Whenever I examine competitor marketing strategies, I feel like I am assembling a puzzle. Each brand has a unique way of attracting and keeping its audience. My goal is to spot the standout ideas I can use to strengthen my PR approach.
By closely examining what competitors are doing well (and where they might fall short), I uncover useful insights that improve my strategies and help my brand connect more effectively with its audience.
In public relations, knowing what your competitors are doing isn’t just helpful, it’s essential. Keeping an eye on their strategies can give you fresh ideas, reveal what works, and show you what to avoid. By understanding their approach, you can sharpen your own PR game and stand out more effectively.
In this article, you’ll learn why competitor analysis is important and get helpful tips on how to do one effectively. Don’t be in a hurry to leave.
Key Points
- Competitor analysis is all about spotting the strengths and weaknesses of similar brands.
- Looking at competitor strategies reveals untapped areas to explore, helping you connect better with your audience and strengthen your brand’s unique appeal.
- Competitor analysis lets you see what makes your brand different. Use this to stand out in the market by focusing on what only your brand can offer.
- By examining customer reactions to competitors’ products, you can gain insights into what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t.
- Competitor analysis often reveals new brands to watch. This way, you’re prepared to adapt to any rising competition in the digital market.
What is Competitor Analysis in Marketing?
Competitor analysis in marketing means studying your competitors’ strategies and actions to understand their strengths and weaknesses. This helps you see where they succeed, where they might fail, and where you could improve your marketing.
Other brands in your field use tactics, messages, and channels to connect with their audience. Analyzing competitor marketing strategies means closely examining how they interact with their customers.
This isn’t just about the obvious stuff; it’s about figuring out what they do regularly to succeed and how it shapes their public image.
The four main areas to look at are:
- Product: What they sell.
- Price: How much do they charge?
- Place: Where they sell their products or services.
- Promotion: How they advertise or reach customers.
By studying these areas, you can gain a better position in the market, avoid mistakes they’ve made, and spot any missed opportunities to improve your marketing.
Who Are Your Competitors?
It doesn’t matter how unique your product or service is; other companies are likely offering something similar. Competition is a normal part of business, pushing companies to improve.
Your competitors are any businesses that might attract customers away from you, either now or in the future. Here are the major types:
- Direct competitors: These are brands offering the same product or service to your audience. People often compare you directly to these brands when deciding what to buy. For example, Arcade and Storyline directly compete in the demo automation space.
- Indirect competitors: These companies address the same issue but with different solutions. They might give you ideas for expanding your offerings. For example, Scribe and Whatfix both help with documentation and internal training, but in different ways.
- Legacy competitors are well-established brands that have been in the industry for a long time and are trusted by customers. For instance, Ahrefs is a long-standing competitor in SEO.
- Emerging competitors are new players with fresh ideas and unique benefits that could challenge established brands. For example, ChatGPT entered the conversational AI field as an innovative disruptor, gaining an edge over many other brands.
When conducting a competitor analysis, focus on your direct competitors to gain useful insights. This will help you understand what’s working for them and what’s not so you can make smarter decisions for your own business.
Benefits of Competitor Analysis in Marketing
Even if your competitors stay the same, the market around you won’t. Changes in customer habits or new technology can impact your business, so it’s important to stay informed and ready to adapt.
With the right competitor analysis tools, you can gather and organize this information more easily. For example, using Sprout’s marketing toolkit can make analyzing competitors simpler and more automated.
Here are a few more ways regularly analyzing your competitors can help you stay flexible and ahead of the game.
#1. Spot Competitors’ Strengths and Weaknesses
What are your competitors doing well that drives their growth? By analyzing what successful competitors are doing right, you can learn what helped them reach the top. This process shows opportunities for your own business.
I find analyzing competitor strengths very helpful. Focusing only on your website, marketing, and business can make you overlook the bigger picture. Studying competitors reveals what’s working well in the market and what could benefit your business.
Competitor weaknesses are just as important, especially if you aspire to reach their level. Look for areas where they fall short and plan ways to avoid making the same mistakes.
Check product and company reviews to find out what frustrates their audience. This can help you improve your product and shape your marketing to attract those customers.
#2. Find New Opportunities
Competitor analysis is a budget-friendly way to spot areas for improvement. For example, by studying their messaging, you can understand what works for your competitors and adapt it to your marketing.
Rachel Andrea Go, a marketing director, explains how analyzing competitors’ messages reveals what connects with their audience. She suggests, “Instead of just saying ‘Best project management software,’ a competitor might say ‘Save time by letting our software manage your projects,’ which frames the product as a time-saver.”
Observe their language on websites, social media, and landing pages, and notice how followers respond.
While competitor analysis is valuable, keep your business needs in focus. Don’t get caught up in matching competitors step-by-step. Instead, identify which opportunities truly fit your business and will make a difference.
#3. Highlight Your Unique Qualities
Competitor analysis lets you reflect on what sets you apart. Every business has unique qualities, so try to discover these to make your brand stand out.
If you keep an open mind, you may find differences in messaging or value that give you fresh insights into your own business.
