Competitor Analysis and Marketing Channels: A Step-by-Step Guide

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is a crucial part of any successful social media marketing strategy. By understanding what our competitors are doing, we can gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t, helping us refine our own approach.

Let’s break it down into key points to cover all the essential details we need to know:

1. What is Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis is the process of researching and evaluating our competitors' strategies, tactics, and performance to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

This involves examining:

• The platforms they use (e.g., Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube)
• The type of content they post (e.g., videos, infographics, articles)
• Their audience engagement (likes, shares, comments)
• Their advertising and promotional strategies

In the context of social media, it’s about studying how competitors interact with their audience, the content they publish, and the overall engagement they receive.

2. Why Should We Do Competitor Analysis?

Conducting competitor analysis offers several benefits for our social media marketing strategy:

• Identify Market Trends: Understanding what’s trending in our industry helps us stay relevant. If competitors are using certain formats or tools, they may have spotted a trend we haven’t yet.
• Improve Our Own Strategy: Competitor analysis helps us identify gaps in our approach. We can learn from their successful tactics and improve our own.
• Spot Opportunities: It highlights areas where our competitors aren’t focusing, giving us the chance to dominate those spaces. For example, if they aren’t using video content and we know our audience prefers videos, this becomes an opportunity for us.
• Benchmarking: By analyzing competitors’ performance, we can set realistic benchmarks for our own social media efforts, such as engagement rates and follower growth.
• Understand Our Audience Better: Competitors may have insights about our target audience that we haven’t tapped into yet. By observing which content resonates with their audience, we can better understand what our audience prefers.

3. How to Conduct Competitor Analysis for Social Media

Here’s a step-by-step guide to conducting competitor analysis for social media:

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

Start by identifying who your competitors are. These could be:

Direct Competitors: Brands that offer similar products or services to the same target audience.

• Example 1: Nike vs. Adidas Nike and Adidas are direct competitors because both sell athletic footwear, apparel, and sports equipment, targeting the same audience of athletes and sports enthusiasts.
• Example 2: McDonald's vs. Burger King McDonald's and Burger King are direct competitors because both offer fast food, including burgers, fries, and beverages, to a similar customer base.

Indirect Competitors: Brands that may not sell the same products but still target the same audience.

• Example 1: Nike vs. Lululemon, which focuses on yoga and fitness apparel, is an indirect competitor to Nike. While Lululemon doesn't specialize in footwear or the same sports gear as Nike, they target a similar health-conscious, active lifestyle audience.
• Example 2: McDonald's vs. Grocery Stores (Walmart, Whole Foods) A grocery store like Walmart or Whole Foods can be considered an indirect competitor to McDonald's because they offer customers an alternative to eating out, even though they don’t provide the exact same service.

My Methods for Competitor Analysis

Here are the methods I use for competitor analysis to better understand my market:

1. Using Google Search to Identify Competitors

Google is my first go-to method for identifying businesses that offer similar products or services. Here’s how you can use it, incorporating your personal experience.

Step-by-Step Process:

• Step 1: Start by identifying keywords related to our business. These should be words that describe our services or customer needs. For example, if we are analyzing for an interior design firm, our keywords could be: Interior design services, Home décor services, Modern interior designers, etc.

• We can also add demographics if we are looking for specific locations, like Bangalore. Additionally, find at least 10 search keywords related to the niche.
• Step 2: Enter these keywords into Google Search and analyze the top results on the first couple of pages. Look for businesses offering similar services.
• Step 3: Visit the websites listed in the search results and go through their content. Check their service offerings, portfolio, and target audience. If we find that they are direct or indirect competitors, we’ll want to gather more information.
• Step 4: Once we identify them as competitors, check their social media handles, which are often listed on their website (typically in the footer or contact section). This gives us insight into their social media presence.
• Step 5: List down their social media handles in a Google Sheet for future reference.
• Step 6: Once we’ve identified 10 to 20 competitors, the next step is to focus on understanding which marketing channels they engage in the most. This will help us see where they are putting their efforts (Instagram, Pinterest, blogs, ads, etc.).

Example: Imagine we’re running a company that offers interior design consultations. We search for “best interior design firms in Bangalore” or “top home décor services in Bangalore” on Google. We might find brands like Livspace, Carafina, or WEA Designs, etc. After visiting their websites and confirming that they are competitors, we can check their social media handles (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest), list them in our Google Sheet, and continue gathering this data for other competitors.

2. Using Social Media Platforms to Identify Competitors

Social media platforms allow us to look deeper into our competitors’ strategies and content. Here's your approach to doing this effectively.

Step-by-Step Process:

• Step 1: After identifying competitor websites, go to their social media profiles (which we’ve already noted in our Google Sheet) to check:
• Step 2: A hack I use is creating a secondary Instagram account and following all the competitors I listed from this account. Because Instagram will start showing us suggested accounts that are similar to the ones you follow, this can also be used for future content reference. I use a single secondary account for all my clients.
• Step 3: Go through these suggested accounts and add the relevant ones to our competitor list. This technique helps us discover new competitors we might have missed in our Google search.

Finding Marketing Channels

Now, after completing competitor analysis, let’s move on to finding marketing channels to focus on. You can use this template for the time being if you are just starting out.

Competitors Marketing Channels Template

Copy and paste the company name, website, and social media handles used by the competitors into the template. Based on the count of the social media platforms utilized by the competitors, the names of the common channels will automatically update in the “Top Channel” column, and the count of the most common channels will be displayed in the “Count” column in descending order, as shown in the image below.

The concept is that whichever channel is most used among all the competitors can be our primary focus.

PS: Please don’t completely depend on the template data to select the marketing channels; this is only to help you to start with. There’s more to selecting the channels based on B2B, B2C, and B2G approaches, which we will be covering in the advanced lessons.

The above method is a basic way to get started. There are numerous free and paid tools to do this activity without a manual approach, which we will be exploring in coming chapters. If you are curious about tools, then you can try some of the tools listed below:

• Hootsuite: Offers detailed reports on competitor performance across platforms.
• BuzzSumo: Helps you find top-performing content for any competitor.
• Social Blade: Tracks follower counts and growth for competitors on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.
• Facebook Ads Library: Lets you see what ads your competitors are running.
• SEMrush: Provides competitive analysis for both SEO and social media.
• Metricool: Offers insights into social media performance and competitor analysis across various platforms.
• SimilarWeb: Provides website traffic insights and comparisons, helping you understand competitor online presence.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully completed the second chapter: Market Research!

With a good understanding of your audience and competitors, you're well-equipped to make informed decisions moving forward.

Next up is the exciting chapter on: Social Media Strategy.

Get ready to explore crafting a strategy that effectively reaches and engages your audience!

Look forward to seeing you in the next section!