We’re going to be talking about some of the best free SEO tools for competitor analysis.
In this post, we’re going to cover everything from competitor keyword research to SERP overviews, site audits, and backlink monitoring.
If you’re an SEO professional or business owner trying to keep up with the latest trends in search engine optimization (SEO), then these tools will make sure you always know what’s happening with your competition.
Free Seo Tools For Competitor Analysis
It can be hard to find completely free online competitor analysis tools you can use effectively. However, there are digital marketing analytics tools that are a gold mine for insights and research on competitors at no cost.
We collected a list of the best online software solutions for market analysis and research such as :
free social media competitor analysis tools;
free website, keyword, backlink, and SEO competitor analysis tools;
free PPC competitive analysis software;
website change checkers and others
Today, it is absolutely critical to ensure you’re monitoring your competitors on a daily basis and updating your view of the market shifts.
On our previous posts
50 Best Web Competitive Intelligence Tools and Techniques and
How To Do Competitive Market Research and Analysis? The Guide
we’ve focused on what are the benefits of competitive research and analysis and how to do it effectively.
Here, we will show you the top 25 costless online tools you can use freely to spy your competitors, spot new market trends, and find out what’s working within your niche.
Some of the tools are free by nature and others provide a completely free account with a comprehensive range of free features.
- Crayon Intel Free (free market intelligence tool that monitor competitor’s content and design changes)
Crayon Intel Free screen shot – one of the best free online competitor analysis tools
This great marketing intelligence tool can help you track, analyze, and act on many things that happen outside of your business.
With Crayon Intel Free you can monitor seamlessly the content and design changes from your competitors.
You can have a collection of competitors, track inspirational brands, get daily email digests, and get a comprehensive view of your competitors’ moves.
Crayon Intel Free is completely free to use, and you can track any number of companies.
Free options: only free account
- Talkwalker’s Free Social Search (free social media competitor analysis tool)
Talkwalker’s Free Social Search
Do you wanna know what social media strategies are your competitors pursuing? You can get the answer for free by Talkwalker’s Free Social Search.
This is a great real-time free social media search engine that can provide you with unlimited searches across all major social networks.
You can get an instant overview of your competitors’ social media campaigns. The tool shows you who’s talking about you and your competitors with live audience insights.
And the best thing is that you can enjoy unlimited real-time data.
Free options: only free
- SiteAlerts (free keyword, social media, and website competitor analysis tool)
SiteAlerts – competitor monitoring software screen shot
This is one of the most easiest to use and completely free online competitor analysis tools that answer many questions such as:
How much traffic do your competitors get? Where does the traffic come from? What software tools do they use? What keywords do they rank for? Is social media working for them?
SiteAlerts is a simple but very useful keyword, social media, and website competitor analysis tool that will provide you with a lot of marketing stats about your competitors as well as the technology they use.
Free options: a free account with a good range of features and paid accounts
- VisualPing (free website change checker)
VisualPing – free online website checker screen shot
Do you want to monitor seamlessly your competitor’s websites changes at no cost? If so, VisualPing can be your solution.
It get you notified on each visual change of a website or website area.
Thus, you can be alerted every time when your competitor update prices, publish news or other important information to users.
Visualping is one of the most easiest to use free website change checkers.
Free options: free account with 62 checks/month and premium accounts
- WhatRuns (discover what technology drives your competitor’s website at no cost)
WhatRuns is a free technology lookup tool that will show you what technologies are used on any website.
Actually, this is a free browser extension that shows you the technologies used on your rival’s website at the click of a button.
WhatRuns shows you almost everything that a website has. Web apps they pay for, CDN they’re hosted on, WordPress plugins, fonts – and much more info!
Also, the tool notifies you when a website starts or stop using a technology.
Free options: only free
- Rank Signals (free keyword, backlink, and SEO competitor analysis tool)
Rank Signals – keyword, backlink and SEO competitor analysis tool
Rank Signals is one of the greatest free online competitor analysis tools that allows you to discover SEO backlinks and traffic sources of your competitors.
You might know how important backlinks are for a good SEO strategy.
Rank Signal helps you identify your competitors best links and evaluate the quality and value of the links.
If you searching for a solid basis for a link building strategy, don’t hesitate to use this tool.
Free options: only free
- Moat (free tool for analyzing your competitors’ ad creative)
Moat – free online tool for analyzing your competitors ad creative
Moat is an awesome free online marketing analysis tool that act as digital-ad search engine. It shows you the competitor’s ad creative and campaigns.
