Competitor Analysis
A competitor or benchmark analysis is a fundamental activity for any company or agency that strives for an efficient communications strategy. Analysing competitors is useful to identify market risks and opportunities, to better understand a target group by observing its relations with competitors, to distinguish oneself from others and – through the study of their strengths and weaknesses – to develop a diverse and innovative strategy and product or service. A competitor analysis also allows one to save time and resources by learning from the errors of others and understanding what works and why from best practices.
Identifying Competitors
The starting point for any benchmark analysis is to identify the competitors. Competitors are all parties operating in the same market segment and that provide clients with answers for the same products and service needs.
There are two types of competitors: direct, who provide a similar solution, and indirect, who are in the same market segment, but provide alternative products or services to those of our clients.
Conducting a Benchmark Analysis
For maximum efficiency, a competitor analysis must monitor a wide range of aspects and data – both on- and off-line – to obtain focused insight on business and communications, marketing, engagement and brand-loyalty strategies through the evaluation of user interest and satisfaction.
A competitor analysis must allow the integration of traditional market analysis methodologies with the strategic use of digital data. It is fundamental to monitor each individual digital touchpoint – search engines, websites, e-commerce platforms, social networks and forums – to produce a competitor analysis that will prove useful both for the company and for product strategic web marketing. Moreover, it is important to study the key words used by competitors for search engines, brand-loyalty strategy and conversion strategy, without overlooking CRM strategy. A complete analysis of competitors will allow us to identify best practices and improve our understanding of what works well (and what doesn’t) in managing client relations and communications.
Competitor Analysis at Cultur-e
We adopt a data-driven analysis model for our benchmark analyses that exploits the exponential development of big data generated by various on-line sources (connected devices, social network discussions, web analytics tools and SEO analysis) and integrates them with off-line tools for the identification of best cases, even at the international level. In particular, the activity aims to map success cases on three axes:
- Marketing Strategy: monitoring customer base commercial, promotional and engagement strategies;
- Identity and Communications Strategy: studying the brand identity and architecture of similar and related enterprises;
- Digital Strategy: analysing the user experience, web design, content and services offered on-line, as well as presence and social media activity, adopted editorial line, and the level of engagement and management of user communities into target groups.
For each axis, we identify the strengths and weaknesses (SWOT Analysis) with a final summary of highlights and best practices.
The competitor analysis, together with our other data-driven analyses (context, target, SEO, assessment of proprietary channels, on-line reputation), allows us to optimize our clients’ marketing, commercial and communications strategies, developing original, innovative and customer-oriented solutions.
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