An Ultimate Guide on How to Do Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing

 In the quick-paced environment of digital marketing, scaling up the best in the partnership is essential for your business to grow. Do you need to perform a competitor analysis regularly like one done at the start of your career, and if so, why?) An in-depth competitor analysis helps you get insights that gear your marketing plans to stay competitive. You are in the right place if you are looking to learn how to do competitor analysis in digital marketing. In this blog, we will help you walk through the process step by step, giving you insight and tools to help you be more aware of your competitors and, as a result, improve your own digital marketing.

What is Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing?

Competitor analysis in digital marketing is the in-depth assessment of your business competitors’ game plans. This may include analyzing their online presence, marketing channels, keywords, backlinks, content strategy, social media, etc. The keyword here is to find where you can outperform your competitors by analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your business.

A competitive analysis in digital marketing means not only identifying your competitors but also the gaps in their strategies that you can exploit to your benefit. Conducting a digital marketing competitors analysis ensures that you remain ahead of the curve and make necessary optimizations in your campaigns to make them successful.

Hands-on Competitive Analysis Guide for Digital Marketing

The process of doing competitor analysis in digital marketing should be structured and systematic. So, to help you get started, here’s a step-by-step guide:

Check Organic Search Visibility

The competitors’ organic search visibility is one of the first things that you should analyze in the competitor analysis digital marketing. You need to look at theirs rankings for relevant keywords and their organic visibility.

Tools to use: Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz.

Keyword Analysis: Analyze the search terms that competitors are ranking for and see how you fare. Pay attention to the higher-volume and long-tail keywords that are bringing traffic to their sites.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Position: See where your competitors rank for these keywords. Are they among the top results when searches are made? How much traffic could they be receiving?

This gives you the precise information you need about your competitors’ SEO position and what keywords you should pursue for greater organic visibility.

Check Up on Their Paid Search Campaigns

You should see what your competitors are doing in paid search, including their ongoing PPC campaigns on Google Ads and other channels. This will give you insight into their paid-for marketing budget, as well as the keywords they are targeting and the ad copy they are using.

Tools to use: SEMRush, SpyFu, Google Ads Keyword Planner

Paid Keywords — Which keywords your competitors are bidding on? What relevant keywords are they targeting which are worth considering?

Ad Copy & Landing Pages: Analyze their ad copy & landing pages. Are they compelling? What CTAs are they using? Have they optimized their landing pages in a way that would convert better?

You can learn how your competition is doing paid advertising and use this to make more informed decisions about your own ads.

Investigate Their Backlink Strategy

Search engines use backlinks as one of the most important ranking factors. Looking into the backlinks that your competitors are getting can give you an idea of their domain authority and reputation online.

What tools to use: Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz.

Backlink Profile: This quick overview of the backlink profile will show you what websites are linking to your competition. They have high authority – are they? What gaps can you fill by getting similar backlinks?

Anchor Text Analysis: Analyze the anchor text of the backlinks to get an idea of what keywords your competitors are targeting.

You can enhance your own website’s SEO and domain authority by discovering prospects for backlink building.

Discover What Platforms Are Working For Them

It is crucial to know where your competitors are using their digital marketing as well. These can be, for example, search engines, social media networks or ad networks. This is where competitors mapping is critical.

Technology Used on Website —BuiltWith or Wappalyzer — can list the technologies and scripts used by your competitors on their website.

Advertise platforms: Are they advertising on Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or others? Knowing where their ads are placed can help you set your ad budget.

This will allow you to outline what platforms your competitors are using, and find holes for you to target your audience successfully.

Explore Their Website

[A competitor’s site is typically the center of their digital marketing.] You can gain great insight from the layout, web copy, and conversion elements of their site.

Content Strategy — Go through their posts, product pages, and everything else. Are they generating quality content to solve customer pain points? Are they optimizing their pages with SEO tactics?

User experience: Is the website user-friendly? Is it mobile-friendly? How quickly does the site load?

An effective digital marketing strategy includes a user (UX) and SEO-optimized website.

Take a look at their social media accounts

Social media is also an integral piece of every digital marketing strategy. Going through your competitors’ presence on social media will give you an idea of how they interact with their audience and the type of content they publish.

Suggested tools: BuzzSumo Social Blade and Hootsuite

Which social media platforms are they using? Are you on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc?

Content: What sort of content do they post (videos, images, blog links, etc.)? How often do they post? How active is their audience (likes, comments, shares)?

Messaging: Are they clear with their messaging, and does it align with their brand values? Are they working with any influencers or brand ambassadors?

Studying your competitors’ social media channels can help you enhance your own social media strategy and engage more with your audience.

Implement a Framework for Deeper Study

Once all this data is gathered, you can then use something like a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to see how your competitors stack up and how your business can shine.