Simply type in the online field a brand and you will see the ads that they are using.
It also displays the dimensions of the ad and the dates during which the ad was (is) active.
You can follow your competitors’ brands and get notified every time they publish a new ad.
Free options: a free account that work great and a PRO oprion
- SimilarWeb (free online tool for analyzing your competitor’s web rankings)
SimilarWeb – a free online tool for analyzing your competitor’s web rankings
This is one of the most comprehensive free online competitor analysis tools when it comes to traffic insights for any website.
Just type a website in the online field and instantly you’ll get global rank, country rank, and category rank of that website.
You also will see nice graphs that show the traffic sources, top 5 organic keywords of your competitor’s website, the leads from social media channels, audience Interests, and much more.
SimilarWeb lets you add competitors and even gives you suggestions on who you may want to follow and watch.
Free options: a free account with a good range of features and paid accounts
- Feedly (free news aggregator site for tracking competitors’ news and mentions)
Feedly – free online news aggregator site
Feedly is a news aggregator site that can work greatly as one of the free online competitor analysis tools .
It’s one of the easiest ways for checking your competitors’ new posts without bouncing all over the web. You won’t miss a beat from your competitors’ news and mentions.
With Feedly you are able to monitor easily news about your competitors’ products, services, posts, content, Tweets or even YouTube videos.
You can create a collection for a given topic – news, competitors, etc. – and put all the sites you currently read into the list.
Moreover, Feedly also recommends other similar and related sites based on the your collection content.
Free options: a free version that will keep you up to date with content and a paid account
- Open Link Profiler (free SEO and backlink competitor analysis tool)
Open Link Profiler – a free SEO and backlink competitor analysis tool
OpenLinkProfiler.org is an awsome free online SEO and backlink competitor analysis tool that enables you to check the backlinks of any website.
You get an immediate link analysis of any website you want. You can export 1,000 links per website for free (more in paid versions).
You can also use a Link Manager for free and get notifications about new links by email.
Open Link Profiler is an online marketing analytics software tool that works great for those who aim to get higher rankings on search engines such as Google and Bing.
Free options: a free account that allows you to export 1000 links per website and premium versions
- Website Grader (a free online website competitor analysis tool)
Website Grader from Hubspot is a very cool tool that will provide you with instant insights on your competitors’ overall score based on website’s performance and SEO activity.
The tool also give you information about how well is optimized your competitor’s websites for mobile.
You can also see how good are your competitor websites’ page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
Free options: only free to use
- BuiltWith (a free website profiler for insights on your competitor’s marketing strategies)
BuiltWith – a free website profiler for insights on your competitor’s marketing strategies
BuiltWith is one of the best free online competitor analysis tools that provides technology information for any website you want to check.
It helps you find out what technology are used for building your competitor’s website, in order to get leads, marketing intelligence, and analysis.
Fill in a competitor’s website and instantly see what software systems they use. This gives you powerful insights on their marketing strategies.
BuiltWith answer questions such as: “What content management system are your competitors using?”, “What are they tracking?”, “What plugins are installed on their website?”
Free options: BuiltWith is completely free to use for individual site lookups.
- Majestic (free backlink and SEO competitor analysis tool)
Majestic is an online SEO competitor analysis tool that specializes in backlinks. It provides you with a depth of backlink data for your competitor’s website.
Majestic is a very easy to setup web-based software. First, you need to register for a free account to get the insights.
After logging in, you can begin using Majestic immediately.
The free version will show you information about the number of links to your competitor’s URL, the number of of links to the domain, the number of domains that link to the URL and to the domain, Citation Flow, Trust Flow, a link profile graph of the citation flow and trust flow, timeline charts, and other.
Free options: free account with a great range of features
- Searchmetrics (free SEO, content marketing, and PPC compatitor analysis tool)
Searchmetrics – one of the best free online competitor analysis tools
Searchmetrics is one of the most powerful free online competitor analysis tools with a lot of functions and options.
It is a web-based SEO and content marketing software solution to help you improve your online presence and research your competitors.
It’s quite easy to jump in and see a lot of types of data for any website you need.
With a free account you can see a lot of SEO data for your competitors such as the top keywords their websites are ranking for, organic vs paid keywords, users by locations, market analysis including your top organic competitors, and more.
Reports are absolutely easy to understand and include PPC competitive analysis and social media competition.
Free options: free account with powerful features and paid versions
- SpyFu (free SEO and keyword competitor analysis tool)
SpyFu – free SEO and keyword competitor analysis tool
When it comes to the most popular free online competitor analysis tools, SpyFu is on the top places and will impress you with its depth and wealth of features.
