Competitor analysis can help you learn the ins and outs of how your competitors do business and find places where you might be able to do better than them. It also lets you keep up with industry trends and make sure that your product always meets or beats industry standards. Learn more about competitor analysis’ role in strategic management, as well as the methods, tools, website, examples, and template.
Competitor Analysis
A competitor analysis, also called a competitive analysis, is a way to compare how well your business and its products or services are doing to those of other businesses in your market that sell similar goods or services.
David Taffet, CEO of Petal, said, “A competitor analysis focuses on finding market players who are in a position to take away your opportunity. It also looks at each player’s operational strengths, substantive weaknesses, product offerings, market dominance, and missed opportunities.” When done right, a competitor analysis can give you information that can help you make business and strategy choices.
Competitor Analysis Template
When doing a competitor analysis, you can use a template to think about and write down details about how your business fits into the marketing scene. This will help you make better marketing decisions. More importantly, these templates (https://www.smartsheet.com/free-competitor-analysis-template) help you focus on getting information about your competitors and learning business lessons from that information, rather than trying to figure out which factors you should study.
Different ways to present data from a competitor analysis template.
Certain additions can help you get your message across more quickly, especially if you have to show your findings to people from different parts of your company:
- Figure out who you want to see your analysis presentation: You can also make multiple presentations for different groups, like a summary for leaders and a PowerPoint for marketing, sales, and development.
- Add the logo of each competitor. This helps to distinguish between companies in the document and can tell you important things about each brand.
- Show the Item: If you can, add pictures of your competitors’ goods or pictures that show what they do.
- Use high-resolution graphics to make a bigger impression.
- Look at the description of the company: Add the tagline, slogan, goal statement, and value proposition. Talk about how companies place themselves and how they describe themselves.
- Keep information consistent: To avoid bias, all competitors should be described with the same type and amount of information.
- Look at the Good They Do: When analyzing the strengths and flaws of your competitors, don’t just think about their weaknesses. Instead, think about what makes their customers happy.
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Competitor Analysis Tools
#1. Phlanx
With this Instagram engagement calculator, you can find out how busy the followers of any given account are. This is a great way to find out what your competitors are doing on Instagram. It’s also a way to figure out if a person with power has a real following or not.
The engagement ratio of a Phlanx account is based on how many followers it has and how often its followers interact with its material (likes, comments, etc.).
For instance, Trader Joe’s has a 2.56 percent interaction rate. This is a good score for a well-known company that posts regularly.
Analysis of TraderJoes’ Instagram interaction by Phlanx
But compare that to places like Denny’s, which have a cult-like following and a lot of crazy fans:
Denny’s Instagram: A Phlanx analysis of the interaction
This number doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about a brand’s Instagram presence, but it does give you some much-needed context.
Take Adidas, which has one of the most popular accounts out there. They get a crazy amount of responses to their posts, but compared to how many people follow them, it’s not that much.
For Adidas’s Instagram, a Phlanx analysis of the interaction
This is a smaller part of a bigger point about analyzing competitors on social media. Context is important. Follower counts are easy to focus on, but engagement may be a much more important measure.
#2. Social Blade
Social Blade is a fun way to find out about bigger names. It looks at the number of followers on sites like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Even though this is often used to measure how popular celebs and YouTubers are, marketers can learn a lot from it.
For example, their study of their Twitter competitors gives them a “grade” based on how many retweets and likes they get on average.
Every social profile you look up on SocialBlade is given a score.
Social Blade gives you a live follower count and a daily report on how many people are following you.
SocialBlade tracks the growth of Twitter followers.
Another cool thing is that you can compare the social presence of different brands.
SocialBlade looks at how many Twitter accounts are being used at the same time.
Tools to look at competitors for SEO
#3. SEMRush
SEMRush is one of the most popular Competitor analysis tools on the market for SEO, but its features for analyzing competitors make it stand out. For starters, you can use SEMRush to pull the backlinks of your competitors and keep an eye on how their ranking changes.
Here’s an example of a dashboard for FreeCodeCamp after a domain study was done:
SEMRush looks at the backlink profiles and traffic sources of your rivals.
And here is the part of the analysis that shows who is fighting for their keywords by the numbers:
SEMRush can tell you who else is trying to get people to visit your site.
