When it comes to marketing online, your competitors are NOT your enemies. Actually they could be the catalysts for your own business.
How?
No, think about it. You want your product to penetrate your market and reach your target audience. You want to know exactly where (and when) to meet them online. You also want to be sure you are meeting them with the right message and visuals to catch their attention and compel them to buy. And lastly you want to know how to turn them into repeat customers and generate a community of brand advocates.
Guess who is already doing all these things for you? Your competitor(s)! There’s so much you can learn from their strategies and tactics that you can apply in your own marketing strategies to place your brand on a higher level.
Now let me clarify something before I move on. When I say learn, I’m not referring to blatant copy-and-paste tactics. Such moves are loser moves and ultimately, will hurt your brand because it only leads to you being perceived as a doppelganger of your competitor and has the potential to seriously backfire, that’s after you manage to escape a potentially nasty legal wrangle you weren’t ready for.
Imagine in your bid to craft your own identity as a fintech brand, everybody sees you as ‘the Zeepay lookalike’ because you copied their colours, tagline and messaging.
I am rather talking about conducting an effective research to identify the foundational principles behind your rivals’ strategies (eg, why they use certain words or phrases, etc), and modifying and applying to your own brand so that you can catch the attention of the same or similar customers without hurting your own brand identity, as well as give your potential customers a reason to choose you over your rivals.
All this can be done by conducting what marketers call an effective competitive analysis.
Analysing the marketing efforts and campaigns of your competitors can save you precious time. It is one of a number of time-saving activities, with another being to craft a good buyer persona for your business.
An effective competitive competitor analysis can have numerous benefits for your brand including;
- Identify strengths and weaknesses of your competitors (to know where you can capitalize)
- Helps refine your USP
- Helps you locate where your ideal customers are online
- Helps you to discover changing industry trends
A good competitive analysis can be your best friend in your marketing efforts. In fact, it is a part of your marketing plan.
A great marketing strategy encompasses a lot of aspects which you must know, and that includes knowing how your rivals are operating. It lets you know where you genuinely stand among your giants. It helps you discover how your rivals are excelling in the market. It reveals to you how your customers would react to certain actions or campaigns.
Investing time and resources in an effective competitive analysis could be the major key that could make or break your business.