5 min Read

Hands holding binoculars looking upwards
Tags
How To
Increase
Online
Sales

Recent articles

Competitive Analysis: Definition, Benefits, And Strategies

Hands holding binoculars looking upwards

Conducting A Competitive Analysis Is Essential To Business Success. But Where Do You Start?

While the ideas, products, and services around which you centre your business may be unique, various marketing practices and business strategies are often not. Taking the time to better understand how those in your industry are achieving their level of success is as simple as conducting a competitive analysis.

But what exactly is competitor analysis, and how do you go about conducting competitor research to improve and refine your own business strategy? In this guide, we’ll break down what a competitive analysis is, what it achieves, and how you can conduct your own to achieve a greater level of success in your own business model.

What Is A Competitive Market Analysis?

A competitive market analysis (also called competitive analysis or competitor analysis) is a type of research strategy that is designed to help you learn more about how your competitors function. 

A competitive analysis is quite comprehensive, and your own will help you learn more about the products, marketing strategies, sales, and other aspects of direct competitors in your industry. Why? 

There are many benefits that come with conducting regular competitive market analysis. A few of the most notable benefits worth mentioning include the following.

Put simply, competitive research is critical to understanding how other companies have thrived in your space and how you can too. 

What Is Competitive Market Research?

So, what is competitive market research? Competitive market research helps you better identify the key differences between your products and services and those of your competitors by searching for and comparing key market metrics. It’s also a great way to discover who you might be targeting, their attitude towards certain products, and beyond. 

A comprehensive wider market focus, as well as an in-depth look into individual competitors, will equip you with all the information you need to effectively compete in your industry. 

Competitive Analysis In Marketing

So, we understand what a competitive analysis is and how it will apply to your marketing and business strategies. But what exactly do you accomplish? What will a competitor analysis help you do? With a competitive analysis, you will be able to:

While all of this information serves to illustrate why competitive analysis is essential, you may need competitive analysis examples and guidance to walk you through the process of taking on this strategy for your own business.

How To Do A Competitor Analysis?

A competitive analysis consists of many parts, but you can often boil these down to a few essentials to get a better idea of what you’ll need to do to successfully analyse the market. Let’s take a closer look at these key points.

1. Analyse how your competitors market their products.

Marketing is everything, and regardless of the quality of your competitors’ products, you need to take notes if they’re marketing their products well enough to place themselves at the top of the market.

But what should you be looking for in their marketing strategy when you’re conducting a competitive analysis? A few of the key things to pay close attention to include:

2. Take note of your competition’s content strategy.

Your competitors’ content strategy is important because it’s what allows them to generate interest and organic traffic. 

Evaluate the quality, type of content, level of depth, and other important aspects like formatting. You might also want to take note of whether content is handled in-house or if they have others writing for them. Finally, analyse their domain authority, their content publishing schedule or frequency, and their growth over time.

3. Observe how they promote their marketing content.

An in-depth look at their SEO strategy and marketing strategy can reveal more about what you need to do to be successful. 

This part of the competitive analysis means seeing what keywords they’re ranking for, how they link to internal content, the ALT tags they use, and other critical aspects that play a role in on-page SEO. 

Of course, you shouldn’t stop there. Which social media platforms are they using to generate brand awareness? What does their backlink profile look like (you can see if the same sites will link back to you)? What are their most viral pieces, and how are they written and promoted?

All of these questions can help you tailor your own content campaign that gets you the traffic and online visibility you desire. Once you have a better overview of their strategies, you can incorporate them into your own SEO strategy to improve your results. 

4. Learn more about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Performing a comprehensive SWOT analysis can help you identify opportunities and problem areas that need to be addressed in both your competitors’ and your own business model.

What are they doing well? What could they improve on? How does this apply to you? What are they missing that you can capitalise on? What do they have that poses a major risk to your growth? The more you know about your competitor, the better you will be able to help your business thrive.

That being said, a competitive analysis might be tricky to tackle on your own. Having the support of a SEO agency in Sydney can help!

Begin Your Journey With The Support Of Sydney Digital Marketing

Conducting a competitive analysis and applying what you’ve learned to advance your business can seem like a major undertaking. However, you don’t have to do it alone! The experts over at Sydney Digital Marketing are ready to help you analyse your competitors, create a strong digital marketing strategy, and achieve the growth you want.

Need high-quality SEO agency Sydney support? Contact us at Sydney Digital Marketing today!

Article by

Grace Pizarro

Content & Copywriting Specialist

Meet Grace, our in-house marketing and sales intern who has a love for everything communication. From blog posts and social media creation, to SEO research and competitor analysis, she enjoys leveraging AI and the latest technologies to elevate brand identity and help companies stand out from the crowd.