SpyFu is an SEO tool that allows you to gain a deep insight on your competitor’s keyword campaign.
Its options include keyword spy tools, PPC competitor monitoring, keyword grouper, competitor shared keywords, and much more.
Except keywords, Spyfu also seamlessly tracks backlinks to your competitors websites and their PPC advertising. This is a very comprehensive tool for tracking your competitors and any other website you want.
It can greatly support your online marketing and digital advertising efforts at no cost.
Free options: a free account with several features with data limits and premium accounts
- Wappalyzer (uncover what technology is used on your competitors’ websites at no cost)
Wappalyzer a free online tool for uncovering what technology is used on your competitors’ websites at no cost
Wappalyzer is a simple and absolutely easy to use free online software tool that uncovers the technologies used on websites.
It can shows you the content management systems, ecommerce platforms, server software, analytics tools, and many other technology solutions used in your competitors’ websites.
Moreover, the tool also shows you what are the leading technologies per industry.
Wappalyzer is an open-source platform capable of identifying 1,222 different web technologies.
Free options: only free
- Adbeat (for spying on your competitor’s ad strategies at no cost)
Adbeat – a free tool for spying on your competitor’s ad strategies
If you are searching for free online competitor analysis tools that provide deep insights into the world of digital advertising, Adbeat can be your answer.
It is a different but very useful free solution. You are able to monitor and analyze all the advertisements that your competitors publish.
Adbeat shows you the messaging, creative, placement, size, the number of ads, ad channels, the types of ads, and many other data.
You are able to see the value propositions your competitors are focusing on. And all of these – for free.
Free options: free account with a great range of features and paid accounts
- iSpionage (tool for PPC & SEO competitive Intelligence)
iSpionage – tool for PPC and SEO competitive Intelligence
iSpionage is an online competitor analysis tool that provides valuable PPC and SEO data.
The tool spies on your competitors and shows you what search keywords and advertisement content allow them to attract customers.
Moreover, you’ll be able to discover how much they spend on the paid and organic search, see their landing pages, and uncover their approximate monthly PPC budget.
You can also use this information to discover the top advertisers in your industry.
iSpionage shows you the data with attractive top-notch reports and various types of graphs.
Free options: a free account with a great range of features and paid accounts
- Social Blade (a free social media competitor analysis tool)
Social Blade – a free social media competitor analysis tool
Social Blade is a great completely free tool that tracks user statistics for social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch.
It allows you to gain deeper insights of your competitor’s user growth and trends.
The tool is able to provide you with global analytics for any content creator or brand you want.
Social Blade collect data from channels like Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Daily Motion, and Instagram and uses these data to create graphs and charts that track progress and growth.
Thus, you can gain very interesting insights for competitors. Social Blade also provides you with a day-by-day follower update as well as a live follower count.
Another great feature is the ability to compere brands’ social presences against each other.
Free options: only free
- Mailcharts (a free email marketing tool for competitive analysis)
Mailcharts – a free email marketing tool for competitive analysis
Mailcharts is a quite powerful tool for email marketers as well as for those who want to spy on competition.
It collects emails from competing campaigns to help you develop your own.
Mailhcharts has an enormous library of emails from countless brands.
It can track and monitor your competitors and their brands to regularly be notified of their activity.
In addition, Mailcharts can compare competitor’s campaigns to your business’ campaigns to let you see where your emails stand.
Moreover, Mailcharts offers a lot of email examples for your inspiration. This way, you can understand what today’s top-performing emails look like.
Free options: a free account that allows you to track 3 companies and paid versions.
- Likealyzer (a free social media competitor analysis tool)
Likealyzer – a free social media competitor analysis tool
If you are searching for comprehensive free online Facebook competitor analysis tools, Likealyzer is a very good solution.
LikeAlyzer will show you an instant health check of any Facebook page.
You can get valuable insights and analytics on your competitors’ Facebook presence by seeing their likes, engagement rate, and PTAT (People Talking About This).
You can also measure responsiveness, posts per day, average post length and other information of multiple competitors to understand where you stand.
Free options: free
- Klear (influencer audit and social media analysis tool)
Klear – an influencer audit and social media analysis tool
Klear is a very cool tool that audits influencer activities on your competitors’ social media accounts.
Thus, you are able to find out influencers and connect with them for your own marketing efforts.
You can search for influencers by skills and location and the tool will generate influencers for you in several categories. This information allows you to determine the quantity and the quality of their followers.
