‘Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.’   In a digital scenario, this saying reiterates the importance of competitor analysis. A few strategic steps to move your ranking up in the world of Digital Marketing helps to improve your digital brand capital and impacts your business & profitability directly.  So if your business has overlooked this critical step, it’s time to pull up your socks and start now.  List your competitors and study their presence on the social media platforms.

Website: Comb through the competitor website and keep an eye on the visitor count. Find out what is drawing the customers to the website.  It could be a landing page aided by search optimisation or social marketing. This provides a clear clue to what the customers’ expectations are. Check their meta tags to know the keywords that lead to their site. Don’t overstuff your website with keywords as it tends to be repetitive for the readers and could make them lose interest.

Mobile: Are your competitors’ websites responsive? If not, that is where you can score a couple of brownie points for your business. Your competitors’ mobile apps and number of downloads can help you determine if an app is a profitable business proposition for your business. Even if their apps are not successful, it helps you understand what works or doesn’t work for your target audience.

Social Media: Start by listing their social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram Google+, etc) and the frequency of posts. Observe the posts that gain maximum traction and the frequency of contests/campaigns. It is important to understand the competitor’s strategy and weigh in with your strengths!

Search Marketing: You might be sure of the keywords relevant for your business but do you know if it is popular in the search engine? It is possible that a synonymous word could be the most searched term for your business. Even if your keywords are highly popular, it’s a good practice to find who is competing for those keywords. Your competitors URL can help you find which keywords Google considers as closely related to their site. So fortify your content with popular keywords related to your business. Look at your competitors’ presence in popular online directories and how they have utilized the profile features.

Content Marketing: Content marketing is another genius method of indirect marketing. Give your customers value added content related to your business to create brand awareness and organic traffic. A quick analysis of your competitor’s strength and weakness in content marketing will help you exploit their weakness and learn from their strengths for the apt strategy in content marketing. Your competitors’ quality of content, frequency of post and medium of propagation can give you hints to build a sound content strategy.

Choose your channels carefully. Exploit your strengths and your competitors’ weakness. Watch your competitors’ take on user experience, channels & strategy to help you build a strong digital marketing strategy. To succeed, keep track of your competitors consistently. Find the missing links and weave them in to your strategy, build on it and make it interactive and engaging. Be ready to be challenged continuously and inspired by new ideas.  However, if you you need concentrated efforts or a specialist to help you streamline your strategy in line with competitor analysis, drop us a line at askus@codelattice.com and we will be happy to help you!

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Written By Axel Balakrishnan

Axel is a co-founder of Codelattice and heads the MARCOMM unit. Perfection in creativity is his motto. He frequently blogs his thoughts on Branding, social media, strategy and Marketing. You can connect with him through axel@codelattice.com