Our competitors are not always our enemies. More importantly, rival relationships need not always be negative. You have to know how to leverage your competitors in the best possible manner for your own advantage. How could your competitors encourage growth for your company?
This is where the idea of competitor research fits in. Competitors come in all shapes and sizes. In digital competition, core competitors are businesses that rank well for the type of terms you need to rank for. They are the ones who you face frequently at client accounts and lose business to. Competition research is not just a way to get one up on a competitor, it is actually a way to grow, learn and discover. It is essential to make time to learn what competitors are doing differently and how because you both are targeting the same market. You can invest time in competitor research by using legion methods to gather information about your competitors like accessing their websites, magazines, social media posts etc.
Here are 5 ways in which competitor research can help you in perfecting your own messaging:
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It helps you learn new ways to serve your customers:
Conducting a regular competitor analysis helps you understand the market place you are operating in. It is a great way to find new ways to give the best to your customers. A competitive analysis can help identify which features make your customers happy. For instance, if you find something that makes your competitors widely successful, you have to know that they are doing something right. You can then try and model your products or features after them.
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It gives you an insight on why some sites may be ranking higher than yours:
Every company has a different set of marketing strategies that give out different magnitudes of benefits. Competitor research is a great way to get information about the strategies your competitors are using in their marketing. This will help you understand exactly why some of the sites have a higher ranking than yours.
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It helps you spot new opportunities, identify market trends and gaps:
Competitor research is a good chance to identify the products and services that are in demand in the market, but your business does not offer. You may then take the opportunity to acquire these resources from your competitors or merge with them in order to offer those products and services. Regular competitor analysis also gives you a peek into the existing market trends. It enables you to spot a gap and make the most of it.
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It makes you zero in on exact content you need to be producing:
Competitor research is an effective way to find out keywords for content that your competitors are using online for their website or for their social media. Based on this, you can decide the ones that you want to use. You do not have to use the keywords in your content. You can opt for variations or use the same keywords with different content.
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Competitor research provides backlinking domains and sites that you should be considering for your business
Running an in-depth backlink analysis across your competitors can provide you with myriad valuable insights that can save you time and money. It tells you which competitors are landing the most backlinks, and which are the sites in your vertical that are more likely to give backlinks. A backlink on your competitors give you a glimpse of the specific strategies and tactics they are using to land quality links. It also helps understand the types of content that is attracting the most backlinks as well as the resources that did not acquire many links. Such information can go a long way in helping you avoid investing time and money into link building campaigns that have little or no chance of success.
With regular competitor research, your business will be able to find new avenues and practices for serving your clients. By systematically engaging in competitor research, your company will be able to track trends that will allow you to better adapt to your competition, market and customer base. In short, regular competitor research is a must for your business to progress in the right direction.