What Is Competitor Analysis?

When working with small service business owners, we often find that they do what they do with passion and pride in their work, but without realizing the power of their unique value. Competitor analysis brings out the differences between you and your competitors so we can capitalize on everything that makes your offerings the best solution for your customers.

“Competitive analysis is the process of comparing your competitors against your brand to understand their core differentiators, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s an in-depth breakdown of each competitor’s market position, sales & marketing tactics, growth strategy, and other business-critical aspects to see what they’re doing right and find opportunities for your business.” —HubSpot

Why Should I Do Competitor Analysis?

If you’re spending money to market your business, competitor analysis isn’t optional anymore—it’s a necessity for getting ahead. In order to stand out, you need to know who you’re competing against, what their strengths are, where they are vulnerable, and finding out where the opportunities are for you to stand out. By looking at the strengths and weaknesses of other businesses, you’ll find ways to set yourself apart and shine even brighter.

Ethical Competitor Analysis

If scrutinizing everything your competitors are doing seems shady, remember that competition plays a crucial role in a free market. It encourages innovation, leads to better products and services, and can result in lower prices for consumers. It also helps to prevent monopolies and promotes a wider variety of choices for consumers. If you use competitor analysis to provide a better service, you gain a win for your business and a win for your customers, too.

Competition Aligning with Your Brand Values

Here’s how we keep competitor analysis above board and well within the boundaries of integrity that your business abides by:

Respect Privacy

When we conduct a competitor analysis for a client, we use our SEO tools for your benefit, but we use only publicly available information. We conduct only “white hat” research, meaning that we play by the rules of best practices without manipulating or bending them. There’s no need to cheat to do it right.

Improvement Is Our Goal

We’re using insights we gain to help you present your services in the best light possible, and to fill any gaps in your marketing strategy. You can use information we gather to improve your understanding of your target market and get ideas for improving your services.

Fair Competition

There’s no unfair advantage involved in competitor research because we’re not undermining your competitors by observing what they’re doing publicly. This is what makes the free market work, to encourage innovation, develop better processes and services, resulting in happier customers.

Market Intelligence Example: Car Racing

Let’s use car racing as an example. If you’re about to compete at NASCAR, you’ll want to know who you’ll be racing against. You’ll want to collect and analyze data from your rivals, like how well their cars perform, what their drivers are known for, how well their teams work to reduce pit stop times, and gather up all kinds of details that will help you refine your own process. If you seriously study your opponent’s playbook, you’ll find opportunities to outmaneuver them by using this information to capitalize on your own unique skills and talents.

Steps To Size Up the Competition

Here are the factors we’re working with when creating content for our clients, to make it a lasting and successful effort.

1. Assess Your Own Business with SWOT

Start this process with an honest assessment of your (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to document where you see your business performing in general. Take a hard look at where your services and your processes excel and where they could use improvement. Once you’re through this process and have seen how your rivals compare, you’ll be able to make changes to strengthen your position in your local industry.

2. Identify Your Competitors

Start by making a list of your direct competitors who provide similar services within your service area. Spreadsheets are useful here to help keep your findings categorized and easy to scan through.

3. Gather Information

Collect data on the important aspects of each competitor, like their pricing structure, services offered, and what marketing strategies they’re using. We use professional SEO tools for insights to help clarify what is working well for them, what keywords they’re ranking for, whether they are doing paid advertising or not, and more.

4. Analyze Their Strengths and Weaknesses

A simple SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) here here will reveal nuances like who they are marketing to, how their services compare to yours, whether their prices are lower or higher than yours, and how their pricing compares to the quality of services they provide.

5. Evaluate Customer Perception

Look at their online reviews on Google and Yelp to get an idea about how customers feel about their services. Reviews are often great sources of detail about customer satisfaction to bring out common themes that give us insight into what customers like or dislike.

6. Note Their Marketing Strategies

Examine how your competitors promote themselves online—for instance, whether they are using social media, how well they are using it, whether they are using paid advertising, and gauging how effective their ads are.

7. Summarize Insights & Take Action

Once you have an overview of the competitive landscape in your service area you can apply what you’ve found through an objective lens to guide your business. How do they compare against your own strengths and weaknesses? Are there offerings missing from your competitors’ repertoires that you already provide or that you can provide? Will you want to consider adjusting your pricing model based on your experiences and this new information?