How to Track Competitors’ Digital Marketing Strategies: A 5-Step Process

Do you know the secret of planning a great digital marketing strategy that works? Having real-time data about your competitors' activities and SEO techniques. Competitor analysis is an efficient way to determine where your brand stands in the market while also identifying your strengths and weaknesses compared to your rivals’ market position.

In the following paragraphs, we have discussed the definition and benefits of competition research. In the end, we have put together a detailed 5-step competitor analysis process, which will help you make more informed decisions and plan effective digital marketing strategies to beat the competition.

What is Competitor Analysis?

Competitor analysis is a method of identifying and analyzing the marketing tactics of your rivals, as well as researching their business traits and activities in a given market. By identifying the probable gaps present in your marketing strategies, you can determine the potential and scope of rectifying them.

Let’s face the truth! Your potential buyers will thoroughly research a product before finally clicking on the “Checkout” button. So, you must ensure your website is engaging and attractive enough to retain your potential leads.

Besides, ensure you are delivering a great experience and value by creating informative and engaging content to help your customers find what they are looking for. In other words, your online marketing moves should have the capability of converting your potential leads into paying customers.

Benefits of Competition Analysis

In today’s ever-changing and dynamic marketplace, eCommerce brands need to beat the competition to stand out. Here are the reasons you should keep a sharp eye on your rivals’ activities.

• To stay updated on the market trends and the industry.

• To identify the channels that work best for your eCommerce growth.

• To upgrade your marketing mix by gaining important news on your competitors' activities, like new product launches, new brand awareness campaigns, etc.

• To learn the best eCommerce marketing approaches and industry practices, thus learning to avoid mistakes.

• To revisit and redefine your goals and objectives.

5 Steps to Perform Competitor Research

Competitor analysis may seem like an endless task, and it is true to some extent. You need to constantly stay updated about your rivals’ activities, such as their product launches, new campaigns, social media strategies, and so on. However, to make it easier for you, here are some efficient approaches to help you stay focused.

Identity Your Competitors

Yes, it may seem obvious at first. But not really! Not all brands selling the same category of products would be a competitor. You must drill down your niche and the brands sharing your market in that area.

For example, if you are a fashion brand with products at affordable price points, then the luxury fashion houses, like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc., would not really be your competitors. That’s because your target market is a group that prefers buying daily-wear clothes at competitive prices. In contrast, the big fashion brands have a completely different audience base, who belong to the posh culture, preferring style statements over price points.

So, decide who your rivals are, including both your direct and indirect competitors. Indirect competitors are those who offer similar solutions to your target market. Also, don’t forget to research competitors who may offer different products but aim to solve the same problem you are solving.

Determine Your Competitors' Market Positions

Stay updated on their latest online marketing tactics to ensure that tour eCommerce strategies are powerful enough to beat the competition. Also, keep checking on your own marketing strategies and campaigns while comparing yourself with your rivals. Besides, consider using competitor analysis tools that help your SEO team to −

• Evaluate the potential of new products and solutions.

• Identify your underserved or unserved areas and market gaps.

• Analyze the efficiency of your marketing strategies.

• Determine where you stand in your market against that of your rivals.

Get Insights into your Rivals' Top Marketing Campaigns

Another vital step towards planning great marketing campaigns is by getting real-time insights into their top-performing campaigns and best-selling products. Also, keep track of their top offers and specialized campaigns. Consider performing this on a monthly basis, as offers and campaigns tend to change every month.

Gaining these insights allows you to plan more powerful counter-campaigns to pull the market towards you. However, it goes without saying that you need to focus on delivering excellent solutions and value to your customers to retain them for the long haul.

Research the Most Shared Content of Your Rivals

Using SEO tools like BuzzSumo, you can search for the most shared content of your competitors, both by brand and by topic. You can simply enter your target keyword and a subject, and you will get a list of all the content in the order of popularity.

As a result, you can gain better insights into whether your rivals are performing well on those topics and keywords. If you can’t find their name in a favorable position on that list, you can learn the areas you can put effort into beating them.

Analyze Your Rivals' SEO Strategies

An eCommerce brand's success stands on its SEO efforts and how well they rank on search engine results. If your competitors rank higher than your eCommerce portal, they get more clicks and website traffic. And therefore, they are generating more leads and higher revenue.

You can monitor your competitors' website visibility using intelligent SEO tools, such as SEMRush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Moz Pro, etc. You can also discover −

• The number of keywords that have good organic positions on Google or other search engines

• Their estimated traffic (branded and non-branded)

• Their estimated monthly organic traffic from the keywords they are ranking higher

• Their estimated price of specific target keywords that have high volumes in Google ad campaigns.

Conclusion

To conclude, we hope the above competitor research approaches help you identify your market standing and the areas you need to work on driving more website traffic and leads. Also, the above-mentioned steps should help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your digital marketing campaigns, enabling your marketing teams to plan more effective strategies to fill these gaps. We wish you the best in establishing a solid marketplace and brand loyalty!