Competitive analysis is a phenomenon of understanding your competitors’ approach in the market. It elaborates on their product, sales, and marketing strategies. By doing this, you expand the horizon of your market research and meet customers’ requirements.
Competitive analysis is an effective method to advance your marketing tactics and build a strong presence by making your businesses stand out from competitors in terms of every aspect.
Significance of Competitive Analysis in B2B
As per the report of Hinge Marketing, businesses that conduct competitive analysis perpetually grow up 70% faster than brands that don’t. Therefore, competitive analysis is highly advantageous to grow a business and reach desired outcomes. It provides valuable information such as qualitative and quantitative data, products strategies, marketing arrangement, customer-centric approach, technological planning, various perspectives, etc.
Appropriate and thorough competitive analysis helps in delivering positive ROI by enhancing sales and brand recognition.
Let’s take a look at some robust strategies to do competitive analysis in B2B.
Top 7 Steps of Competitive Analysis
There is no certain formula. Yet, some steps are indispensable to do competitive analysis in B2B which help in building brand image and make your business journey easy and profitable. Here are some most crucial steps.
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Categorization of Competitors
One of the most crucial steps of the competitive analysis is to know thoroughly about your competitors. There are different types of competitors such as potential, direct, indirect, replacement, etc.. Therefore, it is essential to identify your competitors’ types before finding out their marketing strategies.
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Advanced Technological Adoption
To stay in the competition, you must be aware of technological advancement. Different competitors adopt different technologies for different purposes such as artificial intelligence, marketing automation, account-based marketing, augmented reality, programmatic advertising, etc. You should discover what kinds of technologies are utilized by your competitors. Incorporating these advanced technologies enhances your marketing approach and allows you to provide a fantastic experience to your target audience.
Search engine optimization is the need of the hour in this digital era. There are different
practices of SEO that help in enhancing your Google visibility and organic searches. With the help of SEO analysis, you discover different keywords, hashtags, website rankings, etc., that your competitors utilize to
gain business objectives.
Marketers use
different channels to promote their products or services as they find a diverse audience on different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, website, blogger, LinkedIn, etc. Therefore, it is crucial to find out which platforms they are selling their products and receiving positive responses. Also, make a note on how those platforms are performing as per the audience’s expectations.
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Evaluation of Sales Strategies
A sales strategy is a plan for establishing your products or services in the market for your target audience. It includes the buyer’s persona, sales process, product positioning, methodologies, etc. In addition, evaluating the sales strategies of your competitors provide you a detailed understanding of how they are introducing their products and making profits.
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Evaluating Audiences’ Engagement
Undoubtedly, your calculative approach will help you make your marketing approach better, but ultimately you need to understand your audience thoroughly. Your competitors are creating their strategy according to their audience. Therefore, doing a profound research on your audience will undoubtedly give you favorable insights. You need to keep important questions in your mind while evaluating audience engagement.
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How are your competitors approaching the audience?
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How is the audience responding to their products?
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What Kind of queries does your audience have?
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Positive and negative feedback
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What are the requirements, responses, suggestions coming from the audience?
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Analysis of Content Strategy
Analyzing your competitors'
content strategy will make you know how your competitors are implementing their content strategy to attract the audience. What kind of content do they use, like blogs, infographics, videos, etc.? What is the frequency of their content posting? Do they take any technical support to advance their content strategy?
Essential Tools for Competitive Analysis
Some most prominent tools can help you analyze your competitors’ approach in B2B marketing by providing valuable information, statistics, channel analysis, audience engagement rate, etc. Some of these tools are Quick Search, BuiltWith, WooRank, Google Adwords, and SEMrush.
Final Thoughts
Competitive analysis is an important part of your marketing strategy that makes your presence steady in the market and gives you sustainable development. There are certain practices of competitive analysis that have been mentioned above. You can implement those tactics in your strategy to reach what you are looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the different kinds of B2B marketing research?
There are different B2B marketing research types to give you intended outcomes. They include brand research, client research, market research, client persona research, etc.
What are the required skills to do competitive analysis in B2B?
Competitive analysis in B2B is a meticulous task which requires technical skills, analytical thinking, perseverance, problem-solving, time management, critical thinking, etc.