Klear also generates the account’s top content on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Free options: a free plan with limited but powerful features and paid options
- Followerwonk (a free social media research tool)
Followerwonk – a free social media research tool
Followerwonk is a pretty powerful free online tool for learning more about your competitors’ Twitter followers.
The tool allows you to see and analyze your competitors’ followers, the people they follow as well as their overall Twitter actions at no cost.
Also, you can find out the time when your rivals are the most active on Twitter.
Followerwonk uses actionable visualizations to compare your social graph to others.
Using this tool you can analyze and improve your social growth by seeing Twitter analytics. You also can find and connect with new influencers from your market and easily share your reports with your team.
Free options: a free plan and paid options
- Social Searcher (free social media competitor analysis tool)
Social Searcher – a free social media competitor analysis tool
Those who are searching for free social media competitor analysis tools, will be happy to know about this one.
Social Searcher provides you with real-time search on the most popular social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The tool is super easy to use. You just have to fill the name of your competitors to see who mentioned them, and how often, on the key social media sites.
Practically, you are able to instantly measure and track what people are saying about your or your competitor’s brand, product, services and etc. in one easy to use dashboard.
Free options: free
- Talkwalker Alerts (a free web monitoring tool with results from social media)
Talkwalker Alerts – a free web monitoring tool with results from social media
Talkwalker Alerts allows you to monitor the Internet for new content about your name, competitors, or any other topic you want.
The tool can bring every single mention of your competitors across the Web – from websites, blogs, forums, and even Twitter to your inbox in one email.
Further, there are social media analytics filters that cover the most important conversations so you only receive the alerts that matter for you and can customize your strategy accordingly.
Free options: free
- SEOlium (professional Google rank tracker for SEO)
SEOlium is a new Google rank tracker tool for SEO. You can use it to monitor your market and use the data to better understand and improve your business.
It’s a quite different and powerful tool. Unlike other similar tools, SEOlium produces, own, and fully controls their raw data (Google ranks).
As such, there are no artificial limits (number of projects, competitors, or reports). You have consumption-based pricing.
SEOlium is extremely accurate with superb user-Interface and speed and has many many other great features.
Conclusion
At our web age, when the ways to collect data are critical, you have tons of various factors to take in account when spying on your competitors.
Understanding your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, and strategies is the basis on which to create and develop your business strategy and data driven decision making.
And if you are on a limited budget, there are some pretty powerful free online competitor analysis tools that can provide you with valuable insights.
We’ve collected some very useful free tools that cover a range of areas, from social media to SEO and website competitor analysis. You just have to decide which area of your competitor’s presence you want to research on.
You might be using some of these tools already.
Which online competitor analysis tools are you using? Share your experience with us.
what is competitor analysis example
When was the last time you ran a competitive analysis for your brand? And most importantly, do you know how to do one efficiently?
If you’re not sure, or if the last “analysis” you ran was a quick perusal of a competitor’s website and social media presence, you’re likely missing out on important intelligence that could help your brand grow.
In this detailed guide, you’ll learn how to conduct a competitive analysis that will give your business a competitive advantage in the market.
Access Now: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates [Free Download]
What is a competitive market analysis?
A competitive analysis is a strategy that involves researching major competitors to gain insight into their products, sales, and marketing tactics. Implementing stronger business strategies, warding off competitors, and capturing market share are just a few benefits of conducting a competitive market analysis.
A competitive analysis can help you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works, and identify potential opportunities where you can out-perform them.
It also enables you to stay atop of industry trends and ensure your product is consistently meeting — and exceeding — industry standards.
Let’s dive into a few more benefits of conducting competitive analyses:
Helps you identify your product’s unique value proposition and what makes your product different from the competitors’, which can inform future marketing efforts.
Enables you to identify what your competitor is doing right. This information is critical for staying relevant and ensuring both your product and your marketing campaigns are outperforming industry standards.
Tells you where your competitors are falling short — which helps you identify areas of opportunities in the marketplace, and test out new, unique marketing strategies they haven’t taken advantage of.
Learn through customer reviews what’s missing in a competitor’s product, and consider how you might add features to your own product to meet those needs.
Provides you with a benchmark against which you can measure your growth.
What is competitive market research?
Competitive market research focuses on finding and comparing key market metrics that help identify differences between your products and services and those of your competitors. Comprehensive market research helps establish the foundation for an effective sales and marketing strategy that helps your company stand out from the crowd.
Next, let’s dive into how you can conduct a competitive analysis for your own company.
