with the saying, “Stay in your lane.”
It’s true that the focal point of your thoughts should be on pushing and moving your own company forward. However, how can you know how you’re fairing if you don’t analyze and research what your competitors are offering? Moreover, do you know how well the market is doing?
A digital marketing competitive analysis is essentially where you look into your competitors’ digital marketing efforts in order to gain a wealth of information about their products and services, as well as pricing, marketing tactics, and other service areas.
This information is necessary for you and your team to determine where your competitors are. Are they ahead of your business – or are they lagging behind?
Furthermore, you can ascertain areas or tactics that the competitor may already have invested in. Doing so will let you identify what was successful – and what wasn’t. Therefore, it allows you to learn from their mistakes in a way and steer clear of doing the same thing.
Once you’ve made the decision to commission a competitive analysis, which includes brand awareness, website traffic, online revenue, and customer engagement of your competitors, it’s high time to define your competition.
The key here is to look and think outside of the box, meaning that while many are aware of direct competitors, in other words, companies that sell and offer the exact same services and products under a similar business model, there are different types of competitors, too; indirect competitors would be one of these.
An indirect competitor will sell the same products and services, as mentioned above, to direct competitors but may not distribute these as their primary business or source of income. So, it’s only a part of their business.
The next form of competition is referred to as replacement competition, which essentially means that a company offers or sells a product or service that solves the same issue or problem that your company does, whether the product or service is similar or different to yours.
Then there’s potential competition, which is almost self-explanatory. It includes all businesses that aren’t in the market yet, but that could pose a threat in the near future.
In business, and especially when it comes to competition, never underestimate anyone and always keep a keen eye on what others are doing so that you can be a step ahead of the rest when it really matters.
Once you identify the competition, you will hopefully have a better understanding of the digital strategies implemented by your competitors. Therefore, in turn, leverage your strengths and aim to minimize your weaknesses. This will let your business grow – the company that you’ve put countless hours into to develop and grow.
A great next step is to ascertain what your ideal customer profile is. It’s all good and well to pinpoint competition and know the ins and outs of their online strategies.
However, what good does that do if you haven’t identified your ideal potential customer? Moreover, do you know what type of company that would benefit the most from your product or service?
Customer profiling really does make a huge difference in developing any successful sales strategy. Doing so educates your team and gives them crucial insights into who you need to target and why. Therefore, it ensures that you don’t waste time and precious resources on addressing potential buyers who don’t need your service.
Additionally, another benefit of customer profiling is that it can assist in increasing the speed of the sales cycle. In other words, you can turn leads into customers faster and cement that process to repeat it multiple times!
Therefore, you will always know your next move and where each lead is within the cycle. As such, it saves your team time and, ultimately, money.
Think of your company like a racing car and you as the driver. Your team is the crew that changes your tires and fixes any leaks or issues.
A competitive analysis is similar to having some of your own teammates in the crew of the opposing team. This lets you see what that team is doing – both the good and the bad. Moreover, fixing their problems will help you avoid the same mistakes and get ahead of them without too much effort!
Furthermore, it’s like having a view of the other team’s strategy and creating yours based on their mistakes and errors. Therefore, when it’s ultimately your turn to make a pit stop, your team has insider information.
This information lets you know exactly what needs to be done, simplifying the process and streamlining each and every step. In addition, it ensures that you and your team reach the finish line first – and with fuel to spare!
Now that you understand the amazing benefits of competitive analysis and the opportunities it presents – what are you waiting for? Ask yourself – or the managers of the business – why does it seems like our competitors are always ahead of us?
After reading this post, you know that competitive analysis is what you must do to find out the answer. Therefore, try to find out what your business and marketing strategies of your competitors are using competitive analysis. After you identify them, it’s time to one-up your competitors by doing things better than them!
Read Also:
Abdul Aziz Mondol is a professional blogger who is having a colossal interest in writing blogs and other jones of calligraphies. In terms of his professional commitments, he loves to share content related to business, finance, technology, and the gaming niche.
