A popular saying goes: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Even though it may appear counterintuitive in certain settings, it is sage advice when you are spearheading a business. When done right, competitive analysis can be a reliable growth hacking technique that gets you at par with established brands and entities. At the same time, it allows you to gain an edge over your competitors by offering that “something more.” In the digital arena, where it is all about out-ranking your peers, competitive analysis becomes all the more critical. As such, if your competitive website analysis strategy is to pore over their website merely, then you are doing it all wrong. Let’s first understand how to build a competitive website analysis policy and the tools to deploy for achieving the best results.
How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis
Here is a detailed breakdown of the steps involved in analyzing your competitor’s website:
Define the Key Metrics
The key metrics governing your competitive analysis campaign heavily depend on your organizational goals. For instance, if you were to increase conversions, you would keep a close eye on the CPC (cost per conversion), bounce rates, etc. Similarly, if you plan on expanding your reach, you would monitor the on-page and off-page SEO efforts and track the total number of visits per session, number of interactions, and so on. Hence, define the key metrics based on your overall objective.Identify Your Competitors
Once you gain clarity on the key metrics concerning the analysis, it is time to shortlist your competitors. Identifying your competition and understanding what they do is key to any marketing assessment. Here, assuming established industry leaders to be your competition would narrow its scope. And in the process, you would only end up disappointing yourself. For a more balanced analysis, you require a diverse set of competitors who can transform your end goals, influence your business decisions, and introduce you to new ideologies. Hence, you must list out different competitors for a more holistic outlook, irrespective of whether they are big or small and direct or indirect (offering a different solution or serving to a different customer set) competitors. With the above considerations, you can create a comprehensive list of competitors who are worth observing and measuring against.Evaluate Your Competitor’s Website
Finally, now is the time when you figure out what makes your competition’s website successful. Here are a few ways in which you can assess their website: • Reading Their Content You could develop the flashiest of websites and still fail to attract any traffic. On the other hand, the most basic websites could see many loyal readers simply because they manage to churn out compelling content. So, start by comparing your content quality with that of your competition’s. Apart from its value-adding feature, look out for other formatting considerations, such as a navigable Table of Contents or a helpful FAQ section, which sharpens the content. • Checking Out the Branding Branding and brand consistency could clinch the deal and help you stand out from the crowd.
To leverage branding as a differentiator, analyze the strategies employed by your competition. Look at the brand representatives, such as the logo, color, theme, etc., which form the core brand identity. Next, explore the brand voice and personality. Imbibe these within your branding strategy and maintain it uniformly, whether you redesign your logo or draft your social media posts. • Following Them on Social Media Social media offers a condensed preview of your website content. Besides, it is an excellent source of traffic. As such, you must scrutinize your competitor’s social media activity and analyze how they use it to their advantage. You may even discover the platforms they prefer heavily against those they simply use to register their presence. Based on these findings, you can develop a similar SMM model that ropes in the maximum audience. • Becoming a Customer Sometimes, you may discover the true value offering of any organization by actually using their product or service. Conversely, you may also discover the chinks in their armor by experiencing the product rather than accepting their market standing at face value. By enlisting as a customer, you get the first-hand experience of the complete customer journey. Note the flow of events leading to the purchase and the after-sales services, if any. Locate any areas of improvement and strengthen them within your operations. Become a subscriber to their email marketing campaigns to identify any existing patterns. Finally, test out their customer support by bowling a few common queries. Incorporate the elements that you like and appreciate as a customer within your own business.
10 Competitor Analysis Tools to Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
Naturally, manually combing through your competitor’s website is not enough to get a holistic overview of what they have on you. You need to use tools to measure, quantify, and compare such abstract qualities. Here are a few of these that may come in handy: