Competitor Analysis Factors to Consider

Competitor analysis is important for a business. Ask yourself, what should I look out for when scrutinizing my business rivals? Well, there’s quite a lot of factors to consider. Remember the list of important questions for competitive analysis? Now it’s time to dive deeper.

There’s a lot to deal with when you’re taking a thorough look at your industry. Whether you’re a single small business in a pool of giant conglomerates, or the pioneer in your corner of the world, there’s always a bigger fish. Your job is to become that big fish by any means necessary, and one of those means is competitor analysis!

How do you analyze your rivals?

So you have a business. Part of running that business means ensuring that you don’t get left behind by your business rivals. Customers will not do much business with you if you offer a product or service that isn’t in line with current trends. Additionally, an SEO Audit can help you keep your online presence squeaky clean, and therefore more palatable to potential customers. Here are some SEO Audit tools that can help you! So keep up with the help of your competitors! The data gained from competitor research can help your business thrive. Such competitor research data can be classified according to factors.

Consider these factors when analyzing competitors:

Who are your rival companies?

First off, figure out who your rivals are. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Take your competitors’ presence—online as well as offline—into account. Figure out if they’re a direct threat or perhaps a potential ally in the future. Any knowledge derived about online competitors from the competitor research could mean the difference between failure and success!

Do you want a spot at the top? Then, carve it out for yourselves with the help of marketing. Check out these competitor analysis tools for digital marketing!

What are the products and/or services they offer?

Since you’re familiar with your rivals, the next step is to ask: what are they focused on? Then, through competitor research, find the nature of their product or service and see if it will be a contender for the products and services you’re offering. If you know what your competitors have on lock, you can better plan your business moves.

You shouldn’t just go head-to-head with your competitors, especially the established ones—that’s a disaster just waiting to happen! Instead, start by looking where your rivals aren’t looking. Where there’s an established product or service, there’s an untapped demand elsewhere. So take your walking shoes and trod down that untrod path until you have the strength to beat out those competitors!

Be wary, though, if you are. You may find that there is a reason why your competitors aren’t making bank on such ideas.

What were their past strategies? What are their current strategies?

Now it’s time to do the opposite. Not every company will strike gold with every project they do, so figure out what they’re doing poorly. In your competitor research, see the projects they’ve invested resources in—now analyze which competitors’ projects aren’t doing well. It might be able to save you the time considering the venture, or! You could end up learning from their mistakes and creating something successful from their failures!

What’s more, if you plot ahead, you can even check competitors’ future mistakes and use that in case you want to make a more successful version.

What are past or current strategies that aren’t so successful?

Now it’s time to do the opposite. Not every company will strike gold with every project they do, so figure out what they’re doing poorly. See the projects they’ve invested resources in—now which ones aren’t doing so well? It might be able to save you the time considering the venture, or! You could end up learning from their mistakes and creating something successful from their failures!

For this competitor analysis factor, if you plot ahead, you can even check competitors’ future mistakes! Then, you can use that data case you want to make a more successful version.

How many, and what channels do they use for marketing?

Whatever channels your rivals use will be necessary for handling your own—particularly, digital channels such as social media. This doesn’t mean that you have to create accounts on the same channels, platforms, or sites your competitors use, per se. It just means you have to monitor how much of their engagement occurs across said channels. 

If your competitors are having great success on one particular channel, why is that so? Find how much traffic they derive from that channel. Search for the content that makes them so popular, as well as the methods or tricks they use. If their most popular channel is social media, find the content that pulls in likes and engagement! If they have a website, figure out what’s bringing visitors to their metaphorical yard.

How much of their resources do they spend on marketing their products on their channels?

For this part of the competitor analysis, you have to find the magnitude of your rivals’ investment for particular projects. Of course, you can’t expect a small startup to go against companies on the level of Apple and Facebook—but you have drive. Not only that, you have intel. If you want success, well, you have to find out how much vigor your competitors are putting into everything they do.

If you’re still a new company, you might want to hold off on spending money for bombastic advertisements, but you can surely learn until your head is fit to burst with all the knowledge you’ve stocked up on your rivals! Search Engine Journal puts it best: “Beating your competition is never about being equal. It’s about being better.” So take every advantage you can get, and work hard.

What are your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses?

Do your business rivals have a great web development team? Do they have experienced social media marketers? Are they good at creating exciting graphics and animated GIFs? For such strengths, find out how your competition managed to acquire them, and see if you can apply those strategies to your business.

Conversely, do they have a clunkily designed website? Was their last Instagram post a month ago? Are their graphics a little better than a kid faced with editing software for the first time? Find every one of their weaknesses—then avoid doing them.

What are the opportunities and threats that your rivals represent?

So, for example, your business rival has a finger in the pie of Facebook Advertising. It could go two ways:

1. It seems to be doing wonders for them, and the majority of their traffic comes from it. All right, that’s fine. There are way more platforms in the sea—or, in this case, the internet. Try your luck on Pinterest, or Instagram, etc.—you can market your business better there, where there’s far less competition.
2. It seems to be doing wonders for them, but whoopsie—you’re advertising on Facebook, too! They could snap up your consumer base if they reached out a little more!

Keep your eyes trained on your competitors.

There are many factors of competitor analysis. One should keep track of these when it comes to checking competitors and business rivals. Scrutinize every aspect of their business so you can see their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and apply the data to your business. 

Naturally, you make their strengths yours. Exploit your competitors’ weaknesses to become opportunities for your business. Analyze their opportunities to see if you can make them your own. Finally, threats to them should be handled cautiously by your business. An SEO Company in the Philippines can further help you out with competitor check and research.

About Jalou Batilong

Most every great writer is a voracious reader, and no word describes Jalou better. Jalou enjoys a good read whenever she has the time to sit down and open a book or browse for interesting articles. It's through reading that she is able to digest information so easily, and write her own unique piece of information to share to everyone else.

Find more about me on:
• 
•