Competitive Analysis

That’s a big question. And it doesn’t have a single, easy answer that works for everyone. It depends on a crazy number of factors that are as varied and unique as your company itself.  

To name just five? 

• Your market 
• Your industry 
• Your unique selling point 
• Your current marketing strengths 
• What your competitors are doing 

So yeah, it’s complicated. 

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth answers. Quite the contrary. 

In fact, if you really want the kind of explosive growth that will catapult you to the top and change your life, it’s a question you have to answer. 

But where do you even begin? 

It starts with a competitive analysis. 

We humans like to think of ourselves as masters of the universe. Top of the food chain.

But when you get down to it, our thought processes are not as complex as we think they are. We make decisions (or rather, our brain makes decisions for us) fast. You really only have a matter of seconds—a couple of words, a flash of images—to hook somebody before they move on to the next thing.

And with all due respect to words, the visual language of your marketing often makes a bigger first impression than the written language.

The visual vocabulary of course includes colors, images, graphics, and the like. But it also includes a lot of things you might not think about.

You want it to look nice, but that’s just the surface level. There are so many other important questions to ask.  

For example:  

• How is your website organized?  
• How quickly does it load?  
• Does it look and run just as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop?  
• Do all pages and files have optimized meta tags?  
• Has it been indexed properly by Google? 
• Are you getting good backlinks from trustworthy third-party sources? 
• Where are you ranking on the results page for relevant keyword searches? 
• What are your most popular pages? 
• When visitors land on your website, do they engage with the content or click away?

Your website isn’t the only way potential customers find out about your business online. They often get important company info from a third-party business listing.  

Usually that listing is provided by Google, but there are dozens of prominent websites that release your business info (name, address, phone number, hours, services, etc.) to the online world—and even give customers a chance to review you. 

Once again, there’s a lot more to think about than you might initially realize. For example: 

• Is your Google listing showing up in the “3-pack” for the most relevant searches?  
• Have you claimed your business listings on the most prominent sites so that you can control the information they display? 
• Have you optimized those listings to maximize search traffic and conversions? 
• Are any listings displaying incorrect, outdated, or contradictory information? If you’ve changed names or addresses in the past, you almost certainly have some phantom duplicate listings out there that you need to suppress.

We could go on for a while here, but you probably get the point. A full evaluation will touch every single aspect of your digital marketing strategy and online presence. We could (and you should) go into just as much depth about: 

• Your branding 
• Your performance on social media (followers, engagement, etc.)  
• Whether or not your content marketing strategy is working 
• Your strategy for generating positive online reviews 
• Whether or not you’re using your e-mail database effectively for re-marketing 
• An analysis of pay-per-click advertising opportunities (e.g. what keywords are available at what cost) 

Overwhelmed yet? 

We know, we know—it’s a lot to take in. But that isn’t to discourage you. Again, if you truly want to kick your business growth into overdrive, these are the questions you need to ask and need to have good answers for. 

Once you’ve taken the time to look inside yourself, young one, you go through the same processes again and again.

Only this time, you won’t be analyzing yourself. You’ll be analyzing your competitors.

That’s where the fun begins.

Sure, the picture might not be all sun and rainbows. Your competitors could already have a significant leg up on you in certain aspects of their marketing.

But very few businesses are hitting home runs in all categories. And a surprising amount of market leaders got where they are today more or less by default. They may not have ever had much of a coherent marketing strategy, but—so far, anyway—none of their competitors has taken advantage of it.

“So far” being the key distinction.

This is your opportunity to pounce.

When you’re armed with in-depth data about the digital marketing efforts of you and your competitors, you can construct a SWOT analysis. This serves as the foundation on which to build a digital marketing plan that’s custom-tailored to deliver the best possible bang for your buck.

What is a SWOT analysis? It identifies your:

Now, you’ve got what you need to plan the most critical next steps, whether that includes a new website, updated graphics and branding, pay-per-click advertising, a blogging strategy, improved social media focus, local optimization, or other critical marketing components.