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Competitive Analysis in Marketing
Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to:
Identify gaps in the market
Develop new products and services
Uncover market trends
Market and sell more effectively
As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement.
Next, let’s dive into some steps you can take to conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis.
How to do a Competitive Analysis
Determine who your competitors are.
Determine what products your competitors offer.
Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.
Take a look at your competitors’ pricing, as well as any perks they offer.
Ensure you’re meeting competitive shipping costs.
Analyze how your competitors market their products.
Take note of your competition’s content strategy.
Learn what technology stack your competitors’ use.
Analyze the level of engagement on your competitors’ content.
Observe how they promote marketing content.
Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms.
Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
To run a complete and effective competitive analysis, use these ten templates, which range in purpose from sales, to marketing, to product strategy.
Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates
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- Determine who your competitors are.
First, you’ll need to figure out who you’re really competing with so you can compare the data accurately. What works in a business similar to yours may not work for your brand.
So how can you do this?
Divide your “competitors” into two categories: direct and indirect.
Direct competitors are businesses that offer a product or service that could pass as a similar substitute for yours, and that operate in your same geographic area.
On the flip side, an indirect competitor provides products that are not the same but could satisfy the same customer need or solve the same problem.
It seems simple enough on paper, but these two terms are often misused.
When comparing your brand, you should only focus on your direct competitors. This is something many brands get wrong.
Let’s use an example: Stitch Fix and Fabletics are both subscription-based services that sell clothes on a monthly basis and serve a similar target audience.
But as we look deeper, we can see that the actual product (clothes in this case) are not the same; one brand focuses on stylish everyday outfits while the other is workout-centric attire only.
Yes, these brands satisfy the same need for women (having trendy clothes delivered right to their doorstep each month), but they do so with completely different types of clothing, making them indirect competitors.
This means Kate Hudson’s team at Fabletics would not want to spend their time studying Stitch Fix too closely since their audiences probably vary quite a bit. Even if it’s only slightly, this tiny variation is enough to make a big difference.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should toss your indirect competitors out the window completely.
Keep these brands on your radar since they could shift positions at any time and cross over into the direct competitor zone. Using our example, Stitch Fix could start a workout line, which would certainly change things for Fabletics.
This is also one of the reasons why you’ll want to routinely run a competitor analysis. The market can and will shift at any time, and if you’re not constantly scoping it out, you won’t be aware of these changes until it’s too late.
- Determine what products your competitors offer.
At the heart of any business is its product or service, which is what makes this a good place to start.
You’ll want to analyze your competitor’s complete product line and the quality of the products or services they’re offering.
You should also take note of their pricing and any discounts they’re offering customers.
Some questions to consider include:
Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
Are they working mainly on volume sales or one-off purchases?
What is their market share?
What are the characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick and mortar?
How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
How do they distribute their products/services?
- Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.
Running a sales analysis of your competitors can be a bit tricky.
You’ll want to track down the answers to questions such as:
What does the sales process look like?
What channels are they selling through?
Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage?
Are they expanding? Scaling down?
Do they have partner reselling programs?
What are their customers’ reasons for not buying? For ending their relationship with the company?
What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
Do they regularly discount their products or services?
How involved is a salesperson in the process?
These helpful pieces of information will give you an idea of how competitive the sales process is, and what information you need to prepare your sales reps with to compete during the final buy stage.
For publicly held companies, you can find annual reports online, but you’ll have to do some sleuthing to find this info from privately owned businesses.
You could find some of this information by searching through your CRM and reaching out to those customers who mentioned they were considering your competitor. Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.
To do this, run a report that shows all prospective deals where there was an identified competitor.
If this data is not something you currently record, talk to marketing and sales to implement a system where prospects are questioned about the other companies they are considering.
Essentially, they’ll need to ask their leads (either through a form field or during a one-on-one sales conversation) to identify who their current service providers are, who they’ve used in the past, and who else they are considering during the buying process.
When a competitor is identified, have your sales team dive deeper by asking why they are considering switching to your product. If you’ve already lost the deal, be sure to follow up with the prospect to determine why you lost to your competitor. What services or features attracted the prospect? Was it about price? What’s the prospect’s impression of your sales process? If they’ve already made the switch, find out why they made this decision.
By asking open-ended questions, you’ll have honest feedback about what customers find appealing about your brand and what might be turning customers away.
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start scoping out your competitor’s marketing efforts.
- Take a look at your competitors’ pricing, as well as any perks they offer.
There are a few major factors that go into correctly pricing your product — and one major one is understanding how much your competitors are charging for a similar product or service.
