Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
…and why you shouldn’t make it the be-all and end-all for your business.
The world of business and advertising can, sometimes, feel like a dog eat dog world. It’s a constant war for prospects’ attention and your business needs to consistently come up trumps over and above your competitors to become an industry leader.
Often, this can be draining. But it needn’t be! Understanding your competition is one of the main ways to not only boost your own business but can help you clarify how your business is different.
Therein lies your strength.
So whether you’re running successful Facebook advertising but want to take it further, you want a leg up when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, or you just want to have a good snoop at other businesses, here are our top tips for checking out the competition.
Direct competitors are those that are offering or marketing for the same or similar products to yours. Customers will often compare these with yours during the conversion journey before making a purchase.
Indirect competitors are those that don’t necessarily offer the same products or services, but they compete with you digitally for visibility and for web space. These are the competitors that you would target with SEO strategies.
Of course, keeping an eye on your competition is beneficial; it can help fill any gaps in your advertising or highlight areas where you can improve how your products or services meet your customers’ needs.
But, it’s important not to get hung up on comparing the granular details.
Running your business and advertising your solutions to customers is a delicate balance between keeping an eye on what your direct competitors are doing while still focusing on the quality and individuality of your own business.
As a digital marketing agency, we know the importance of standing out from the crowd. Therefore, it’s critical that these insights are used to further your own USPs rather than as a guide for your business model.
Gather insights into how your competitors run their business, how they engage with their customers and the kinds of marketing efforts they’re making but use this to ensure that your business is competitive – not the same.
Modelling your business in the same way as your competitors is a sure-fire way to wind up losing visibility and impact.
So, you know what direct competition is, now how do you keep track of what they’re up to?
Luckily, there are multiple ways to keep an eye on your competition and use these insights to strengthen your own business. Here are a few methods we recommend:
One of the best ways to identify your direct competition is through market research. This lets you look at other companies that offer similar products or services to yours and come up with USPs and marketing efforts to outperform them.
Whether this starts as a simple Google search or asking your sales team which brands they come across during their sales process, market research is invaluable.
This is another helpful tool for keeping an eye on what brands your customers are directly comparing during the conversion journey. Customers will (usually) always evaluate your business against a direct competitor before they make a purchase.
Once they’ve chosen your business, you can ask them which brands they were evaluating alongside yours and why.
Whether this is a simple customer survey requested after a purchase or a feedback form with an incentive – this is a key way to ensure you know exactly who you’re up against.
This feature on Facebook allows you to see whether your competitors are running paid ads on this social media platform. Here you can see their creative assets and what copy they’re running.
While it’s important to ensure you’re not running identical ads, this is a great way to compare direct competitors’ assets to yours and see how you can utilise your unique branding in a more-eye catching way.
A study in recent years found that nearly three quarters (73%) of Gen Zers and Millennials respondents value responses, reviews and opinions from online communities more than those from mainstream social media.
With reviews, community posts and forums weighing so heavily on buying intent, it’s essential to determine your competitors’ reputation and work to ensure that you can provide better experiences for your customers.
With influencer marketing growing at an unprecedented rate, social media is an undeniable powerhouse for making or breaking a brand. More so than ever, social media is being used for product research, online purchases and brand engagement.
This means that it’s invaluable to manage your own reputation online and check how your competitors use social media. Do they employ influencers? How often do they post organic content? What types of organic social content do they post?
Plus, it’s also important to understand where your competition is, where they’re visible, and what they’re doing to engage customers when it comes to social media advertising.
Of course, competitor analysis is also something that we’re familiar with as an experienced digital marketing agency. It’s a critical part of how we work to improve the efficiency of our campaigns.
If you’d like to know more about our innovative advertising strategies and how we can use market insights to boost your business, why not get in touch with our team?
Just because we’re a digital marketing agency in London, it doesn’t mean we can’t help your business wherever you are in the UK and wherever your audience is in the world. We run campaigns at all levels and completely understand the needs and challenges of running a small business! Our experience across a broad spectrum of digital marketing platforms means we have the experience and the know-how to get the job done.
The Good Marketer was founded in 2017 with a very clear mission and even clearer values. Although we might not have been around in the industry for as long as some of our competitors, we actually think that is a good thing. We’re open to new ideas and have invested in our experienced talent in order to provide the best service for all our clients. To get a better idea about this, read our reviews as they simply speak for themselves!
Our core values make us different. We’re not afraid to embed ourselves into your team, get under the skin of your business, seek out business challenges and provide positive results that make a real impact on your bottom line. We pride ourselves on being your business’s biggest champions because we’re genuinely passionate about working with SMEs.
We set our terms as 3 or 6 months, so we have enough time to deliver the results and execute the bespoke plan we put together for you. However, we have clients who have been with us for a number of years because of our proactive and personable approach. Long term relationships lead to the best successes, as we seek out business challenges and solutions together.
Absolutely! Whether you know exactly where you need to fill in the gaps or you need a full overhaul, we can help.
Here at The Good Marketer, we appreciate that you might not have the resources to invest in all channels immediately. We can create a digital strategy that is bespoke for your brand and in line with KPIs that we agree on together. This document will outline a strategic plan of the work, tests and optimisations we will do each month and will also highlight when we expect to introduce new channels and capitalise on bigger opportunities. Book a call to outline what you’re looking to achieve and find out more!
Phone: 0203 963 0810
Address: 4 Ravey Street, London, EC2A 4QP
info@thegoodmarketer.co.uk
Phone: 01245 951526
Address: Saxon House, 27 Duke Street, Chelmsford, CM1 1HT
info@thegoodmarketer.co.uk
