Comprehensive Guide to Analyse Your Competitor’s Marketing Strategy

When you decide to begin with your own startup, there are a few things that cannot be avoided. You must have heard that there is a lot of competition when you thought of starting up your own business in that field. This is the time you need to realize that, you need to build up a new skill to land your startup in success.

One of the skills is Analysis of your competitor’s marketing strategy is a skill which is extremely useful for any sort of business you might have entered. On the other hand, analysis of your competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step which if once analyzed, brings you halfway to your success. You need to make sure that you look outside the window and analyze what others are doing and know their strengths and weaknesses. In this article, we will provide you with a guideline on how to analyse your competitor's marketing strategy. So let's get started.

What Is Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?
What All Does This Analysis Comprise?
Benefits of Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis
What Is the Process of Analyzing Competitor’s Marketing Strategy?

What Is Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis?

Competitive analysis in simple words refers to– a well-structured evaluation of your business environment that includes the competitor’s company, it's offering, and most importantly its marketing strategy. It is the art of knowing how well the other players of that particular field are doing in the market. Most importantly look for the spaces they are creating for you to grab the opportunity to dive into and come up better than them by providing something more valuable.

What All Does This Analysis Comprise?

Competitor’s marketing strategy analysis involves qualitative and quantitative data that is very crucial. The goals and missions of an organization depend upon it. Most importantly, how will the goals be achieved, i.e., what will be the strategy to effectively and efficiently achieve those goals is also formulated in accordance with the data collected. It involves answers to various questions like-

• What are the competitors good at?
• Where do the competitors lack?
• How to make sure that they don’t steal away your customers?

Benefits of Competitor’s Marketing Strategy Analysis

Analysis of competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step for all businesses big or small. It must be done cautiously. As, it deals in the collection of the most important data, upon which the organization’s strategies are based upon. If done appropriately, it gives out plenty of qualitative and quantitative data that will help your own crucial business decisions. Analysis of Competitor’s Marketing strategy is important in many ways.

Identify Opportunities

Why choose your brand? This question plays a significant role in separating you from your competitors. A good analysis of a competitor’s marketing strategy gives you an insight into what unique would customers find in you. So that, they choose you over your competitors.

Competitor’s marketing strategy analysis creates a significant opportunity to identify gaps through analyzing data. Create a new product category to bridge the gap between what your competitors offer and what the customers need.

Know Strengths and Weaknesses

You have a great opportunity to find out, where do the competitors lack by analyzing the collected data. Improve your product by capitalizing on competitors’ weaknesses customers complain about. It helps you create your own Unique Selling Proposition. You must learn from their mistakes and make sure that you do not repeat them at any cost. The focus must be on consistent learning and improvement simultaneously. By this, you can easily come up with a distinguishing identity in the market.

Position of Your Business in the Long-Run

As your brand expands, the expectations of your customers from you also increase. This opens up an opportunity for you to position your business in the long run. When you create a distinguishing identity. Through competitor marketing strategy analysis, you get a chance to get to know all their weaknesses of them, which is an edge for you over your competitors. You need to overcome all their mistakes that will help you position your business in the long run by creating a faithful image in the mind of the customers.

Uncover Market Trends

You get to know what is going on in the market. It, therefore, helps you to keep with the pace and follow contemporary methods. You must eliminate the usage of obsolete and traditional marketing strategies. It helps you uncover market segments that aren’t fully served by competitors. You need to focus on that and work upon the loopholes of the competitors.

Motivation

By analyzing what your competitors are doing, you get to know their position in the market. They set a benchmark that helps you measure your standards and take corrective action wherever required. The presence of competition in the market gives the inspiration to work consistently. It gives a thrust to keep on striving to do better.

What Is the Process of Analyzing Competitor’s Marketing Strategy?

This guide on analyzing competitor’s marketing strategy works well for startup founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers, etc. Including certain tips on where to look for data that isn’t publicly available, this guide consists of a step by step process of how to go about analyzing your competitor’s marketing strategy-

Identify Competitors of Your Industry

The first and foremost step is to determine who your competitors are. You need to pick the right competitors who are pitching similar products or services targeting a similar category of customers. To simplify, divide your competitors into two categories: direct and indirect.

Direct competitors are those, who offer a product or service similar to that of yours who works as a substitute for yours operating in your same geographic area. Whereas, Indirect Competitors are those who provide dissimilar products that can be used as an alternative to satisfy the needs of the customer. You need to realize that Direct Competitors are to be paid more focused.

Wondering how to identify direct competition? Here are the steps to follow-

• Analyze search engine results (SERPs) for similar product queries.
• Have a look at the market share analysis.
• Have a check on who is sourcing products from the same suppliers/wholesalers as per your plan.
• Keep a note of brands that use your target buyers the most.

Determine What They Offer

Product or services offered is where the heart of any business lies. Therefore, it is the best place to start with. A deep analysis of the competitor’s complete product line or services offered must be done. Along with this, there must be an eye upon attractive benefits that they offer along with the product and service which tends to attract their customers.

Analyze Their Tactics

Existence in this competitive market is quite difficult. Certain tactics are used by market leaders to achieve heights. Therefore, the focus must lie on the following questions-

· What does the sale procedure look like?

· What are the channels of distribution used by them?

· What are the tactics that earn them the most advantages?

· What are their customer relationship management techniques?

· What are the lucrative offers they offer to their customers?

· How do they manage interpersonal relations?

These are a few helpful pieces of information that give you an idea of the tactics that the competitors apply. By knowing this, you can get an idea about how to go about to form own strategies.

Analyze Their Pricing Strategy

Price is the most important element. It is the value that the customer pays for the product or service. Pricing must be done very carefully as it depends upon certain major factors. Due care must be taken upon how the competitors tackle those factors and price the offerings.

Determine Their Marketing Strategy

The productivity of businesses depends upon the marketing strategy that is used. There must be knowledge of marketing strategies being applied by other players in the market. With the advent of technology, most businesses use the internet for marketing. The online world opens up the doors to meet a vast audience. Observe the competitor’s website, the way of content marketing, social media marketing, etc.

Use Spying Tools to Know Your Competitor’s Strategies

Various online tools and methods are available online which help you be aware of your competitor's strategies. Spying tools can be of great help for this. One of the popular spying tools is AdSpyder. It helps you spy on your competitor's ad strategies on different platforms. The platforms include Facebook Google, Youtube, and Instagram, and also search engines like Yahoo and Bing.

Perform a SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis is a great tool to envision how to get an edge over other businesses. SWOT stands for Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. When you have an overview from all these perspectives, you are on the right path to success. The analysis must comprise of following areas which are not exhaustive-

· Customer experience

· Online marketing strategies

· Pricing strategy

· Content strategy

· Promotion strategy

Conclusion

The main objective of this article is to pay attention to the opportunities that the competitors are missing. One must learn to take advantage of the competitor’s weaknesses through the strengths of own. The market is highly dynamic which demands routine running of the competitor’s marketing strategy analysis. Competitor’s analysis is a multi-facet process, which if well-executed can land you towards productivity.

FAQs

What is Competitor's Marketing Strategy Analysis?

It is the art of knowing how well the other players of that particular field are doing in the market.

What is the importance of Competitor's Marketing Strategy Analysis?

Analysis of competitor’s marketing strategy is a crucial step for all businesses big or small. It is important in many ways.

How to Position a business in the long run?

Business need to overcome all their competitor's mistakes that will help you position your business in the long run by creating a faithful image in the mind of the customers.