Post by lizaseo11 on Nov 9, 2024 7:37:20 GMT 1
Many people want to do a competitor analysis, but they don’t always understand the algorithm for conducting such research. We have developed a step-by-step action plan that will help you organize a systematic approach. Our algorithm makes it easy not only to study the competitive environment, but also to find new opportunities for your business growth.
Analytics may concern individual tasks – studying the range and product line, comparative analysis of positioning. However, the most complete picture for online business promotion is given by a comprehensive approach to studying competitors.
Where does competitor analysis begin?
In any business activity, it is important to start with the most important thing – defining the research objective. At different stages, different tasks may be of interest:
pricing and pricing policy,
Features of positioning strategy,
USP characteristics,
definition of distribution channels,
dynamics of product line expansion.
Each of these tasks requires shopify website design a different approach to study the most important indicators. This will save you from unnecessary information and reduce the costs of marketing research.
Once you have defined your research objectives, you need to select competitors to study. It is always a pressing task to accurately understand your target audience and their immediate needs. To clarify the information, use questions such as:
how similar is your business's target audience to your competitors' offerings,
what needs are solved by the products and services of a competing company and yours,
what methods of finding solutions to their needs from competitors are used by representatives of your target audience.
If you overlap in these three characteristics, this is a sign of a competing company. It is important to distinguish between the ways of solving similar customer problems, as products may differ in some parameters. Carefully analyze the correspondence and difference in the issue of closing customer needs to get the most accurate picture.
Please also pay attention to:
value for money,
occupied market segment,
product line and assortment.
If your company is a newcomer to the market, then study not only little-known brands, but also industry leaders. By choosing the best business representatives for research, you can learn a lot from them so as not to invent obvious solutions. In addition, the experience of predecessors will show the most effective tools that bring results.
How to correctly identify your main competitors
At the first stage, collect a list of companies that intersect with your goods or services. The next step will be to study the sites for which the similarweb service can be used. It is important to understand how similar you are to each other, and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Pay attention to the semantic core of their site to understand what queries they used to get into the TOP. It is best to study the general summary report in Serpstat - there you will see such an indicator as "visibility". It shows how many pages of the site got into the TOP of search engines. The greatest visibility will show the strongest competitors online.
In addition, pay attention to the keywords by which the site is ranked. They can be used when developing a technical task for copywriting for SEO promotion. For a thorough analysis, choose no more than 10 competitors, this is quite enough for complex Internet promotion.
Competitor Analysis Plan
Basic information that will help you form an opinion about the company. What it includes:
year of foundation/opening,
regions of active work,
management composition and administrative structure,
number of personnel,
market share,
expected financial turnover,
key clients.
Study of the product matrix. What is the main product of the company - it is important to study it carefully and thoroughly. It is the market offer that is the foundation on which the business is built:
study the product/service carefully and in detail (specifications, warranty, color, size, appearance),
identify not only global differences, but also small details (packaging, delivery time, payment methods, ease of ordering).
Pay attention to pricing features. Large companies tend to have higher prices, as customers overpay for the brand. Study what is included in the cost of goods. The second criterion for evaluation will be the consumer's opinion - how much the price corresponds to the customers' willingness to pay it. Also pay attention to loyalty programs, promotions and discounts.
Development of a marketing strategy:
It will not be possible to study it thoroughly through external characteristics, but pay attention to promotion channels, activity in advertising, social networks and other platforms. Analyze the USP especially carefully to assess the strengths. Be sure to take into account strong market players to study the corporate style, company values and its mission.
Outperform your competitors – to gain an advantage in advertising. For example, if you are 1 position higher in contextual advertising, then you will get a larger market share. To do this, carefully study the advertising channels and campaigns of your competitors to understand the strategy and outperform in results.
Develop a customer retention strategy and encourage repeat purchases. Proper work with the contact base will allow you to return existing consumers again and again. Customer retention methods include marketing tools and sending out useful materials, price lists, new products, whale marketing, and information about promotions.
Sales organization:
At the stage of attracting clients, marketing plays a crucial role. But the sales department and managers who communicate with consumers are no less important. Analyze not only product knowledge, but also communication style, education, personal qualities, intonation, speech, appearance.
Sales optimization tools directly affect the results. If managers forget to call back, are late with sending an order, then this approach will lead to loss of clients.
Evaluate how your competitors' CRM system, sales scripts, staff motivation, and reporting work.