Be strategic. While it’s great to study the most successful competitors, also consider brands that are closer to your level. Balance your analysis between the big players and those in similar positions.
#4. Get Closer to Your Target Audience
Competitor analysis helps you better understand your audience. By reviewing what people like, dislike, or complain about in competitors’ products, you learn how to connect with them more effectively.
You’ll see how people talk about competitors, what they value, and what they dislike, giving you insights into how to improve or avoid certain approaches.
Use social media, forums, and review sites to gather feedback directly from your audience.
#5. Discover New Competitors
Sometimes, competitor analysis reveals brands you didn’t consider before. Dan White, an SEO consultant, notes that checking shared keywords often shows unexpected competitors. “It helps clients see both the obvious competitors and others who are actually attracting similar audiences.”
In a digital world, your competitors might not just be local businesses—they could be online, serving the same audience in ways you hadn’t seen.
#6. Set Benchmarks for Success
Competitor analysis provides realistic benchmarks. You can assess if you’re on the right track by tracking your competitors’ progress. Check in periodically, quarterly or annually to review key performance indicators (KPIs) and measure growth against competitors.
Whether launching a new business or refining an existing one, competitor analysis removes guesswork. It provides solid information to shape your business strategy.
Note: Every brand can gain a lot from regularly studying their competitors. When you analyze your competition, you can:
- Spot gaps in the market.
- Create new products and services.
- Discover market trends.
- Improve your marketing and sales.
Each of these steps can help guide your brand toward success.
Now, let’s look at some steps you can take to carry out a complete competitor analysis.
How to Conduct Competitor Analysis in Marketing
As a content marketer, I have helped brands analyze their competitors, thereby improving their messaging, shaping their marketing strategy, and finding new channels. The good news for smart marketers is that competitor analysis is now easier and faster.
Here are the five simple steps I use to analyze competitors:
#1. Find and sort all competitors.
Start by identifying every competitor in your field, even the smaller or lesser-known ones. The idea is to know all the players in the market instead of ignoring some.
Once you’ve found competitors, sort them into these groups:
- Direct competitors
- Indirect competitors.
- Legacy competitors.
- Emerging competitors.
#2. Identify each competitor’s position in the market.
After listing your competitors, start by looking at their place in the market. This step will show you where you currently stand in terms of market share and customer satisfaction. It’ll also reveal the major players and the top competitors you should focus on in your analysis.
Also, creating a picture of the market will help you see what’s missing. This way, you can spot gaps and opportunities for your brand to succeed, even in a crowded market.
To map out competitors’ market positions, make a graph with two factors: market presence (Y-axis) and customer satisfaction (X-axis). Then, place competitors in one of these categories:
- Niche brands: Small market share but high customer satisfaction, likely focusing on a specific audience.
- Contenders: Strong market presence but lower customer satisfaction, often newer brands with strong sales and marketing.
- Leaders: High market share and high customer satisfaction, the main players with a strong reputation.
- High performers: High customer satisfaction but smaller market share, often appealing to customers who want alternatives to big brands.
This visual will show how crowded the market is and help you find ways to grow and compete with established brands.
#3. Carefully study your main competitors.
In Step 2, you narrowed your list to only the most important competitors to focus on. Now, it’s time to look closely at each one and create a report comparing their strengths and weaknesses.
This isn’t about finding only the flaws; aims to objectively see both the good and bad aspects of each brand. Here are the main things to look at when studying competitors:
- Quality: Check the quality of each competitor’s products or services. Compare their features and see if any give them an advantage over you. Look at customer reviews to understand what users think about their quality.
- Price: Note down each competitor’s prices to understand their pricing approach. You can also talk to their customers to see if they feel they’re getting good value.
- Customer service: See how they provide support—whether by chat, phone, email, or a help center. Check customer ratings on different websites too.
- Brand reputation: Compare how each competitor is seen in the market. Look for both positive and negative feedback people share about these brands.
- Financial strength: If you can, look for data on their financial health, like revenue growth and profit margins.
This comparison will need both direct research (like talking to customers) and indirect research (like checking online reviews). Spend enough time on this step to make sure your competitor analysis is solid and thorough.
#4. Examine Their Marketing Strategy Thoroughly
While the first few steps help you find ways to improve your product or service, it’s also essential to see how competitors promote their products.
Take a close look at their marketing strategies to understand how they reach their customers. I go through each marketing channel, noting how they communicate with their audience and express their brand personality.
Here are a few main marketing channels to explore:
- Website: Review their website layout and wording to understand their message and brand tone.
- Email: Sign up for their emails to see their frequency, writing style, topics, and other details.
- Paid Ads: Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to check if they run paid ads on search engines.
- Thought Leadership: Follow their educational content, like podcasts, webinars, or courses.
- Digital PR: Look into any digital PR efforts they make to create awareness for their brand.
- Social Media: Check how active they are on social channels and what content works best for them.
- Partnerships: Analyze any valuable partnerships they have with other companies that might be mutually beneficial.
You can create a detailed document with all this information about a competitor’s marketing strategy. This will help guide your own marketing plans.
