Competitive research is the backbone of a strong marketing strategy. After all, if you can’t identify your competitors and their marketing tactics, you’ll struggle to differentiate yourself and your product from the crowd.
But how do marketers identify their primary competitors and their strategies? Here is our five-step strategy for how to identify your competitors, research your competition, and channel it into powerful marketing that meets your customers needs.
How to Find Your Competitors
Finding your competitors doesn’t have to be taxing or complicated. The first step to finding your competitors is to differentiate between your direct and indirect competition.
What is Direct Competition?
Direct competition is a term that refers to the companies or publishers who sell or market the same products as your business. Your customers will often evaluate both you and your direct competitors before making a purchase decision or converting.
What is Indirect Competition?
Indirect competition is a term that refers to the companies or publishers that don’t sell or market the same products, but are in competition with your business digitally. They may write the same type of content as you and be competing for the same keywords. In short, they are competing for your customers’ attention.
The term 'competitive intelligence' might make you think of corporate spy games, but it’s actually an ethical, simple and valuable technique that can aid your market research. Whether you're designing a marketing plan or launching a new product, it helps to have as much information as possible about your target marketplace. Though this may seem to throw a wrench in your current search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, there are specific voice search SEO strategies your business can use to improve your voice search readiness. From including keyword phrases that better suit voice search queries to nailing down exactly how to approach local SEO, these changes to.
As you craft your marketing strategy, you need to be aware of both your indirect and your direct competition. Let’s discuss three ways to identify both your direct and indirect competitors.
How to Identify Direct Competitors
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When identifying competitors who are in direct competition to your business, you’ll want to start with your product. A thorough understanding of your product and the value it provides to your audience or customers is crucial to identifying your direct competition.
If you work for a sneaker brand, for example, you are not simply in competition with other sneaker brands. You’re also in competition with large shoe retailers, and any other brands and business that are creating footwear. Only by looking at your product and evaluating its value (you need to know not just that your sneakers cover and protect feet, for example, but also that people might evaluate them for durability, athletic use, and style), will you realize the full scope of your competition.
A few effective techniques for identifying direct competitors:
1. Market Research
Take a look at the market for your product and evaluate which other companies are selling a product that would compete with yours. Talk to your sales team and find out which competitors they see come up often in their sales process. From there, you’ll be able to take a closer look at those companies, their product and marketing efforts, and create strategies to outperform them.
2. Solicit Customer Feedback
Again, your customers are the key to unlocking your direct competitors. Once they’ve decided on your business and product, you can ask them which other businesses/products they were evaluating. Customers often reveal unexpected competitors that aren’t even on your radar.
In addition, during the sales process your sales team can also ask your potential customers which businesses they are considering. If they haven’t decided on your product yet, your team will be able to speak to their needs better if you know which businesses or products they are considering.
3. Check Online Communities on Social Media or Community Forums
In this day and age, your potential customers will often seek out advice and recommendations on social media sites and apps, or on community forums like Quora or Reddit. By investigating the conversations your customers have on these websites, you’ll be able to further identify your competitors.
This is especially true for any marketers speaking to millennial audiences. Research by Deloitte shows that 50% of millennials report that a recommendation from a friend or family member has a high influence on their buying decision. And 27% of both millennials and Gen Z feel an online recommendation from someone in their social media circle has a high influence on their buying decisions.
But enough about your direct competitors. What about the competitors you don’t even know about yet? How do you identify your indirect competitors?
How to Identify Indirect Competitors
Your indirect competitors have just as much influence on your selling process as your direct competitors. In fact, because your indirect competitors are often writing content that competes with yours, they have an even greater effect on potential customers in the early stages of the buyer’s journey. So how do you discover them? Checkout boostsocial sharing, countdown timer, upsell.
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is the best way to identify your indirect competition. By conducting a competitive SEO analysis, you can determine which businesses or publishers are competing for space on Google. After all, many of your customers are looking for your products and solutions by typing them into search engines. For today’s marketer, that means that you’re in competition not only with your direct competitors but with every other website competing for keywords important for your business.
If you are currently using an SEO platform or technology, you may find that your SEO technology can help you identify competitors with data and insights. For example, Conductor Searchlight can provide a high-level look at the keywords your direct competition is targeting. It also can tell you which websites are ranking for a keyword important your business. These represent your indirect competitors.
If you’re working manually, check out our guide to scoping out your competition through keyword research, A Step-By-Step Guide to Competitive Analysis.
2. Analyzing Google’s Search Engine Results Page
When it comes down to it, many of your indirect competitors are writing about topics close to your value proposition. If you examine the value proposition of your product, you’ll be able to identify keywords that are central to your product or offering. From there, type the keywords into Google and see who is competing with your content on search engines. Anyone writing content around your value proposition, represents a person, blog, business, publication, or organization that is the indirect competition of your business.
3. Take a Look at Paid Data
If you’ve taken the first two steps on this list, step three should be a breeze. Head into AdWords and scan those keywords that are important to your business. Is there a lot of competition for any of those keywords? If there is, check out which businesses or websites are purchasing ads for those keywords. If websites are paying for paid space on the search engine results page for a keyword, they’re competing with your content for space on Google.
You may find that, as you dive into the paid data, the websites purchasing ads are new competitors you weren’t aware of before. Those also might be known as, say it with me: your indirect competition.
How to Identify Marketing Opportunities Based on Competitor Research
After you’ve identified your competitors, you’ll want to identify marketing opportunities so you can start outperforming them.
