Hi! Oh… Where are you going? Why… Why are you hiding? It’s me, Blue Strawberry! Oh – you’ve mistaken me for your biggest competitor! Well, we do have a similar haircut… Which reminds me, I have to go to the hairdresser’s before Christmas.
Anyway, about the hide and seek situation… Don’t shy away from your competition. Rather, take advantage of competitive analysis to make your brand more prominent on the market.
Competitive analysis in a nutshell
Competitive analysis is a research process in which you’ll find out how you and your competitors stand on the market.
You will utilise that information to learn from your competitors what you can do better to strengthen your position.
Competitive analysis is essential to every marketing campaign
Don’t think that you’d be ‘’stealing’’ something if you do competitive analysis. Every successful business does it as part of their marketing campaign.
You know what they say – keep your friends and your enemies even closer. Except that your competitors are not your enemies – they can actually be very beneficial for you.
As long as you stay original and true to your brand, it’s fine. Taking a peek at what works great for your competitors is a valuable marketing move.
Types of competitors
Direct competitors are the ones who offer the same or almost the same products or services as you do. If you do manicure, you’re in direct competition with other beauty salons that do it too.
Indirect competitors don’t sell or offer the exact same products and services as you do, but work in the same niche and satisfy similar customer needs as you do. If you’re a manicurist, indirect competitors would be everyone who works in the beauty niche – e.g. salons that do facials and pedicures.
Explore your market
After you’ve found out who your direct and indirect competitors are, find out where your brand stands on the market in relation to them. This will make it easier for you to build your content strategy.
Explore how much your audience knows about your kind of products or services. If you’ve entered an already established market, learn from more experienced brands. If your brand is a novelty, you’ll have to make extra effort to convince your audience that they need what you have to offer.
Take note of social media channels
If your competitors use particular social media channels, they probably chose them because the content that bides well on these channels works especially well for their brand.
For example, if your competitors heavily use Instagram, your products or services are probably well advertised by short stories, videos or eye-catching photos.
On the contrary, if what you offer needs more thorough explaining, blogs or vlogs might be a better option.
Keep up to date
If you want to benefit from competitive analysis, you have to do it often and regularly.
Social media change constantly so you have to keep up with the trends. If you’ve noticed a hashtag or challenge craze among your competitors, don’t be the only one who doesn’t participate.
Furthermore, take note of how your competitors have evolved. Have they taken advantage of new social media features? Has it made difference? Has it been more or less beneficial for them? Learn from others’ mistakes and success.
AI competitive analysis tools
To stay true to my words, I would like to remind you that I’ve already talked about some of my competitors who offer a competitive analytics feature: Rival IQ, SproutSocial and Missinglettr.
And of course, there’s me – Blue Strawberry. Our advanced AI tools will help you analyse what works best for your brand to stay relevant on the market.