If you feel your product offers superior features compared to those of a competitor, you might consider making your product or service more expensive than industry standards. However, if you do that, you’ll want to ensure your sales reps are ready to explain why your product is worth the additional cost.
Alternatively, perhaps you feel there’s a gap in your industry for affordable products. If that’s the case, you might aim to charge less than competitors and appeal to prospects who aren’t looking to break the bank for a high-quality product.
Of course, other factors go into correctly pricing a product, but it’s critical you stay on top of industry pricing to ensure you’re pricing your product in a way that feels reasonable to prospects.
Additionally, take a look at any perks your competitors’ offer and how you might match those perks to compete. For instance, perhaps your competitors offer a major referral discount or a month-long free trial version. These perks could be the reason you’re losing customers, so if it feels reasonable for your brand, consider where you might match those perks — or provide some unique perks of your own if competitors’ don’t offer any.
- Ensure you’re meeting competitive shipping costs.
Did you know expensive shipping is the number one reason for cart abandonment?
Nowadays, free shipping is a major perk that can attract consumers to choose one brand over another. If you work in an industry where shipping is a major factor — like ecommerce — you’ll want to take a look at competitors’ shipping costs and ensure you’re meeting (if not exceeding) those prices.
If most of your competitors’ offer free shipping, you’ll want to look into the option for your own company. If free shipping isn’t a practical option for your business, consider how you might differentiate in other ways — including loyalty programs, holiday discounts, or giveaways on social media.
- Analyze how your competitors market their products.
Analyzing your competitor’s website is the fastest way to gauge their marketing efforts. Take note of any of the following items and copy down the specific URL for future reference:
Do they have a blog?
Are they creating whitepapers or ebooks?
Do they post videos or webinars?
Do they have a podcast?
Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?
What about slide decks?
Do they have a FAQs section?
Are there featured articles?
Do you see press releases?
Do they have a media kit?
What about case studies?
Do they publish buying guides and data sheets?
What online and offline advertising campaigns are they running?
- Take note of your competition’s content strategy.
Then, take a look at the quantity of these items. Do they have several hundred blog posts or a small handful? Are there five white papers and just one ebook?
Next, determine the frequency of these content assets. Are they publishing something new each week or once a month? How often does a new ebook or case study come out?
Chances are if you come across a robust archive of content, your competitor has been publishing regularly. Depending on the topics they’re discussing, this content may help you hone in on their lead-generating strategies.
From there, you should move on to evaluating the quality of their content. After all, if the quality is lacking, it won’t matter how often they post since their target audience won’t find much value in it.
Choose a small handful of samples to review instead of tackling every single piece to make the process more manageable.
Your sampler should include content pieces covering a variety of topics so you’ll have a fairly complete picture of what your competitor shares with their target audience.
When analyzing your competitor’s content, consider the following questions:
How accurate is their content?
Are spelling or grammar errors present?
How in-depth does their content go? (Is it at the introductory level that just scratches the surface or does it include more advanced topics with high-level ideas?)
What tone do they use?
Is the content structured for readability? (Are they using bullet points, bold headings, and numbered lists?)
Is their content free and available to anyone or do their readers need to opt-in?
Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?)
Is there a visible byline or bio attached to their articles?
As you continue to scan the content, pay attention to the photos and imagery your competitors are using.
Do you quickly scroll past generic stock photos or are you impressed by custom illustrations and images? If they’re using stock photos, do they at least have overlays of text quotes or calls-to-action that are specific to their business?
If their photos are custom, are they sourced from outside graphic professionals or do they appear to be done in-house?
When you have a solid understanding of your competitor’s content marketing strategy, it’s time to find out if it’s truly working for them.
- Learn what technology stack your competitors’ use.
Understanding what types of technology your competitors’ use can be critical for helping your own company reduce friction and increase momentum within your organization.
For instance, perhaps you’ve seen positive reviews about a competitor’s customer service — as you’re conducting research, you learn the customer uses powerful customer service software you haven’t been taking advantage of. This information should arm you with the opportunity to outperform your competitors’ processes.
To figure out which software your competitors’ use, type the company’s URL into Built With, an effective tool for unveiling what technology your competitors’ site runs on, along with third-party plugins ranging from analytics systems to CRMs.
Alternatively, you might consider looking at competitors’ job listings, particularly for engineer or web developer roles. The job listing will likely mention which tools a candidate needs to be familiar with — a creative way to gain intel into the technology your competitors’ use.
- Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.
To gauge how engaging your competitor’s content is to their readers, you’ll need to see how their target audience responds to what they’re posting.
