What You Can Learn From Your Competitors?

Competitor research isn’t a new thing but an important part of marketing. Businesses keep watching their competitors from close to know what are they doing and determine how they are doing things. But it isn’t that you should jump and copy everything your competitors are doing, you should watch them closely and follow only good things.

Here’s how you can take advantage of competitor research. Follow the five point marketing formula to follow your competitors and see what keeps them ahead in competition. You can take many lessons from their good and bad deeds and clear your way to success.

1# Know your competitors

Every business has two types of competitors – traditional and online. While it is easy to locate competitors in traditional market, online market works in a different way. In digital market, you compete for keywords for which any website from a blog to a DIY site could compete. So, you have indirect competitors on the web and you simply can’t ignore these sites. It can also be said that you need doing more marketing work on the web.

2# Know user engagement of your competitors

When you know your competitor sites, you can easily see where they are currently engaged. These websites are occupying digital space you are competing for. The best thing you can do is to locate the space where competition is weak. The objective is to occupy the space left free. It is like catching a low hanging fruit before anyone sees the fruit. Every website sitting on the space you need is your competitor. You simply can’t reject a site just because it is working as a knowledge bank. These sites are keeping your targeted customers engaged.

3# Understand the best things your competitors are doing

See how your competitors are doing and what are the things that are working in their favor. For instance, a site could achieve exceptional organic ranking with the help of social media optimization. It could be weak in SEO and good in social media marketing. Similarly, you can see other factors working in favor of your competitors. This research will help you understand how your competitors are doing better than your site. You can set your marketing campaigns right following the footsteps of your competitors.

4# Weak points of your competitors

Your competitor sites might be doing well in some areas but they can’t be good in everything. A site could be good in SEO but poor in SMO. Businesses do many things poorly. You need looking at activities of your competitors to find things they can’t do correctly. It is like learning from mistakes of others. You might need doing the similar things but you can do those things correctly. In this way, you will have a strategic advantage over your competitors.

5# Know what is the level of investment of your competitors

It is difficult to win the battle with half-hearted measures, when your competitors are engaged in heavy digital marketing. First of all, you need knowing how much time and money your competitors are investing on digital marketing. You have to overspend your competitors in time and money to win the battle. You need tracking your competitor sites to monitor their activity and also find ways to outperform your competitors.

Conclusion

Competition is a wealth of knowledge that can provide you valuable information on what works and what doesn’t work. Every competitor is a case study that can tell what measures the competitor took and how successful was the site in its efforts. You might not follow footsteps of your competitors but you can certainly get amazing ideas for digital marketing.