When a football team prepares for a game, the head coach spends hours each week watching films of the competition. The coach is looking for ways to defeat the competition, and he is also looking for things the competition does well that he can use for his team. A football coach never goes into a game without doing a competitive analysis, and your company should take that same approach.
A competitive analysis takes a look at what your competition is doing to market their products or services online, and the tactics your competition is using to establish their brand. You use a competitive analysis to develop ideas that are superior to what your competition is doing, but there are other reasons why a competitive analysis is so important to your business.
You and your competition face very similar challenges when it comes to keeping down costs, and a strong competitive analysis will help you keep track of your competition’s cost model. If the competition releases a product that has a price well below what you could sell the product for, then you know that the competition has made significant changes to their product. You can learn how to keep your own costs down when you follow the competition’s cost model, or you can find better ways to differentiate yourself from the competition by pointing out cost cutting measures the competition is using.
Any digital marketing professional can determine how your competition’s website is performing, and they can even break it down to the keywords your competition is using. A competitive analysis will give you the chance to examine the new keywords the competition is using, and help you to enhance your own keyword tactics to get better results.
A significant part of any successful competitive analysis is a complete breakdown of every aspect of your competition’s website. You will want to find out the kind of traffic your competition is getting, their bounce rates, their conversion rates, and the kind of click through they are getting that results in orders. You do not want to copy these methods, even if they are successful. Your purpose to a comprehensive website analysis of the competition is to find out why the competition’s website is successful and determine how you can improve on what the competition is doing.
For many business website owners, the call to action is often considered a throw-away item. Consumers do not like to be told what to do, but there is still significant value in encouraging consumers to act on information they found helpful on a website. It is always a good idea to spend time comparing your calls to action with the ones your competition are using. You might start to notice patterns with some of your competitors that could help you create more effective calls to action for your own website.
If you want to stay successful, then you need to constantly keep an eye on the competition. You should hire a digital marketing firm to do a quarterly competitive analysis on your industry to let you know how you can increase your revenue, and find out what the competition is up to.