Check the average number of comments, shares, and likes on your competitor’s content and find out if:
Certain topics resonate better than others
The comments are negative, positive, or a mix
People are tweeting about specific topics more than others
Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content
Don’t forget to note if your competitor categorizes their content using tags, and if they have social media follow and share buttons attached to each piece of content.
- Observe how they promote their marketing content.
From engagement, you’ll move right along to your competitor’s content promotion strategy.
Keyword density in the copy itself
Image ALT text tags
Use of internal linking
The following questions can also help you prioritize and focus on what to pay attention to:
Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?
What content of theirs is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
Which social media platforms are your target audience using?
What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site, but not yours?
Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?
Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?
For the keywords you want to focus on, what is the difficulty level? There are several free (and paid) tools that will give you a comprehensive evaluation of your competitor’s search engine optimization.
- Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms
The last area you’ll want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is your competitor’s social media presence and engagement rates.
How does your competition drive engagement with their brand through social media? Do you see social sharing buttons with each article? Does your competitor have links to their social media channels in the header, footer, or somewhere else? Are these clearly visible? Do they use calls-to-action with these buttons?
If your competitors are using a social network that you may not be on, it’s worth learning more about how that platform may be able to help your business, too. To determine if a new social media platform is worth your time, check your competitor’s engagement rates on those sites. First, visit the following sites to see if your competition has an account on these platforms:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Snapchat
LinkedIn
YouTube
Pinterest
Then, take note of the following quantitative items from each platform:
Number of fans/followers
Posting frequency and consistency
Content engagement (Are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?)
Content virality (How many shares, repins, and retweets do their posts get?)
With the same critical eye you used to gauge your competition’s content marketing strategy, take a fine-toothed comb to analyze their social media strategy.
What kind of content are they posting? Are they more focused on driving people to landing pages, resulting in new leads? Or are they posting visual content to promote engagement and brand awareness?
How much of this content is original? Do they share curated content from other sources? Are these sources regular contributors? What is the overall tone of the content?
How does your competition interact with its followers? How frequently do their followers interact with their content?
After you collect this data, generate an overall grade for the quality of your competitor’s content. This will help you compare the rest of your competitors using a similar grading scale.
- Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
As you evaluate each component in your competitor analysis (business, sales, and marketing), get into the habit of performing a simplified SWOT analysis at the same time.
This means you’ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats any time you assess an overall grade.
Some questions to get you started include:
What is your competitor doing well? (Products, content marketing, social
Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?
What is the weakest area for your competitor?
Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
What could they do better with?
In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?
Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?
You’ll be able to compare their weaknesses against your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company, and you’ll start to uncover areas for improvement within your own brand.
Competitive Product Analysis
Product analysis drills down to discover key differences and similarities in products that share the same general market. This type of analysis if you have a competitor selling products in a similar market niche to your own – you want to make sure that wherever possible, you aren’t losing market share to the competition.
Leveraging the example above, we can drill down and discover some of the key differentiators in product offerings.
Step 1: Assess your current product pricing.
The first step in any product analysis is to assess current pricing.
Nintendo offers three models of its Switch console: The smaller lite version is priced at $199, the standard version is $299, and the new OLED version is $349.
Sony, meanwhile, offers two versions of its Playstation 5 console: The standard edition costs $499 and the digital version, which doesn’t include a disc drive, is $399.
Step 2: Compare key features
Next is a comparison of key features. In the case of our console example, this means comparing features like processing power, memory, and hard drive space.
FEATURE
PS5 STANDARD
NINTENDO SWITCH
Hard drive space
825 GB
32 GB
RAM
16 GB
4 GB
USB ports
4 ports
1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0
Ethernet connection
Gigabit
None
Step 3: Pinpoint differentiators
With basic features compared, it’s time to dive deeper with differentiators. While a glance at the chart above seems to indicate that the PS5 is outperforming its competition, this data only tells part of the story.
Here’s why: The big selling point of the standard and OLED Switch models is that they can be played as either handheld consoles or docked with a base station connected to a TV. What’s more, this “switching” happens seamlessly, allowing players to play whenever, wherever.
The Playstation offering, meanwhile, has leaned into market-exclusive games that are only available on its system to help differentiate them from their competitors.
Step 4: Identify market gaps
The last step in a competitive product analysis is looking for gaps in the market that could help your company get ahead. When it comes to the console market, one potential opportunity gaining traction is the delivery of games via cloud-based services rather than physical hardware. Companies like Nvidia and Google have already made inroads in this space and if they can overcome issues with bandwidth and latency, it could change the market at scale.
