Competitive Analysis: Understanding Competitors, Optimizing Strategies & Strengthening Market Position

Welcome back to our blog series “5 Tips on How to Keep Your Online Marketing Strategy Relevant Even in Times of Automation”! In this part, we focus on a often underestimated yet essential topic: Competitive Analysis.

Why is it so important to keep a close watch on the competition? What tools and methods can help identify relevant competitors? And above all: How can strategic advantages be derived from these insights? This is exactly what we will explore in this post.

If you missed the previous parts of our series, feel free to take a look - there we discuss, among other things, why clear business goals are essential, how to optimally position your online marketing channels, and why Contextual Advertising is often underestimated.

Competitive Analysis - What is the competition doing?

Competition is well-known for driving business. While this is often a blessing for end consumers, it has already broken many companies as their product suddenly became irrelevant, and thus their customers stayed away. Therefore, it is essential to never lose sight of your own competition and to regularly look out for new, emerging companies. A so-called competitive analysis is recommended for this purpose.

First of all, it is necessary to identify your competitors. There are numerous ways to do this. Anyone already using Google Ads can easily access the auction insights within the campaigns and see which companies are actively participating in the auctions and how aggressively they are doing so. The metrics “Top of page rate” and “Absolute top of page rate” help us here by indicating how often we appear in the auctions either in the first three results, or even at the very top. By looking a bit more closely, we can even determine if we might be overbidding and artificially driving prices up.

Other ways to understand the competitor's approach

If you're interested in what type of advertising the competition is running and what images and texts are being used, the ad libraries of all major advertising platforms are recommended. There, we can see exactly which ads have been played by other companies, completely effortlessly and for free. For example, the Google Ads Transparency Center and the Meta Ads Library are mentioned here. But additional information such as rough target groups, estimated budgets, and targeting options can also be gleaned there, albeit not in detail. Other platforms like LinkedIn or TikTok also have such libraries that are extremely helpful for competitor analysis.

Other options include external tools (e.g., Semrush, Similarweb, Ahrefs), generative AI tools (Google Gemini, ChatGPT), or simply the classic Google search. This allows us to see aside from Google Ads who potentially appears with us in auctions, or which companies also rank organically or show presence in another form for relevant search queries. We can also relatively simply identify and use the relevant content of the competition for our analysis.

Once the competitors are identified, we can start the actual competitive analysis and thus gain a better overview of the competitive environment we are operating in. Topics we should look at more closely include, among others:

• Website - What does the site look like? Is it a one-pager, or does it have a more complex design? Is the navigation simple, or rather more nested? How high is the informational content? What kind of approach is used? How easy is it for a user to convert?

• Marketing Strategy - What fundamental goals are pursued? Which actions are potential users supposed to take on the website (appointment requests, demos, downloading informational materials, product purchases, etc.)?

• Online Marketing Activities - Which channels are being played, which advertisement formats are used?

• Social Media Presence - What topics are covered? What works well, what doesn’t (engagement)? Where are there still gaps for our own positioning?

• Price and Offer Structure - Are discounts or other promotions frequent? Does the quality justify the prices, or is there an increasing reliance on low-priced products?

• Customer Reviews and Feedback - What do the customers say about this competitor? What do they like, what do they criticize?

Summarize and keep an overview

For better visibility, we can also summarize the insights gained in a classic SWOT analysis to visualize the current situation. This helps us to understand the status quo more easily, highlight our own strengths better, and identify potential gaps. Additionally, it can be worthwhile not only to compare the competitors to our own company but also to compare them with each other as part of the competitive analysis. This way, we may recognize commonalities and overlaps on which we should particularly focus.

These analyses help us to gain a better understanding of our own USPs. Moreover, we can discover new potentials and play segments or products that have hardly existed until now. Based on this, we optimize our marketing strategy and in some cases can even predict new trends.

If we discover significant differences in the price structure compared to our competitors, it becomes easier for us to justify our own prices. Perhaps our products are indeed more expensive than those of the competition, but in return, they are more robust and durable. This can be effectively communicated.

We learn from the weaknesses and mistakes of our competitors through customer feedback and can ideally profit from them. By targeting communication that addresses the exact problems and concerns of the target group, we gain a competitive advantage and ensure better customer satisfaction and loyalty from the very beginning.

By implementing the measures defined from this, not only do we ideally save a lot of money and tons of nerves, but we also free up time for the really important things, namely providing the best possible experience for the customers and also the employees within the company.

Thank you very much for your attention! Hopefully, it was insightful, and you could take something away for yourself! In the fifth and final part of our mini-series, we will delve deeper into the topic of optimizing your own website. Our previous post on the topic of Contextual Advertising follows.

Have we forgotten something important, or do you have questions on the subject? Then feel free to write it to us in the comments!

If you want to get in direct contact with us, feel free to check out our contact form. We help you better understand your competitive situation and benefit from it, so you can get the most out of your online marketing strategy - simple and non-binding!