Digital Marketing Tools for Competitive Analysis
- Friday, January 17, 2020
Internet knows no geographical boundaries and hence one company can serve the entire world or country. Internet based industries hence have scope only two-three companies serving the entire market as they operate on thin margins and high cost of customer acquisition, which requires economies of scale.
In this blog I will tell you how you can do Competitive Analysis using tools in Digital Marketing to trump the competition. Businesses has never been more competitive then now as the cost of doing business has significantly come down, and hence entry barriers are low. It is easy to understand the business models of competitors in the age of internet, as information is easily available. As a marketer there is a need to keep a tap on competitors to benchmark as well as to stay ahead of the curve.
Through digital you can understand the product strategy, pricing, promotion strategy, competitive advantage and communication strategy of your competitors. Here are the few tools which you can use to analysis competition.
Meta Tags Tool
By analyzing the meta tags in your competitor’s website you can understand the focus areas of your competitor and his positioning. You can use tool like SimilarWeb you can know how much traffic is coming from which source.
- If more traffic is coming from direct, that means competitor is having good Brand Pull.
- If more traffic is coming from search, than competitor is doing well in SEO and PPC Ads.
- If more traffic is coming from referrals, than online PR, affiliate marketing and forum communities are doing good.
- If more traffic is coming from social, than competitor is doing well in Social Media Marketing and is engaging with its users.
You can know how many visits competitor is having per month, what is the bounce rate etc. from this data you can infer the Revenues of competitors. Marketer never had so much information about their competitors it was always kept like a secret and any competitive intelligence was gathered through field sales force.
Facebook Ads Library
Facebook has added a new feature call Facebook Ads Library where marketers can see the ads of their competitors which are currently running. These are live ads and you can see what images/videos or content is used. What are the key messages and benefits are highlighted in the ads? what is the Call-to-Action and what is the Landing Page. You can click on it and thoroughly analyze the Landing Pages.
You can analyze and model your ads based on competitors, it also shows how many impressions the ad has got, and how much budget has been spent on it. You can model your ads on long standing ads of competitors as they have proven to be successful.
Search Terms Tool
You can use tools like SEMrush or SEO SiteCheckup as they can tell which search terms are driving how much traffic to competitor’s website. Search Terms will help you to understand the brand associations the primary keywords and you can model your keywords based on your competitors. It will also tell how many organic traffic and how much is paid traffic. That will give insight into how much is PULL and how much is PUSH that the competitor has.
Engagement Tools
You can use tools like FanPage Karma and Quintly to see what is their engagement rate is social media, it should be at least more than 2% if it’s less than it is more one-sided and invert looking content which has lack of interest with the users. You can also find the Response Rate of the competitor, how much they response to their customers comments and what is the response time. A best practice is to response to each comment of user as that helps to build connections.
Content Tools
#HashTags reveal the content strategy of your competitors. Tools like BuzzSumo to analyze the content posted by competition. You can see their content buckets and the tone of the brand, the personality of the brand and how much involved they are across marketing channels.
- Analyze the tone is Formal or Informal
- Do they use Humor or Serious tone?
- Masculine or Feminine
What is the purpose of each channel, maybe Twitter is used for Customer Service were as Instagram is more for User Engagement and the Website is more for brand showcase? Is the Product the hero or is User the hero?
Search Trends
Google Trends is very powerful in identifying how much is the search interest of users in competitor, which regions has more interest, which keywords are used more often and what is the trend over time. It can indicate if the search interest in your industry is growing or declining.
Domain Authority Checker
You can find out the domain authority of your competitor website, how reputed is the website. If the competitor’s authority is significantly higher, than you have a lot of catch up to do.
Backlink Checker Tool
With the help of backlink checker, you can analyze which sites are giving backlinks to your competitor you can even analyze their domain authority and you can target them to get backlinks from them for your website.
All these learning can be applied to identify the strengths & weaknesses of competitors and identify opportunities and treads for your business. Digital bring a lot of transparency in the industry and smart marketers leverage it to up their game and better themselves against competition.
Joydeep Deb is a Senior Digital Marketer and Project Manager with strong experience in Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Brand Management, Marketing Campaigns, Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), PPC, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Technologies, Web Design and Development.
With an MBA in Marketing. IIM Calcutta Alumini. Lives in Bangalore, Karnataka - India.