What exactly is competitive analysis and how to identifying competitors?
Companies need to provide customers with products that meet their needs better than their competitors in order to increase sales, increase market share, increase profits and overall business success.
The first step in achieving this goal is “competitor analysis”, which requires marketing strategies to take into account not only the needs of target consumers, but also the practices of competing companies.
The following sections describe the concepts of competitive analysis and the steps involved in identifying competitors.
The idea of competitive product analysis
By analyzing and identifying competitors strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats can be identified and explored. Competitive analysis is the process of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors.
In other words, identifying competitors and assessing their objectives, strengths, weaknesses, strategies and responses is competitive analysis. Ultimately, you have to decide which competitors to attack and which to avoid.
The benefits of competitor research
Companies must provide customers with products that meet their needs better than their competitors in order to increase customer loyalty, expand market share, increase sales, increase profits, and ultimately achieve business success.
During competitor analysis, the question is raised, what information should companies obtain from their competitors in doing this process? Finding the right answers to the questions that follow will complement our knowledge of competitors.
- Who are your competitors?
- What are their goals?
- What is their policy?
- What products do they sell?
- What is the market share of each competitor?
- Which media do competitors use for advertising?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of them?
The first step in achieving this goal is “competitor analysis”, which requires marketing strategies to take into account not only the needs of target consumers, but also the practices of competing companies. The concept of competitive analysis and the steps to identifying competitors are covered in the following sections.
Identifying competitors: Gather information about competitors
While having competitors isn’t a good thing, you should take steps to identify yours because every industry has them.
Ask about their perspective, goals, strengths and weaknesses in the situation. Plus, by identifying, understanding and tracking your competitors, you don’t have to worry about it. This process is called “gathering competitive information”.
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Identifying competitors: competitor analysis
Google and Amazon are the best places to do competitor research, although there are many other ways to find a company’s competitors. Before looking for your product ideas, research your brand. You can use different keywords to find relevant companies and their active social networks.
to identifying competitors Always check your competitor’s Alexa rank. Differentiate your competitors to rank them. Consider dividing your competitors into categories, such as B.
Those who are likely to attract the attention of your customers and those who do not directly compete with your business. This will help you get an overview of your competitive analysis.
Competitor strategy analysis
We will look at six main points that make up the main stages of a company’s competitive analysis.
Identify competitors
Businesses usually face a variety of competitors. In general, a company can consider all companies that produce similar products and services as competitors. All other companies whose products provide similar services are also considered competitors of this company.
Identify competitors’ goals
After identifying competitors, marketing managers should ask themselves what each competitor’s goals are and what drives each competitor’s actions.
At first glance, it appears that the competitors’ only goal is to “maximize profits,” and this goal underlies every aspect of their business.
However, it should be noted that the importance companies attach to short-term and long-term profits depends on their goals. Contrary to popular belief, it is also possible that the company makes “customer satisfaction” a top priority.
Therefore, when analyzing competitors, in addition to focusing on the “profitability” goal, other goals should also be taken into account, such as increasing market share or providing better service.
Also worth paying attention to. By knowing the nature of your opponent’s goals, you can determine if they are happy with the situation. How will it respond to different competitive behavior?
Identify competitor strategies
When identifying competitors, the more similar the guidelines of the two institutes, the more intense the competition between them.
The company must consider the quality, characteristics and composition of the products produced, customer service, sales price policy, distribution volume, supplier policy, sales promotion plan, etc.
to formulate an appropriate policy in society Competitors have sufficient knowledge. In addition, it must also review and scrutinize the policy information of competing companies in research and development, production, procurement, financing, etc.
A company should simultaneously consider all competitors, potential and existing customers and analyze them regularly to develop effective and efficient policies. Then develop an aggressive marketing strategy.
It is important to note that policies should be put in place that would give the company an edge over its competitors and gain the greatest competitive advantage.
Assess your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
What do they see as the most important characteristics of the companies they buy goods and services from? Using this information can also reveal a company’s vulnerability to competitor actions, what competitors don’t know about and need to attack, and the tactics they use.
Additionally, when analyzing competing companies, companies need to be aware of their own false assumptions about the industry. Because many companies believe that “our product quality is the best” and “customers care more about price than service”.
