How to stay away from competitive analysis paralysis

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Imagine a situation where you know who your competitors are, what past and current strategies they are providing, and how they advertise their product or services. You are delivering real-time value to your customers by analysing competitors’ strengths and weakness. Awareness of your market’s potential threats and opportunities is converting first-time users into life-long customers.

Sounds amazing, right?

Competitive analysis is a robust online approach to turn your imagination into reality. With proper research, analysis and comparison, it helps you:

» Stay one step ahead in your content marketing strategy to make competitors’ work for you.

»  Build a strong foundation by analysing their topic selection, choice of channels, and marketing strategies.

» Uncover missing angles to differentiate your brand.

Before starting the analysis, ask this vital question:

Analyse the frequency of their published articles and visual content. Keep a track on their content relevancy by going through crucial topics and keywords. Subscribe to their newsletters. Set up Google Alerts for your rivals’ products, company name, and their key personalities.

Two-step action plan to overshadow your competitors
» Avoid investing time in their strength areas. Stay away from topics where they dominate.

» Looks out for potential channels where they are not active. Focus on their weakness by covering the unaddressed topics.

Keep an eye on your competitors’ most engaging content
Higher the engagement, higher the audience demand. Take the following cues from your opponent’s most engaging content:

» Figure out a way to repurpose the content in a different format.

» Is there any possibility to add valuable points and gain more traction?

» Find out whether the audience enjoys long-form or snack-size content.

» What takeaways attract the eyeballs?

Scan the titles, anchor text, subheading, and the body text of the most engaging content published by your competitors. Pay close attention to the comment section--the gold mine of information.

When visitors land on your website, every second counts. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test, or WebPage Test to compare your site’s performance with competitors.

» Post frequency: Examine your competitors’ post frequency and timings, but spend quality time determining a schedule which works best your audience.

» How are they raising readers’ awareness (top of the funnel) to make their product or service more useful?

» Why do prospects start associating with the solution they offer with consideration (middle of the funnel) content?

» Which content type triggers the transaction (bottom of the funnel)?

» How are they persuading one-time buyers to become repeat customers with retention content?

Realise your content goals by observing the following cues from your competition:

» Traffic Direction: Detect how your competitor directs the traffic to a particular channel, product or service pages.

Put together all your research work on a spreadsheet or document. Don’t fall into “analysis paralysis” where there is a temptation to collect every bit of data.

The purpose of data collection is to stay ahead of the competition; not to overburden yourself with piles of information.

The author is a founder of Mushroom Content, aims for making businesses more human with approachable content.