Competitor analysis is one of the most critical and yet most overlooked steps in digital marketing.
Many business owners don’t know who their real competition is, how long they’ve been in business, what they have to offer the marketplace.
Too many business owners think they know their competition but don’t research them often enough. This means they miss opportunities to fill gaps in the market left by their competitors.
Make sure you perform thorough competitor analysis and can answer the following seven key questions:
- What’s their product or service? (Are they in direct competition with you? Does their product or service address a problem in the same way your service does?)
- What is their revenue?
- How have they grown or shrunk over the past 12 months, and over the past five years?
- What is their market share? (This is often more relevant than their revenue. Some industries are tracked by analysts, which makes the information easier to find.)
- What do their clients think about them? How do they treat their clients? What do they do to keep their clients’ loyalty?
- Is your client service better than the competition? Do you give more value-added service? Do you offer volume discount pricing? Do you have a longer-term relationship wide your clients?
- Does your company make it easier in any way for a client to do business with you rather than your competitors?
It’s imperative that you constantly update the information you have about your top competitors. Gather as much objective information as you can about your competition and use that knowledge to give your business an advantage.
Inspired by my virtual mentors, Paul Gorman, Richard Branson, Jonathan Jay, Dan Kennedy, Tony Robbins, and Simon Coulson