Competitor analysis, and why is it important?
Competitor analysis is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of a brand's competitors. It allows brand managers to analyze what competitors are doing, how they’re doing it, and then figure out how to make your brand stand out in comparison.
Competitor analysis can benefit your brand growth in the following ways
It can help you gain competitive advantage and market share
It can increase your bargaining power — particularly when negotiating better pricing from suppliers
It can help you understand your competitors’ weaknesses and how to use them to your advantage
It helps you strengthen and clarify your value proposition
How to conduct competitor analysis
Define your competitors
Your competition is not static — new rivals can pop up at any time. Thus, it’s important to take the time to define or redefine your competitors before diving into the research. It also makes sense to have at least two tiers of competitors: top competitors and secondary competitors. While your top competitors are those whose products and services directly rival your own, secondary competitors usually operate in a similar market and have some important overlap with your brand’s products and services.
Analyse your competitors’ customer journey
It’s always a good idea to know your competitions’ moves inside out. Your knowledge of their tactics and strategies is one of the most effective ways to stay ahead of the game.Take the time to go through as many steps as possible to glean what you can about their strategies. And while you go through the process, keep documentation so you can compare your research, look for similarities, and identify opportunities
Review their marketing strategy
From paid ads to content marketing to social media, there’s a lot to explore here. During this stage of research, it’s important to keep in mind you’ll never have access to their actual strategies. Instead, you’ll need to use the information you find to piece together your best approximation of their marketing strategies. Gather information that tells you how they’re marketing their products, find out what they’re doing differently to you — and the same as you. If they’re performing better at the channels you also target, why?
With Latana
Many brand and marketing managers will already be using online visibility tools focusing on areas like keyword rankings and social media mentions to conduct competitor analysis. However, when it comes to gathering competitor insights, there’s more than one area that needs to be analyzed — online visibility isn’t the be all-end-all.
While it’s extremely important to use online visibility tools to gain a better understanding of your online presence and performance, it’s just as (if not more) important to understand how actual consumers perceive your brand and that of your rivals.
That’s where Latana's brand tracking software comes in. To truly understand how your brand is performing in comparison to your competitors, you need access to consumer insights data — stats on brand awareness, market size, purchase drivers, and more.
How Latana's competitor analysis feature can help your brand
Case Studies
See how industry leaders are using Latana to improve brand performance.
