Your Marketing Plan (3/10); What You Need To know About Competitors In The Market

There is a lot you can learn from your competitors’ digital marketing strategies, especially those that are currently outperforming you online. Gaining an in-depth understanding of key strategies being used by your top performing competitors can provide you with the insight and knowledge you need to gain a competitive edge

When putting together your marketing plan, there is no point in trying to reinvent the wheel.

Unless you have some mind-blowing new technology like time travel or teleportation you have competitors. Now I know what you say in your investor pitch about a blue ocean. We’ve all read the book. But trust me; you do have competitors. They might not be your direct competitors but for the purpose of this exercise – they count.

There are companies out there who are probably competing on correlating services, and your prospective customers will need to decide whether to allocate their budget to your solution or opt for theirs. So before you go out and build a complex strategy, check them out and see what they've already done.

The first thing you need is a list of your direct and indirect competitors. Make sure you have a compressive list. If you’re the new kid on the block (or even if you’ve been around the block a few times), there might be ones you’re not thinking of. A good way to know exactly what competitors are playing in your market is to check on who’s bidding on your main keywords. Make a list of your main keywords and use the AdWords Auction Insights report. You can see impression shares, average position, and a lot more information.

I use different online tools to get this data. Sometime you’ll need to pay for it. Don’t be cheap. The free accounts are usually not enough, so pay for the monthly subscription if you need to. The abundance of information these tools offer will be invaluable when you’re considering your strategy. Here is a list of what I look for and some of the tools I use to get that info.

Website Visits – Prepare a report that compares the visits to your website Vs. Your competitor’s estimated traffic in the last six months from all channels. Has their traffic increased, remained stable or decreased? Regardless of the answer to the question, the next question should be why?

Brand Engagement – Prepare a report that provides time on site and bounce rate comparisons which can provide insight into the experience competitors are providing visitors. Search engines use search quality metrics to help them assess whether or not a webpage is a good answer for a query. Also keep in mind (for later) that becoming a destination, providing a great user experience and being the best answer for the keywords your site is ranking for are all essential to support your future SEO efforts.

Traffic Sources – This report measures where your competitors are getting their traffic. Are they outperforming you in organic search, and if so, what keywords are driving these visits?

Referring Sites –This report will tell you what websites are referring the most traffic to your top competitors. Do they have partnerships or relationships with other websites you should also be pursuing?

Organic Keywords – Use this report to evaluate what keywords are sending the most organic search traffic. Should you try ranking organically for these keywords as well? Pro tip: If the ranking is high (and strong), and you decide you want to go after it but it will take time (because good SEO takes time) try the paid search method in the meantime. You can always bid on an SEO competitive keyword, and it might save you having to wait for organic results.

Paid Keywords – Use this report to evaluate what keywords are valuable enough that your competitors are willing to pay money to be seen for? This report can often provide insight into what keywords are leading to conversions (sales) for your competitors.

Social – As social profiles and content continue to increase as a touch point on the path to purchase, understanding what social channels are driving the most traffic is important. If a competitor is receiving a substantial amount of social traffic from Facebook, I’d want to know what types of content they’re posting and how frequently.

Here's a pro tip that you've earned if you read this whole post: One more thing I compare (or at least do my best to compare; this one can be tricky) is messaging (and through that product positioning). Some tools will give you a snapshot of your competitor text and display ads. Use them to compare language and see how they are positioning themselves in the market. What you chose to do from there, take them head on, or avoid them altogether is up to you.

Read the next post in this series to learn about Your Buyers Journey and be sure to let us know what you think in the comments!