From the outside, it is easiest to study sales scripts, since all you need to do is call them by phone. Other types of information are more difficult to obtain, since this applies to internal work regulations.
Study production, logistics, installments, and other conditions of work with consumers as accurately as possible. From the experience of the best companies, you can learn many secrets of high checks and big profits only through careful and detailed analysis. Go all the way from the call to the purchase to understand the work algorithm. Pay attention to the return of products, work with claims and returns. Show persistence and meticulousness to create the most accurate picture of the work of competitors' businesses.
Where is the best place to look for your competitors?
We provide the main sources of information in the form of a list with comments:
Internet. Use search engines to gather information. You can collect the main search queries - which customers use to search for similar products or services - and then analyze Google's results.
Involve your sales staff. Managers are usually exposed to information about competing companies and are well versed in the USPs of other brands. Collect and systematize this information.
Research your target audience's requests and needs. Clarify in as much detail as possible the expectations and problems of clients who fit your target audience profile.
Explore ratings by business types and industries. Among them, you can easily identify leaders that should be carefully studied. You will receive ready-made lists of representatives of your business.
Use specialized services. Many of them are paid, but they have free access with limited functionality, and this may be enough. For example: similarweb.com, serpstat.com and spywords.ru.
What criteria should be used for analysis?
First of all, rely on the goals of your research, and then set tasks on this basis. Evaluation criteria can be quantitative and qualitative.
Bring all the data into tables to immediately receive systematized answers. The form can be arbitrary, but it should be simple and convenient enough.
Quantitative indicators are those characteristics that can be assessed in points. For example, website usability, availability of a callback form, navigation and quality of texts. Make yourself a rating of the best websites that will become an example for your project.
Qualitative indicators reflect what cannot be assessed in numbers. This includes the friendliness of communications with the sales department, the design features of the packaging, the meaning of the logo or name, etc.
The results can be presented in the form of graphs and diagrams, as visualization allows for better comparison of indicators.
How to use the results
The most important thing is to summarize and analyze the data obtained. This will require not only experience, but also knowledge of Internet marketing. Only after a thorough analysis can you get a complete picture of the business. Based on the research data, the development of a strategy begins, which takes into account the specifics of the market situation.
It is quite difficult to carry out such work on your own. Here, specialist consultants or marketing agencies that have the necessary experience and carry out comprehensive Internet promotion will come to the rescue .
Analytics may concern individual tasks – studying the range and product line, comparative analysis of positioning. However, the most complete picture for online business promotion is given by a comprehensive approach to studying competitors.
Where does competitor analysis begin?
In any business activity, it is important to start with the most important thing – defining the research objective. At different stages, different tasks may be of interest:
pricing and pricing policy,
Features of positioning strategy,
USP characteristics,
definition of distribution channels,
dynamics of product line expansion.
Each of these tasks requires shopify website design a different approach to study the most important indicators. This will save you from unnecessary information and reduce the costs of marketing research.
Once you have defined your research objectives, you need to select competitors to study. It is always a pressing task to accurately understand your target audience and their immediate needs. To clarify the information, use questions such as:
how similar is your business's target audience to your competitors' offerings,
what needs are solved by the products and services of a competing company and yours,
what methods of finding solutions to their needs from competitors are used by representatives of your target audience.
If you overlap in these three characteristics, this is a sign of a competing company. It is important to distinguish between the ways of solving similar customer problems, as products may differ in some parameters. Carefully analyze the correspondence and difference in the issue of closing customer needs to get the most accurate picture.
Please also pay attention to:
value for money,
occupied market segment,
product line and assortment.
If your company is a newcomer to the market, then study not only little-known brands, but also industry leaders. By choosing the best business representatives for research, you can learn a lot from them so as not to invent obvious solutions. In addition, the experience of predecessors will show the most effective tools that bring results.
How to correctly identify your main competitors
At the first stage, collect a list of companies that intersect with your goods or services. The next step will be to study the sites for which the similarweb service can be used. It is important to understand how similar you are to each other, and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Pay attention to the semantic core of their site to understand what queries they used to get into the TOP. It is best to study the general summary report in Serpstat - there you will see such an indicator as "visibility". It shows how many pages of the site got into the TOP of search engines. The greatest visibility will show the strongest competitors online.
In addition, pay attention to the keywords by which the site is ranked. They can be used when developing a technical task for copywriting for SEO promotion. For a thorough analysis, choose no more than 10 competitors, this is quite enough for complex Internet promotion.
