One may think that competitor analysis is just for the big corporations and fortune 500 companies. But, that’s not true. Anyone new to the world of the web can feel a little lost in the beginning. Therefore, looking at your competitors and seeing what they are doing can give a sense of direction to your marketing efforts.
Coming up with new content ideas all the time can be particularly difficult for many marketers. But, with the right tricks, you’ll never run out of things to share and you’ll also be able to stand out and beat your competitors.
Here are some content analysis ideas brought to you by SPOPLI –
Mine their pages to see which ones you’re missing
The first thing you should do is – audit your competitors’ websites. Study all their pages and their content. Pay close attention to the pages missing on your site that competitors have. This doesn’t necessarily have to be about just the ‘product’ related pages. Look for stuff like reviews, testimonials, case studies, success stories, pages dedicated to company culture, etc. Anything that makes them stand out.
It’s always good to look for anything creative and incorporate that into your content strategy.
Observe their key selling points
The homepage of any website is the most crucial. It’s the first point of interaction between the brand and the customer. If the homepage is compelling enough to retain them, they will want to explore more. This is why you should see what kind of USPs the brand has used for the home page.
Pay close attention to the kind of things highlighted most on the homepage. You too can highlight brand mentions by the industry leaders or associations with business bureaus such as BBB. It could be anything that fits your brand image. But, it’s always good to look at what your competitors are highlighting right off the bat.
Identify ‘content gaps’ and fill them
They say ‘content is king’! And rightly so! Make it a point to fill any ‘content gaps’. It’s the buzz term in competitor analysis. And it goes beyond just looking at what kind of blog posts your competitors publish.
It involves diving deep into their content strategy, analyzing it, and looking at things like video content, podcasts, case studies, infographics, papers, etc. Pay particular attention to the nature of topics. See if you’re missing out on any particular topics. Perhaps they have a fresher take on things or maybe they are tackling the topics from a different angle.
Once you have noted all this down, start filling those gaps by putting out greater quality content to beat your competitors.
For analyzing content gaps, you can use marketing tools like SEMRush, The Hoth, and Ahrefs.
Sign up for their newsletters to get email updates
Emails and newsletters are one of the most effective ways of marketing. The majority of companies still conduct newsletter campaigns. You might want to sign up for 7-8 of your competitors newsletters.
Most websites will let you subscribe via their contact page and subscription are mostly free. By closely monitoring the kind of content they regularly send out, you can maintain a stock of content ideas to publish every week. Observing the newsletter also gives you an idea about the tone, structure, frequency, and type of content to craft.
Observe their social media presence
Almost all serious brands are present on social media. You should be too. Get a feel for your competitor’s social media pages by following them and seeing what kind of content they put out. Is it videos or microblogs? Are they publishing longer or shorter posts? See which posts have the highest engagement and try to curate content along the same lines.
Pay close attention to the tone of the content and the kind of images they have used with each post. Also see the kind of hashtags they have used and the keywords supplied in the description for each post.
Analyze their Video Content
The popularity of video content is on the rise. It’s evident by Instagram incorporating bite-sized video content and introducing features like IGTV that now supports hour-long videos. The reason is that internet bandwidth has improved considerably. Therefore, people can now access video content more easily without buffering.
It’s always good to analyze what kind of videos your competitors create. Observe them across their websites and social media platforms. Pay attention to the tone, length, and placement of the video on the page.
Know their best-targeted keywords
Although there’s no direct way to find out which keywords your competitors are focusing on, you can do so in some indirect ways. You must know that targeting the right keywords and curating content around those terms remains the single most important thing for all your marketing efforts. One way you can find your competitors targeted keywords is to see their product descriptions. For instance, if you both sell on Amazon, pay attention to their product descriptions and see which keywords they have incorporated.
Final words
Remember, you and your competitors are part of the same world. So, most likely you are all facing the same set of challenges. By examining how others are dealing with those challenges you can make things a lot easier for yourself. This is what competitor analysis is all about.