Competitive Analysis Example
How do you stack up against the competition? Where are you similar, and what sets you apart? This is the goal of competitive analysis. By understanding where your brand and competitors overlap and diverge, you’re better positioned to make strategic decisions that can help grow your brand.
Of course, it’s one thing to understand the benefits of competitive analysis, and it’s another to actually carry out an analysis that yields actionable results. Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with a quick example.
Sony vs. Nintendo: Not all fun and games
Let’s take a look at popular gaming system companies Sony and Nintendo. Sony’s newest offering – the Playstation 5 – recently hit the market but has been plagued by supply shortages. Nintendo’s Switch console, meanwhile, has been around for several years but remains a consistent seller, especially among teens and children. This scenario is familiar for many companies on both sides of the coin; some have introduced new products designed to compete with established market leaders, while others are looking to ensure that reliable sales don’t fall.
Using some of the steps listed above, here’s a quick competitive analysis example.
- Determine who your competitors are.
In our example, it’s Sony vs Nintendo, but it’s also worth considering Microsoft’s Xbox, which occupies the same general market vertical. This is critical for effective analysis; even if you’re focused on specific competitors and how they compare, it’s worth considering other similar market offerings. - Determine what products your competitors offer.
Playstation offers two PS5 versions, digital and standard, at different price points, while Nintendo offers three versions of its console. Both companies also sell peripherals – for example, Sony sells virtual reality (VR) add-ons while Nintendo sells gaming peripherals such as steering wheels, tennis rackets, and differing controller configurations. - Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.
When it comes to sales tactics and marketing, Sony and Nintendo have very different approaches.
In part thanks to the recent semiconductor shortage, Sony has driven up demand via scarcity – very low volumes of PS5 consoles remain available. Nintendo, meanwhile, has adopted a broader approach by targeting families as their primary customer base. This effort is bolstered by the Switch Lite product line, which is smaller and less expensive, making it a popular choice for children.
The numbers tell the tale: Through September 2021, Nintendo sold 14.3 million consoles, while Sony sold 7.8 million.
- Take a look at your competitors’ pricing, as well as any perks they offer.
Sony has the higher price point: Their standard PS5 sells for $499, while Nintendo’s most expensive offering comes in at $349. Both offer robust digital marketplaces and the ability to easily download new games or services.
Here, the key differentiators are flexibility and fidelity. The Switch is flexible – users can dock it with their television and play it like a standard console, or pick it up and take it anywhere as a handheld gaming system. The PS5, meanwhile, has superior graphics hardware and processing power for gamers who want the highest-fidelity experience.
- Analyze how your competitors market their products.
If you compare the marketing efforts of Nintendo and Sony, the difference is immediately apparent: Sony’s ads feature realistic in-game footage and speak to the exclusive nature of their game titles; the company has managed to secure deals with several high-profile game developers for exclusive access to new and existing IPs.
Nintendo, meanwhile, uses brightly-lit ads showing happy families playing together or children using their smaller Switches while traveling.
- Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.
Engagement helps drive sales and encourage repeat purchases. While there are several ways to measure engagement, social media is one of the most straightforward: In general, more followers equates to more engagement and greater market impact.
When it comes to our example, Sony enjoys a significant lead over Nintendo: While the official Playstation Facebook page has 38 million followers, Nintendo has just 5 million.
Competitive Analysis Templates
Competitive analysis is complex, especially when you’re assessing multiple companies and products simultaneously. To help streamline the process, we’ve created 10 free templates that make it possible to see how you stack up against the competition – and what you can do to increase market share.
Let’s break down our SWOT analysis template. Here’s what it looks like:
competitive analysis template fro SWOTDownload Free Templates
Strengths – Identify your strengths. These may include specific pieces of intellectual property, products that are unique to the market, or a workforce that outperforms the competition.
Weaknesses – Here, it’s worth considering potential issues around pricing, leadership, staff turnover, and new competitors in the market.
Opportunities – This part of the SWOT analysis can focus on new market niches, evolving consumer preferences, or new technologies being developed by your company.
Threats – These might include new taxes or regulations on existing products or an increasing number of similar products in the same market space that could negatively affect your overall share.
How Does Your Business Stack Up?
Before you accurately compare your competition, you need to establish a baseline. This also helps when it comes time to perform a SWOT analysis.
Take an objective look at your business, sales, and marketing reports through the same metrics you use to evaluate your competition.
Record this information just like you would with a competitor and use this as your baseline to compare across the board.
Conclusion
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