#5. Do a SWOT analysis.
The final part of analyzing your competitors is creating a SWOT analysis for each company. This means looking at each competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Think of it as a way to bring all your research together by answering these questions:
- What does your competitor do well? (Think about their products, marketing, social media)
- Where do they have an advantage over your brand?
- What is their weakest point?
- Where does your brand have the upper hand?
- In what areas might this competitor be a threat?
- What could they improve on?
- Are there opportunities in the market that they’ve already spotted?
This lets you compare their weaknesses to your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company and find areas for improvement in your brand.
Tools like Miro can help you make this data easier to see and understand. Once you lay it out visually, you’ll get a clearer picture of where you can surpass each competitor.
Bonus Tips: Here’s a simple Competitor Analysis Template designed to help you gather and organize key information about your competitors. It will guide you step-by-step to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities so you can improve your strategies and stand out.
Use this template to analyze your competition and uncover insights to strengthen your PR and marketing approach.
Competitive Product Analysis
Product analysis looks closely at products to find key similarities and differences among products in the same market. If a competitor sells products similar to yours, you’ll want to ensure that you don’t lose customers to them.
Using this approach, we can explore what sets each product apart and identify its unique features.
#1. Check Your Product Prices
Start by looking at how much your products cost.
For example, Apple offers multiple models of its iPhone: the iPhone SE at $429, the standard iPhone 14 at $799, and the iPhone 14 Pro at $999. Samsung’s Galaxy lineup also includes various options, with the Galaxy A53 at $450 and the Galaxy S22 at $799.
#2. Compare Key Features
Next, examine the main features of each product. For example, if you’re comparing smartphones, you might look at display quality, camera performance, battery life, and storage capacity.
| Feature | iPhone 15 Pro | Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Display | 6.1-inch OLED | 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED |
| Camera | 48 MP main | 200 MP main |
| Battery life | Up to 23 hours | Up to 24 hours |
| Storage options | 128 GB – 1 TB | 256 GB – 1 TB |
Comparing these details helps you understand which model offers the features most important to your customers, like longer battery life or a higher-resolution camera.
#3. Find What Makes Each Product Stand Out
Now, look for what makes each product unique beyond the basic features. At first glance, both phones have similar high-end specs, but each has its distinct strengths.
The iPhone 14 Pro stands out with its high-quality build, sleek design, and exclusive features like Face ID and the iOS ecosystem, which many users find appealing. Samsung’s Galaxy S22, however, shines with its customizable interface, higher camera specs, and compatibility with Samsung’s S Pen, which allows for enhanced productivity.
#4. Spot Market Opportunities
The last step is to look for areas in the market that have yet to be fully covered, which could give your company an advantage.
In the smartphone industry, one growing opportunity is the rise of foldable phones. Companies like Samsung have led this market with devices like the Galaxy Z Fold. If they can make foldable technology more affordable, it could attract a broader audience and redefine what smartphones can do.
Final Thoughts
Conducting competitor analysis is one of the smartest ways to grow your brand and improve your marketing. By learning from others, you can identify what works, spot new opportunities, and find ways to make your brand stand out. This approach not only keeps you informed but also helps you stay competitive in your market.
Remember, the goal isn’t to copy your competitors but to use what you learn to build a unique strategy for your brand. In the end, competitor analysis gives you the insight and tools to connect with your audience and strengthen your brand’s presence.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 4 competitive marketing strategies?
- Cost Leadership: A company aims to be the cheapest seller or producer, keeping prices low while maintaining good product quality.
- Cost Focus: Like cost leadership, but aimed at a specific group by understanding their needs and offering low-cost products just for them.
- Product Differentiation: A company makes its products stand out through things like size, design, color, shape, performance, and special features.
- Market Niche Focus: A company targets a small, specific part of the market to meet unique customer needs.
What are the 5 types of competitors in marketing?
There are several types of competitors in marketing:
- Direct Competitors: These are businesses that offer similar products or services to the same customers, often in the same location.
- Indirect Competitors: These businesses provide different products or services but still meet the same customer needs. For example, a fast-food place and a buffet restaurant are indirect competitors because they both serve food.
- Replacement Competitors: These businesses offer products or services that customers can use instead of yours.
- Potential Competitors: These are businesses that could start offering similar products or services in the future.
- SERP Competitors: These businesses show up in search results for the same keywords as you.
What are the 5 C’s of competitors?
The 5C Analysis is a marketing tool used to understand a company’s environment. It helps identify what makes a business successful and highlights potential risks. The 5Cs stand for Company, Collaborators, Customers, Competitors, and Context.
What are the 4 Ps of strategy?
With these management tools giving live feedback, companies can easily change direction when new opportunities or risks arise. A simple model called the “Four Ps” can help companies gain this advantage. These Ps stand for Perceptions, Performance, Purpose, and Process.
What are the 4 main parts of a strategy?
The 4 main parts of a strategy are: Vision, Analysis, Target, and Plan. A good strategy starts with a clear vision of what it aims to achieve.
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