Competitor Research
They Set the Bar, You Raise ItIn competitive markets, insight is your advantage.
Competitor research is essential for understanding the competitive pressures and risks in your market.
Knowing what topics your competitors focus on, and what level of engagement they receive for these areas, can provide inspiration for your own communications.
Don’t join them, let’s beat them.
Competitor Research
Competitor research can include SEO research, Google AdWords research, content analysis, publisher and analyst relations research and social media research.
Each aspect of this research can be used to save time, allowing your brand to build on what is known to work in your market, as well as identifying gaps where you can differentiate your proposition most effectively.
Researching the competition is also an important aspect of SWOT analysis (specifically the ‘threats’ part), as part of the broader topic of marketing research. Moreover, it’s good to undertake competitor research, but market research is a broader and more valuable consideration.
Above all, research informs strategy and without such a business cannot grow effectively.
Competitor Monitoring
Competitor research is often undertaken when breaking into a new market. However, outside of these occasional review and research windows, competitors can creep up on you.
Where possible, there should be an annual (or more frequent) objective to refresh this research. Outside of this, alerts can be put in place to identify specific changes in competitor activity.
Some of the tools we use are able to track and report regularly on changes in the competitive landscape. For example, we can spot a competitor gaining ground in search position, or becoming particularly vocal on a topic through social media channels.
Keeping tabs on competitors, via competitor research and monitoring, should be an ongoing objective.
Get In Touch
Glastonbury, Somerset, UK
+44 747 666 2948
marc@glastonbury-marketing.co.uk