Again, at this stage, keyword research can really help you decide where to put your efforts. If your competitors are targeting specific keywords with their content, where is there opportunity to outperform them? Are they implementing a particularly strong keyword strategy? What insights can you glean from that?
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Similarly, by looking at your competitor’s social media presence, you can evaluate where they’re focusing their attention and efforts. From there, you can look toward opportunities to either compete with them directly for attention around specific topics or questions, or differentiate your approach by looking for gaps in their content or new angles to approach questions your audience is posing.
Lastly, you can always go back to paid data. If your indirect or direct competitors are putting money behind ads, you can be sure those keywords represent important business initiatives. This will also provide insight into where your competition is placing their efforts and money. From there, it’s up to you to craft marketing strategies to compete.
When it comes to marketing and competition, it is absolutely essential to approach competitive analysis strategically. You have all the tools you need to develop a thorough understanding of your direct and indirect competition, and build a stronger marketing strategy based on that knowledge. So what are you waiting for?
Hey, what kind of blog would we be if we didn’t give you a CTA? To get started analyzing your indirect competition, check out our guide to the SEO competitive analysis.
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How To Use Competitive Intelligence To Boost Your Local Seo Service
No matter the industry, it is only natural for a business owner to want to provide the very best service to their target audience. The online reviews are there to act as proof that the company is doing a good job, and it can be disheartening to find negative reviews. However, it also offers an opportunity to turn things around and arguably make things better than they were before. For some companies, online reviews are not as big a priority, as there are often so many other things to consider. However, when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), such reviews play a big part in the overall success of a company. The top Houston SEO companies strive to acquire as many positive reviews as possible to help reinforce a digital marketing campaign.
It can sometimes be challenging to figure out if online reviews have a significant impact, as the Internet is often littered with all sorts of information, and not everyone can always find what they are looking for. However, if there is one thing the year 2020 has proven in the business landscape, it is that online reputation management (ORM) takes precedence if a new company wants to gain a foothold in their chosen industry.
Just as there are plenty of businesses clamoring for the attention of their target audience, there are far more online shoppers this year than ever before due to the recent pandemic. The online culture is often dependent on online reviews to try to figure out whether or not a product is worth their time. With the volume of online shoppers in the ongoing holiday season, it is only natural for companies to focus on ORM. Ideally, the use of SEO experts is recommended, as they not only provide a foundation for digital marketing but also utilize online reviews to boost local SEO.
The learning algorithm
Considering that SEO is about getting a higher rank in the search engine results page (SERP), the top Houston SEO companies work to ensure that all of the company’s bases are covered. It can be challenging to figure out the ins and outs of the world’s most popular search engine algorithm, but there are enough patterns to help most companies get a handle on how the algorithm handles certain details. For example, citations, including the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a company is crucial, as the algorithm will take all of the information online into account. If any of the citations do not match the other citations found, the algorithm will be more likely to rank a company lower in the search engine.
The same thing goes for online reviews. While having plenty of online reviews can be fantastic for any business, having an abundance of negative reviews with no resolution will only hurt a company’s push for brand recognition. Not only will the algorithm likely respond negatively, but any online shopper curious about the company’s products will look elsewhere.
How to turn a negative review into a positive result
Tackling a negative review is something that every business has to experience at one point. Even if the company owner works their hardest to ensure that the products and services rendered are of the highest quality, there will always be someone unhappy with the service. There might even be some that choose to write a negative review for fun. That said, there is a silver lining for most businesses in a competitive industry.
For example, if there is a negative review with constructive feedback, the reviewer will be more likely to respond to the company. It would be every business owner’s responsibility to get in touch with the unhappy customer and see that their concerns are addressed. Even those that are uninterested in communicating with the business will likely appreciate their attempt to rebuild trust. While no-one wants a scathing review, it does provide a golden opportunity to make things better for everyone involved by solving the problem. Perhaps the reviewer might even write a positive review as a result!
Why online reviews have an impact on search engine optimization
As stated above, the learning algorithm has a habit of taking all of the various information online about a company and figuring out whether it is worth boosting its spot in the rankings. However, it is not the only reason why online reviews are so crucial to SEO. Much of it has to do with how the company responds to such reviews, especially in social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and more.
It is a well-known fact in the SEO industry that consistently delivers results. If a company is as consistent as possible when it comes to how they interact with their consumers, they are far more likely to place high on search rankings. Stagnant businesses will end up being overshadowed by their more hardworking peers, which means it is crucial to consistently make an effort.
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How To Use Competitive Intelligence To Boost Your Local Seoul
It is typically not enough to hire a quality SEO agency to get the job done when it comes to digital marketing and brand recognition. It is also crucial for the company to work hard alongside the SEO agency to ensure that any issues are addressed as soon as possible. Negative online reviews might seem like a big problem, but they can be a blessing in disguise — especially for businesses that are always hungry to continue improving. While some types of negative reviews will not have any useful information, there will be others that have constructive feedback.
How To Use Competitive Intelligence To Boost Your Local Seo Marketing
The best part is that a company can develop a positive reputation when it comes to interacting with clients. If the business is known for trying to fix any issue clients might have, online users, are far more likely to avail themselves of the company’s services. Alongside the help of top Houston SEO companies, it develops a fantastic cycle for success where the reputation continues to grow. Online reviews are undoubtedly crucial, and how the company responds to the reviews is even more important.
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