How to Use Competitor Research to Improve Your Marketing Strategy

Competitor research is one of the tools that is less often used, but can help grow a business. Companies should always peek at their competitors’ strategies and find ways to improve or avoid similar mistakes.

A deeper dive into competitor data can show you how to use the information to improve your existing marketing strategy.

Examine Multiple Competitors

First off, keep an eye on multiple competitors when monitoring marketing data. It’s easy to get caught up with the website or brand of one competitor and feel like you learned enough. However this can be misleading or that specific competitor might be doing a bad job with his content marketing.

There is always the chance that the competition you’re scouting could have mimicked other competitors and doesn’t have a specific strategy beyond that. Make sure that you get the bigger picture in your niche, if you want to make insightful decisions and expand your brand.

Find Content Gaps

Content gaps can be found in every industry or niche. It would be close to impossible for a competitor to cover every aspect of your nice. Examine the content your competitors are publishing and look for opportunities where you can create improved content for your own website.

If you are a furniture manufacturer and you see that your competitors cover bedroom or living room furniture, there is a gap for bathroom-specific furniture that you can fill with your content.

Use Social Listening

Social listening is a tool to keep tabs on your competition by listening to what others are saying about the brand.

The social listening process begins with checking review sites, social media, and news sites to see what other people are saying about your competition. It is critical to consider both positive and negative comments.

Good comments and feedback will give you an indication of what your competition is doing right. For example, if you have an ecommerce website that sells pet products and you see that everyone loves the selection of products offered by a competitor, then it’s a good idea to think about your product line.

By analysing bad comments, you can see what the expectations of your ideal customer are. You can learn how to solve the pain points and offer a product that meets the demands of consumers.

If you notice a string of bad comments saying that the competition has high prices, limited product variety or faulty products, you might want to consider on these suggestions and improve your store based on the feedback given to your competition.