A critical part of your companies marketing plan is the overall competitor analysis. In order to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in reaching and selling to your target market, you must possess a thorough knowledge of your competition. That’s why it's highly important for your company to understand the process while being able to identify your own competitors. Evaluating your competitor's strategies will help you determine their strengths and weaknesses and find out what your competitors are doing and what kind of threat they present to the financial well-being of your marketplace.

Here are a few tips that will help you understand a competitor analysis.

Identifying your Top Competitors

Every company has their own competitors within the market that try to steal potential customers time after time. There are direct and indirect competitors in relation to your product or services that you have to offer. Within your company, the sales and marketing teams are probably well aware of your top five to ten competitors, but this really depends on if your company is local, national or international. Identifying which organizations should be considered as your top competitors is initially the first step to doing a competitor analysis.

Always Analyze & Compare Content

Once you’ve identified your top competitors you can start analyzing each competitor to find out what type of information they focus on publishing. Finding out what kind of content creation your competitors focus on is key. Doing a little research and finding out if your competitors blog about content, use webinars, videos, case studies or feature articles can help you determine what opportunities you have to help you outperform your competitors. When analyzing and comparing content, competitive strategies fall into the areas of Product, Pricing, Distribution, Promotion, and Advertising. Locating the content of your competitors can help you determine the quality and see how the information compares to you. Comparing your competitors content to your own gives you a better perspective of where you need to put in more effort and resources.

Check Out Social Media Usage

Competitors are now using different social media platforms every day to boost their company’s presence. It's important to learn how your competitors are using social media and integrating it into their marketing. Social media is a trending aspect of all businesses today and it's also a great way for companies to interact with their customers and users. It’s always good to check out your competitor's social media usage to see what they’re currently posting if people are interested and how they’re using their profiles. Things you can look for on a competitor's social media platform is if they’re posting frequently, what kind of audience is following them and what’s so attractive about their content. By checking out other competitors social media usage you can learn from key influencers in your industry and apply new things to your own social media content.

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