In this way, they subject themselves to poor judgment. Other competitors may use competitors who use fake premises as the basis of their business.
Anticipate your opponent’s behavior
This partly explains how competitors will react to increasing advertising budgets, lowering sales prices, launching new products, etc. Examine your competitors’ goals, policies, strengths and weaknesses.
Each participant responded differently to these difficulties. Some companies do not react quickly and strongly to the actions of competitors, perhaps because they believe that their customers are very loyal, because they have not identified competitors in time, or because they do not have the financial resources to do so.
Others may only respond to specific attacks, such as a drop in selling price. Some also react quickly and violently to any kind of attack.
Moreover, some hostile societies exist peacefully, while others are in constant conflict. In general, by knowing how competitors react, a company can develop the best strategy to compete with them and defend its current position.
Choose an opponent to attack or run away from
Based on the research and the information gathered in the previous phases, the marketing manager must decide how to proceed in the competitive environment. For example, most companies choose to target weaker competitors in their competitor analysis because it takes less time and money.
However, this group of candidates does not have any special advantages in attack. Companies have to compete with huge rivals to develop their capabilities; there is no doubt that these types of opponents are more profitable to beat.
Software for identifying competitors
Below we have listed some tools that can be used to analyze your company’s competitors. With these tools, you can track your competitors and check their health.
Traffic monitoring with Alexa
One of the web traffic analysis tools is Alexa, which allows you to monitor the traffic of your website as well as that of your competitors. Alexa is a tool that can help you use data for your business.
SE Ranking
It helps you track your competitors’ search engine rankings (up to five items per site) across all niches and areas of interest. Additionally, you can use this tool to get a comprehensive competitor analysis report among top SEOs, including information on their average position, expected site traffic, and more.
Additionally, you can aggregate and display information on the first page of each search. You can learn a lot about how your competitors are doing.
Monitor Backlinks
This tool allows you to track various competing backlinks and identify low quality and high quality links. It helps you develop a link building strategy, get quality links from your competitors, and create link-building content by analyzing links from bloggers and webmasters in your industry.
In addition, this tool allows you to measure the amount of traffic growth for a given site based on keyword targeting and efforts to improve the quality of backlinks.
Spy Fu: See competitor’s keywords
This powerful tool allows you to view competitor keyword data in both organic search and AdWords. Also, this tool provides conditions to get more relevant keywords. You can see a lot of competitors’ strategies just by adding keywords.
Open Site Explorer: Control Backlinks
It’s a well-known and easy-to-use tool from Moz that helps monitor backlinks. With the help of this tool, you can not only track the backlinks of all competitors, but you can also use it to improve your link building strategies.
Importantly, to identifying competitors you can compare page data and domain authority, anchor text, linking domains and links for up to 5 websites.
Moat: Find ad placement
Moat is a multipurpose tool for the advertising industry. With its help, you will find out what ads are running for different websites and top brands.
Also, with the help of this tool, you can also view the locations and size of recently displayed ads. Overall, Moat provides a step-by-step guide on where to place personalized ads and can help with your branding.
ISpionage: Keyword tracking
This tool tells you what organic searches your competitors are doing. It has tools that include competitor SEO analysis, social monitoring, and keyword tracking.
Followerwonk : Analyze Twitter followers
To enhance your Twitter marketing strategies, this tool analyzes any Twitter profile for free and provides a wide range of details, such as recent tweets, archives, locations and follower preferences, to get an overall picture of your competitors’ Twitter.
Ontolo: For Content Marketing
Antolo is a suitable tool for monitoring backlinks and content marketing for identifying competitors. With the help of this tool, you can determine content topics, reach authors, improve link building strategies, etc.
last note to identify your competitors
As stated, in order to be successful in business and surpass the competitors, it is necessary to carry out the process of competitor analysis. To do that, you must first analyze the market, then by fully identifying competitors, analyze each business and prepare a competitor analysis model.
Now you have to adjust your work behavior so that customers prefer you over competitors and come to you.
In this article, while explaining the concept of competitor analysis and identifying competitors, its steps as well as competitor analysis tools in business were studied and investigated.