We see too many small businesses waste resources pursuing their market the wrong way, or even pursuing the wrong market altogether, that’s why we encourage the use of Competitive Intelligence as the backbone of any marketing strategy.
Competitive Analysis
It’s not a new concept, most people in business have put together either a business plan or a marketing plan at one stage or another, and will remember a portion of the process where they went and collected as much information on their competitors as they could. Usually the information gathered was focused on Product, Price, Distribution, and Promotion (the traditional marketing mix) which was used to form an analysis of their competitors and determine where exactly their company (or project) fit in. This process was often a time-consuming, but rewarding activity that provided valuable insight.
At Evolve Creative Marketing, our full service marketing and design firm, we use competitive intelligence and analysis as the backbone of our branding and marketing strategy. With a focus on data, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing Communications resources are a part of the process that we regularly use to help businesses understand market trends and opportunities in their area.
Our market analysis expertise allows us to evaluate a client’s Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and competition to identify gaps within their target market. This insight is used in evaluating marketing, search engine optimization and advertising opportunities. Armed with this information, we can better align our client’s design and communications to focus directly on profitable gaps or neglected areas of the marketplace. I thought I’d prepare this article to provide some insight into the rationale behind this.
Marketing Your Brand
There’s so much involved in marketing a brand, it’s without a doubt a very time consuming task that encompasses every aspect of a business. Developing a sustainable brand requires research, goal setting, and some – well, a lot of creative innovation. Once the work of brand creation is complete, it’s important to put it to work, continue to test it and promote it. It’s equally important to continue to evolve your brand and grow your company so that you don’t lose momentum and stall.
Gone are the days when the idea of “a brand” should last for more than 20 years. With stiff competition, a plethora (I can’t believe I just used the word “plethora”) of promotional media, and an abundance of new emerging products, services and technology to go with them, businesses must be willing to evolve their brands to stay competitive.
Competitive Analysis
Modern Marketing is a fast paced environment, with social, political, geographical and other trends changing at sometimes a daily pace, or faster. Businesses often get caught up in their own activities and lose track of what their competitors are doing. In my opinion, this is a big mistake.
Competitive Intelligence and analysis is one of the most important components of a marketing strategy, regardless of the size of the business or project. A small portion of what you can do through Competitive Intelligence can include:
* Tracking your competitors reputation through Social Media, Google Alerts, and other tools
* Analyzing Online Keywords through meta data and targeted On-Page SEO keywords can help identify what terms are being targeted (what terms your competition feel are relevant)
* Researching Website page strength can provide you with information on what content is most popular
* Search Marketing (pay-per-click) Ads can also be analyzed based on Keywords, with the right tools and know-how you can discover which PPC Ads are performing the best for a specific term
As you can see, there are a lot of different elements that can be examined through Competitive Intelligence, the benefit of which will be cost saving and provide you with not only a better understanding of your competitors, but also of your customers. If done right, you will be rewarded with a great understanding of the culture of your business, product/service, competitors, and the language being used by your targeted clients.
Where to start?
The first thing you want to do is make a list of competitors, you can chose which ones to include based on similar products, size of business, range of distribution and other factors. One good starting point is to look at which companies are often grouped in with your own, but don’t forget to add at least one “major player” a company that appears to have a much larger market share than yours and has the potential to have a much larger marketing budget for promotion. You can look at the major player as where you want your company to be in the future. Sometimes it’s also wise to look at a newly emerging company too, being a start-up, they may be using new technology or strategies as they enter into the market.
Once you have your list of competitors you might want to include some of the following into your research: Competitor Name, Size of Company, Products, Location, Range of Distribution, Pricing, Affiliate Program (if they have one), Community (what platforms are they using and what is their position), Referrals (who do they have on their side), Targeted Key Terms (what terms are they using to describe their business, product, etc), Targeted Messages (how are they communicating with their audience, what promotional material do they use, what are their most popular web pages, etc).
By discovering how your competitors are finding success in their marketing, you can build strength and sustainability into your own brand.
Establish some competitive goals for your business. One set of simple competitive goals can be to include Alexa and Google Page Rank as a metric to evaluate your online marketing success compared to your competitors, and try to out-perform your competition in terms of website traffic and “importance.”
At Evolve Creative Marketing, we offer sustainable design and competitive intelligence because clients need a comprehensive strategy to survive in today’s market, we go beyond traditional graphic design and web development to give our clients an edge. All of our client projects begin with competitive analysis as the backbone of the marketing campaign. From the market data we gather, we develop a sustainable brand and marketing strategy. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your company, feel free to give us a shout.
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