Today, all brands and Organizations have to operate in a very competitive and fast paced environment. Brands are always looking for opportunities to hop on and gain competitive advantage in the industry. On the other hand, some of the brands think that it is best to get on with their own plans and completely ignore the competition, while some of them become so obsessed with tracking their competitors that they even use illegal methods to get the information. Brands that have strong knowledge about their competitors and their activities, helps brands to make better decisions for their marketing strategies.
Why Analyze Competition?
For a brand, the primary goal by analyzing their competitors is to find out the strengths and weaknesses of their competition, so that the brand can make knowledgeable decisions about their own marketing strategies and fight with the threats from their competition and avail any opportunities that is offered to them because the competition is neglected some factor.
Today, we will be providing you some tips so that you are able to analyze your competition on digital media and gain the benefits from it. Before we tell you anything else, we would like to clarify one important factor i.e. do not compare product specifications while analyzing your competition (it’s not about the product comparison, it is about finding out the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors).
What you need to know?
You need to know some of the things before competitor analysis. Rather, you need to ask these questions to yourself before proceeding with competitor analysis:
- Who are your competitors?
- What are their strengths and what sort of threats you face from them?
- What are their weaknesses and what sort of opportunities can be availed from them?
- What are the competitor’s objectives?
- What strategies are followed by the competitors and are these strategies successful?
- If we bring some change in our business, how would the competitors respond to the change?
Sources of Information:
J.H. Davidson (in his book “Even more offensive marketing”) have categorized the sources of information for competitor analysis in a very nice way:
1 – Recorded Data: is easily available in published form such as:
- Press Releases
- Newspaper Articles
- Analysts Report
- Competitor’s Annual Report
- Government Reports etc.
2 – Observable Data: requires activities to collect information from different resources such as:
- Price List
- Promotions
- Tenders
- Patent Applications
- Advertising Campaigns etc.
3 – Opportunistic Data: requires planning and organizing and can be collected from:
- Sales Force Meetings
- Recruiting Ex-Employees
- Seminars / Conferences
- Suppliers
- Trade Shows etc.
How do you analyze your competitor?
The question is: How do you analyze your competition in this age of digital media and put in use the data you have collected.
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Here is the list of some popular techniques for competitor analysis that can keep you updated about your competition’s weaknesses and strengths:
- Compare Engagement Level: You need to analyze the content that is shared by you and your competitor, and try to find out the weakness and opportunities available for growth. Identify where your competitor out performs you, and concentrate more on that particular area to give your competition a hard time.
- Measure Response Time with the Leader: With social media, customers wants their queries to be responded at a very short time. Compare what are your standards with the best in the market and define goals for yourself as standards. By analyzing your responsive against your competition would help you rank your brand for engaging with the customers.
- Identify your Brand Reach: Evaluate your individual social platform presence and also the combined reach of your social presence. Use this data to evaluate your competitor’s reach and the tactics they are following and if you find it useful, incorporate those tactics with your marketing strategies.
- Measure your Share: It is important that you know how many people are engaging with you, at the same time it is also important to know your share in the market. Checkout your competition and and identify is there is still a need of improvement in your marketing strategies to make them more effective.
- Quality of the Content: Each industry focus on specific content or shall we say each of them has their own keywords to focus on. The key here is to make sure that you follow your content and know what is best for your marketing strategy and content mix.
CONCLUSION:
If you are able to engage your fans through your content and timely response, there are definitely more chances for your brand to be at the top of the industry and popular among the lot. Our tip is, do not distracted from your marketing strategies and goals, while focusing on your competitor’s activities.