Strengths: What are your competitors doing right? It could be better content, better backlink profiles, or better social media presence.

Weaknesses: Identify areas in which they fall short with their plans and use this to your advantage. Perhaps they’re overlooking important keywords or not adequately connecting with their audience.

Opportunities — From what you uncovered, map out new opportunities to enhance your digital marketing strategy.

Threats: Lastly, it would be best if you examined what potential threats your competitors pose, such as malicious ad campaigns or high-quality content.

You can do it by using this framework and understanding what best practices your competitors follow.

Case Studies of Competitor Analysis in Digital Marketing

An online travel agency successfully outperformed its competitors with a digital marketing competitor analysis. After scraping their competitors’ content and social media tactics, they realized their competitors were not efficiently targeting long-tail keywords around specific destinations. This combination of targeted content with high-volume, high-competition searches allows agencies to maintain a constant flow of qualified traffic that delivers them as customers.

In another example, we helped a SaaS company who used competitors mapping to discover a gap in their market. Exploring their competitors’ websites and social media channels, they realized there was a gap that their competitors weren’t filling, and there was demand. They built and promoted this feature by combining their content and paid ads, and it resulted in a 40% increase in their sales. As you explore ways to improve, understanding the nuances of digital advertising vs. digital marketing can help you decide where to focus your efforts. 

User Testimonials

“Competitor analysis is a must-know for our digital marketing campaign. We had already identified gaps in our strategy and adapted our ad campaigns and content strategy. As a result, reaped a 30% increase in conversions in a span of two months!” – John Smith, Marketing Manager, TravelPro Agency.

“Using tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush to analyze the backlink strategy of our competitors and using that data to pinpoint where we were lagging in SEO gained us some valuable insights.” We increased our domain authority and organic traffic drastically by obtaining similar backlinks.” – Sarah Miller, SEO Specialist, SaaS Solutions

Security and Privacy Focus

Make sure that you’re not breaking any privacy laws and ethics when you do a digital marketing competitor analysis. Do not use unethical and illegal methods to get information, rather use only such methods that are ethical. For instance, do not scrape private or confidential data, and respect intellectual property rights when doing competitor analysis.

Also, if you are using any competitors’ analysis tools, ensure that they are GDPR compliant.

Conclusion

Competitor analysis is a necessary skill — and knowing how to do it is crucial — if you want to stay ahead in the competitive landscape of today’s digital marketing world. When you leverage of the above-mentioned steps, you will uncover your competitors’ strategies, identifying the opportunities and refining your digital marketing strategy.

A comprehensive digital marketing competitive analysis will keep you nimble, enhance your campaigns, and put together a winning digital marketing strategy as you plan for the future and fight competition ahead.

Analyzing competitors’ strategies can reveal opportunities to refine your approach. If you’re evaluating external support, are digital marketing agencies worth it is a great resource to explore their potential value.”

Frequently Asked Question

1. How to do digital marketing competitor analysis?

To conduct a digital marketing competitor analysis:

1. Identify your key competitors.
2. Analyze their online presence (website, SEO, social media, and content).
3. Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SimilarWeb to evaluate their traffic sources and keywords.
4. Study their audience engagement and ad strategies.
5. Look for gaps and opportunities to differentiate your strategy.

2. What are the 5 steps to analyze your competitor?

The 5 key steps are:

1. Identify Competitors: List direct and indirect competitors in your niche.
2. Assess Competitors’ Online Presence: Study websites, blogs, and social media platforms.
3. Analyze SEO and Keywords: Use tools to identify high-performing keywords and backlinks.
4. Evaluate Marketing Strategies: Check their content marketing, email campaigns, and ads.
5. Benchmark and Improve: Compare their strategies with yours and refine your approach.

3. How do you conduct a competitor analysis in marketing?

Competitor analysis involves:

1. Researching Competitors: Identify top players in your industry.
2. Data Collection: Use tools and techniques to gather information about their marketing efforts.
3. Analyzing Strengths and Weaknesses: Identify what they do well and where they lack.
4. Strategizing: Use insights to optimize your marketing strategy.

4. What is digital competitive analysis?

It is a process of evaluating the online competitive strategies of your competitors in relation to their SEO, PPC, content, social media, and website performance. This offers insights about their strengths, weaknesses, and how you can leverage opportunities that can help you outperform these competitors digitally.

5. Is SWOT a competitive analysis?

SWOT analysis is not solely a competitive analysis, but it can be used as part of one. It evaluates:

• Strengths: What your company excels at.
• Weaknesses: Things you do worse than your competitors.
• Opportunities: Markets gaps or trends to exploit.
• Threats:External challenges, such as competitors, which may lead to failure.

References:

1. “How to Conduct a PPC Competitor Analysis” Neil Patel.
2. “What Is a Competitive Analysis — and How Do You Conduct One?” HubSpot.