This is a great tool for finding out who your competitors are from an SEO point of view. In the same way, knowing what keywords your competitors are using directly affects your own content plan.
#4. Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ site explorer is another important SEO tool for analyzing competitors. It lets you check the top organic keywords for any URL. You also get a rough idea of how much traffic a competitor gets from those terms.
Ahrefs looks at the organic traffic of your rivals.
If you look at backlinks (instead of shares), it’s also easy to find a site’s best content. This information tells you what kind of goods or messages a brand does best with.
Ahrefs can tell you where your competitor’s backlinks come from. It can also tell you what keywords bring the most traffic to a competitor’s site, in addition to the best content.
Ahrefs gives you a detailed list of the keywords that your rivals are using.
What does this mean? When you run your own reports often, you don’t have to guess how much traffic your competitors are getting.
#5. MozBar
With this Moz browser app, you can get a quick idea of how important Google thinks a site is. MozBar gives sites a DA score based on Moz’s own domain authority (DA) measure and how likely they are to rank in search engines (based on things like backlinks). The DA score is better the higher it is.
The MozBar is a useful tool that sits on top of your browser and lets you see at a glance how well a site will do in a search.
MozBar is a tool for analyzing competition that checks a site’s Domain Authority.
When turned on, a Google search lets you see how different sites compare to each other.
MozBar looks at the domain authority of competing Google results.
MozBar lets you do a kind of passive study of your competitors by looking at their sites to see how long they’ve been around and if they’re getting backlinks.
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Why Do a Competitor Analysis?
Most of the time, small business owners have to do a lot of things at once. Even if you are busy, you should still take the time to look at your competitors.
#1. Find Out What Your Business Does Well and What It Could Do Better
By looking at how people feel about your rivals, you can figure out what the strengths and weaknesses of your own brand are. Knowing your company’s strengths can help you decide how to place it in the market or how you want your product or service to be seen by the people you want to buy it. It’s important to tell potential customers in a clear way why your product or service is the best one out there.
It’s just as important for your business to grow if you know what its flaws are. Knowing where you fall short of what your customers want can help you figure out where you might want to spend more time and money.
You might find out, for example, that your buyers like the customer service of your competitors better. Look at what your competitors are doing right and see what you can use in your own business.
#2. Understand Your Market
When looking for competitors, you may find companies you didn’t know about or hadn’t thought of as rivals before. The first step to beating your competition is to know who they are.
Doing a thorough analysis of what your rivals are selling could also help you figure out where your market isn’t being served well enough. If you find gaps between what your competitors give and what customers want, you can make the first move and expand your own offerings to meet those unmet customer needs.
#3. Find Market Trends
When you look at the competition, you can also see where the business as a whole is going. But you shouldn’t do something just because it’s what your competitors are doing. If you try to copy the competition without thinking about your own place in the market, you will rarely, if ever, be successful.
If you see that your competitors are doing something you aren’t, don’t try to copy them right away. Instead, think about what your customers want and how you can meet those needs. It’s often better to zag when everyone else zigs.
#4. Set Goals for Growth in the Future
In a competitor study, you should look at both bigger and smaller companies than your own. When you look at well-established businesses in your field, you can get an idea of what success looks like and a point of comparison for your own growth. On the other hand, if you look into companies that are new to your industry, you can find out which ones might try to take your market share in the future.
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What Is Competitor Analysis Summary?
Competitor analysis (CA) is the process of finding your competitors and evaluating their business and marketing plans to learn about their strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. Competitor analysis gives you a bigger picture of the whole marketing scene and gives you information about your competitors.
What Is SWOT Analysis of Competitors?
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) research is a way to figure out how competitive a company is and how to plan its future. SWOT analysis looks at both the inside and outside of a business, as well as its present and future potential.
What Are the 2 Components of Competitor Analysis?
Researching a competitor’s products, pricing models, marketing strategies, and customer service methods are the main parts of a competitor analysis framework.
What Is Pestel Analysis for Competitors?
PESTLE analysis is a way to figure out how things outside of a company affect its actions and make it more competitive. The analysis is often done when deciding on a business strategy, starting a new business, or joining a new market in a different country. It’s also useful for planning business strategies.
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