Competitor Analysis Plan
Basic information that will help you form an opinion about the company. What it includes:
year of foundation/opening,
regions of active work,
management composition and administrative structure,
number of personnel,
market share,
expected financial turnover,
key clients.
Study of the product matrix. What is the main product of the company - it is important to study it carefully and thoroughly. It is the market offer that is the foundation on which the business is built:
study the product/service carefully and in detail (specifications, warranty, color, size, appearance),
identify not only global differences, but also small details (packaging, delivery time, payment methods, ease of ordering).
Pay attention to pricing features. Large companies tend to have higher prices, as customers overpay for the brand. Study what is included in the cost of goods. The second criterion for evaluation will be the consumer's opinion - how much the price corresponds to the customers' willingness to pay it. Also pay attention to loyalty programs, promotions and discounts.
Development of a marketing strategy:
It will not be possible to study it thoroughly through external characteristics, but pay attention to promotion channels, activity in advertising, social networks and other platforms. Analyze the USP especially carefully to assess the strengths. Be sure to take into account strong market players to study the corporate style, company values and its mission.
Outperform your competitors – to gain an advantage in advertising. For example, if you are 1 position higher in contextual advertising, then you will get a larger market share. To do this, carefully study the advertising channels and campaigns of your competitors to understand the strategy and outperform in results.
Develop a customer retention strategy and encourage repeat purchases. Proper work with the contact base will allow you to return existing consumers again and again. Customer retention methods include marketing tools and sending out useful materials, price lists, new products, whale marketing, and information about promotions.
Sales organization:
At the stage of attracting clients, marketing plays a crucial role. But the sales department and managers who communicate with consumers are no less important. Analyze not only product knowledge, but also communication style, education, personal qualities, intonation, speech, appearance.
Sales optimization tools directly affect the results. If managers forget to call back, are late with sending an order, then this approach will lead to loss of clients.
Evaluate how your competitors' CRM system, sales scripts, staff motivation, and reporting work.
From the outside, it is easiest to study sales scripts, since all you need to do is call them by phone. Other types of information are more difficult to obtain, since this applies to internal work regulations.
Study production, logistics, installments, and other conditions of work with consumers as accurately as possible. From the experience of the best companies, you can learn many secrets of high checks and big profits only through careful and detailed analysis. Go all the way from the call to the purchase to understand the work algorithm. Pay attention to the return of products, work with claims and returns. Show persistence and meticulousness to create the most accurate picture of the work of competitors' businesses.
Where is the best place to look for your competitors?
We provide the main sources of information in the form of a list with comments:
Internet. Use search engines to gather information. You can collect the main search queries - which customers use to search for similar products or services - and then analyze Google's results.
Involve your sales staff. Managers are usually exposed to information about competing companies and are well versed in the USPs of other brands. Collect and systematize this information.
Research your target audience's requests and needs. Clarify in as much detail as possible the expectations and problems of clients who fit your target audience profile.
Explore ratings by business types and industries. Among them, you can easily identify leaders that should be carefully studied. You will receive ready-made lists of representatives of your business.
Use specialized services. Many of them are paid, but they have free access with limited functionality, and this may be enough. For example: similarweb.com, serpstat.com and spywords.ru.
What criteria should be used for analysis?
First of all, rely on the goals of your research, and then set tasks on this basis. Evaluation criteria can be quantitative and qualitative.
Bring all the data into tables to immediately receive systematized answers. The form can be arbitrary, but it should be simple and convenient enough.
Quantitative indicators are those characteristics that can be assessed in points. For example, website usability, availability of a callback form, navigation and quality of texts. Make yourself a rating of the best websites that will become an example for your project.
Qualitative indicators reflect what cannot be assessed in numbers. This includes the friendliness of communications with the sales department, the design features of the packaging, the meaning of the logo or name, etc.
The results can be presented in the form of graphs and diagrams, as visualization allows for better comparison of indicators.
How to use the results
The most important thing is to summarize and analyze the data obtained. This will require not only experience, but also knowledge of Internet marketing. Only after a thorough analysis can you get a complete picture of the business. Based on the research data, the development of a strategy begins, which takes into account the specifics of the market situation.
It is quite difficult to carry out such work on your own. Here, specialist consultants or marketing agencies that have the necessary experience and carry out comprehensive Internet promotion will come to the rescue .