Why competitive analysis is important before starting a digital marketing strategy

The importance of knowing what other organisations in your market are doing on social media cannot be overlooked, as this knowledge will give you comparative context for your digital marketing strategy.

With this in mind, competitive analysis should be an important part of your digital marketing strategy. With digital marketing drives ever increasing now is a good time to put this strategic approach into action to gain a better understanding of what your direct competitors are doing on social media to get results.

Examine wider for broader results

It’s worthwhile to widen your competitive analysis research in order to learn from established brands that have a respected social presence. It’s also a great idea to complete a digital marketing course which will cement your understanding of all social media aspects.

A good tip is to even analyse competitors that may not be directly relevant to your business or product as their successful social media techniques will help you engage your audience by providing useful insight.

Analyse don’t copy

Competitive analysis is designed to analyse your competitors’ ads, keywords, social interactions, graphics and practices – not to copy them. As such, by undertaking a competitive analysis of a similar business’ digital marketing strategy will help you make informed decisions on which keywords to target, which practices to put in place and which digital marketing strategy is most likely to work for your business.

Competitive analysis goal

Your goal is to build a clear picture of how your competitors are building their social media presence. This can be quite a time-consuming task, as you will need to spend time reviewing their profiles, reading their content, and checking how their customers respond to their social media content posts.

Have you ever wished you could take a sneak peek inside your competitor’s digital marketing strategy? Now you can and there is a very simple and effective way to do this.

Conducting a marketing competitive analysis helps you:

Uncover digital marketing opportunities to outperform your competition and differentiate your brand;
Compare topics, tactics and social media channels driving market performance for you and your competitors;
Benchmark your brand against your competitors, industry leaders and market influencers;
Identify the best practice strategies in your niche;
Gain insight into your competitors specific digital marketing campaigns;
Fine tune your own digital marketing strategy.

Competitive intelligence framework

Before undertaking a competitive analysis before starting your digital marketing strategy you need to have the right framework in place so you can back-up your digital marketing strategy with clear market-based research.

Here are a few steps to get you started:

Pick the right metrics – most marketers struggle to identify the right digital marketing metrics to track their performance.
Track follower growth on social media channels. By benchmarking your audience growth against your competitors allows you to spot where competitors are having a greater impact and improving their brand awareness.
Determine whether competitors are posting more or less frequently than you.
Choose the right social media channels.
Determine who your competitors are.

Monitoring your competitors

To complete an effective competitive analysis before starting a digital marketing strategy it’s crucial to continually monitor the competition. Competitor analysis allows you discover new digital marketing opportunities and gives you invaluable insight into what works and what doesn’t when marketing online.

Here are a few tips to successfully keep a firm eye on your competition:

Uncover the keywords they are targeting – Once you’ve determined your competitor’s keywords you can target these phrases or keywords.
Analyse their rankings against keywords – Where competitors are outranking you, check their website and supporting content to see where you could do better.
Research their most shared content – Research the content that your competitor has had most shared, by topic and by brand. This may also help you identify competitors who hadn’t considered previously.
Stay alert for new content – An easy and free way to monitor the competitor’s content is to use Google Alerts – which is free and easy.
Track new links – It’s a good idea to keep track of any new links your competitor is getting and there are quite a few good apps which allow you to do this.
Monitor their social– Keep an eye on your competitor’s social media activity.

Read their blogs – Reading your competitor’s blogs is a good way to spark ideas for your own content.

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