Mastering Competitor Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide with a Free Template

Mastering Competitor Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide with a Free Template

Introduction

Competitor analysis is the process of gathering information about your competitors’ products, services and marketing strategies. It can help you understand how they’re performing and where they might be vulnerable.
This guide will show you how to carry out a competitor analysis using data from Google Analytics (GA). You’ll learn how to identify key metrics that reveal your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as how their performance compares with yours. We’ll also look at some ways in which you can use this information when planning future campaigns or making decisions about your current strategy.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

The first step in competitor analysis is to identify your competitors. You can do this by researching your industry, identifying potential competitors and then narrowing down the list to those who are most likely to impact your business.
There are many tools available online that can help with this process including Google Alerts and Mention (for social media monitoring), Social Mention (for general keyword searches) or SEMrush (for keyword research).

You can also search for your competitors on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and review their websites to get an idea of how they approach their business. Once you have a list of potential competitors, start with the ones that are most similar to your business. These companies will be easiest for you to understand and analyze because they operate in the same industry as you. Next, expand your analysis to include companies in adjacent industries or those who are at different stages of their lifecycle than yours.

Step 2: Gather Data

The sources you use will depend on what kind of business you’re in, but there are some general ones that apply to most businesses:

  • Your website’s analytics
  • Company reports (SEC filings)
  • Competitor social media accounts (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram):
  • Industry trade publications and blogs that cover your industry
  • Company websites and annual reports
    This can be a time-consuming process because it requires you to do research on each competitor individually. You want to make sure that the information you get is accurate and thorough so that it’s useful for making decisions later on in the analysis process.

Step 3: Analyze the Data

Now that you have your data, it’s time to analyze it.

  • Identifying strengths and weaknesses: This is where you’ll look at the different areas of your business and decide what is working well, what isn’t working as well and why. You can also use this step to identify opportunities for improvement or ways that competitors may be able to beat you in the future.
  • Opportunities and threats: Here, we want to figure out how our competitors are going after our customers by identifying their strengths (what they do better than us), weaknesses (what we do better than them) and threats posed by external factors such as new technologies or regulations that could impact our industry in some way

Step 4: Develop a Strategy

  • Set goals. We want to figure out what we want to achieve and how long it will take us to get there. You can also use this step to identify what resources you need in order to accomplish your goals and how much they will cost. Assess the risks involved with various strategies. Once you know what your strategy is going to be, it’s important that you assess the risks associated with each strategy so that you can make an educated decision about which one makes sense for your business at this point in time.
  • Develop a plan. Once you’ve determined what your goals are, how long it will take to reach them and what resources they will require, it’s time to develop a plan. This step is where all of the other steps come together and you start taking action. Keep in mind that this step isn’t just about doing things once; instead, it’s about doing things over and over again until your strategy becomes habitual.
  • Create strategies based off competitor analysis results. If you’ve done a thorough competitor analysis, then you already know who your competitors are and what they’re doing. You also have an idea of where they’re strong, where they’re weak and what marketing strategies they use to grow their business. Use this information as a starting point for developing your own strategies.

Step 5: Monitor and Adjust

Monitoring changes in the market is a vital component of competitor analysis. You need to know when competitors are making moves and how they’re changing their strategies so you can adjust yours accordingly.
Monitoring competitor moves can be done through secondary sources like news articles, industry reports, and social media posts. For example, if one of your competitors launches a new product or service offering and announces it on Twitter, then this would be an indicator that they’re expanding their business in this area and should be considered in future strategy decisions.
If you see any changes happening within your industry that may affect your company’s performance (or vice versa), make sure to respond quickly by adjusting your strategies accordingly!

Using a Competitor Analysis Template

Using a competitor analysis template is an easy way to get started on your own analysis. It’s also a good idea if you’re working with someone else who will be analyzing competitors, because it ensures that both of you are using the same criteria and language when talking about each company.

The first thing to do when you create a competitor analysis template is to list all of the companies that are competing against you in the marketplace. This will help ensure that you don’t leave any out, and it will also give you some context for how large or small your competitors are relative to each other. Next, rate each company on various criteria such as market share, revenue growth rate and financial health (if available).

You can also add a rating for how “interesting” you think that company is, and list any other information that might be relevant to your analysis. For example, if one of your competitors has just launched a new product or service, then this would be an important piece of information to note. The more complete your competitor analysis spreadsheet is, the better it will serve as a starting point for brainstorming ideas about how to out-compete them in the marketplace.

When you’re ready to create your own competitor analysis spreadsheet, simply follow the steps below:

1. List all of your competitors in one column. Make sure that they’re organized by type (e.g., direct vs indirect), product or service and geographic location if applicable.

2. In the next column over, write down the company’s name and website address if available. If not, then just include their industry category instead (e.g., “food delivery services”). When you’re ready to create your own competitor analysis spreadsheet, simply follow the steps below:

Step 3: Use the competitor analysis spreadsheet to brainstorm ideas on how to out compete your competitors. This involves looking at each of the companies that you have identified as competitors and considering whether there is any way that they could be doing something better than what they are currently offering. If so, then this would represent an opportunity for your company to improve its own offering and capture some market share from one or more of these companies.

The competitor analysis spreadsheet will help you to do this by providing a framework for looking at each of your competitors and comparing them with one another. It is important that you do not simply look at one company’s offering in isolation, but rather consider how it compares with those of its competitors.

Now that you’ve brainstormed, it is time to prioritize your ideas. This can be done by looking at how much each idea could impact the market, as well as how easy or difficult it would be for your company to implement them. For example, if one competitor has an extremely high price point for its products and services then this could have a major impact on the market because it means that other providers may be able to offer their own similar offerings at a lower price point (which in turn means that consumers benefit from lower prices).

The next step is to determine how you can use this information to improve your own business. This may involve making changes to your products or services, as well as reviewing your pricing structure and marketing strategies.

 

Conclusion

  • In this guide, we’ve covered how to use competitor analysis to improve your marketing strategy.
  • To get the most out of this process, you should start by defining your goals and identifying which competitors will be most useful for reaching them.
  • Next, gather data on each of these competitors so that you can analyze their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own business model and product offerings.
  • Finally–and most importantly–use this information as a basis for creating new strategies that will help set you apart from the competition!

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