How to Do Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis with Semrush
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How to Do Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis with Semrush
When devising a digital marketing strategy, most companies undertake a competitor analysis in order to gain insights into their competitors' marketing practices and avoid common pitfalls. By analyzing their competitors, businesses can develop their own online marketing plan. In this article, we will explore why and how to perform a competitor analysis in digital marketing using the Semrush .Trends digital analytics tools.
Let's get started!
What is Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis?
Let's start with the basics: What exactly is digital marketing competitor analysis?
In essence, competitor analysis is the process of researching your market to identify competitors, analyze their business strategies, and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. In the digital marketing context, competitor analysis is unique because it takes into account the fast-changing nature of the online landscape.
Who Should You Analyze as Competitors in Digital Marketing?
Once you decide to perform a competitor analysis for your digital marketing plan, you need to determine who your actual competitors are in the digital marketing space.
While you may already have a few digital competitors in mind, it is important to conduct thorough research to identify competitors who may surprise you in terms of their traffic acquisition strategies.
There are three main types of competitors to consider:
- Direct Competitors: These are businesses that offer similar products or services and target the same customer segment, directly competing with each other for market share.
- Indirect Competitors: These businesses may offer different products or services, but they target the same or similar customer segment, potentially fulfilling similar needs or providing substitute solutions.
- Brand Competitors: Brand competitors are similar to direct competitors, but they have established strong brand identities and customer loyalty, differentiating themselves through reputation and unique value propositions.
In digital marketing, the main focus is on traffic, regardless of whether it comes from social media advertisements, organic search results, or referrals from other websites. Your competitors are those websites that draw traffic away from your own site to their own.
Why is Ongoing Competition Tracking Important?
While the main competitors in your industry may not change drastically over time, their positions and overall market conditions may shift continuously. It is important to regularly monitor your competitors for several reasons:
- To review benchmarks and learn from your competitors' successes.
- To stay up-to-date with industry and market trends, allowing you to adapt your own strategies accordingly.
- To learn from your competitors' best practices and avoid their mistakes.
- To stay informed about your competitors' activities, such as new product launches or marketing campaigns.
- To refine your marketing goals based on changes in the online market.
Using Digital Analytics to Analyze Competitor Activity
Digital analytics provides valuable insights into your competitors' online presence, customer behavior, and campaign performance. However, it is essential to know what metrics to measure and why. Here are some key metrics to consider:
- Competitive Landscape Dynamics: Monitoring your competitors' roles in the marketplace and tracking their traffic growth or decline over time can help you identify key players to watch and study.
- Website Traffic: Monitoring the number of visitors to your competitors' websites allows you to understand the reach and popularity of their online presence and gain insights into user behavior.
- Traffic Channel Breakdowns: Analyzing traffic sources helps you understand the performance of different acquisition channels and make data-driven decisions to improve your digital marketing strategies.
- Engagement Metrics: Measuring metrics such as bounce rate, time on site, and page views per session provides insights into user interaction and helps identify areas for improvement and optimization.
- Social Media Metrics: Analyzing social media engagement, follower growth, likes, shares, and comments helps assess the impact of your competitors' social media presence and content strategy.
- Email Campaign Metrics: Tracking email open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates helps evaluate the effectiveness of your competitors' email marketing efforts.
- Conversion Rates: Monitoring conversion rates, such as purchases or form submissions, allows you to assess the effectiveness of your competitors' marketing strategies in driving desired actions.
By understanding which metrics to measure and why, you can leverage digital analytics to make informed strategic decisions, improve performance, and achieve your marketing goals.
How to Perform Competitor Analysis Using Semrush
Semrush .Trends provides unique capabilities for analyzing your market landscape, your competitors' traffic, their marketing strategies, online activities, and growth dynamics. Follow these five steps to conduct a quick digital marketing analysis of the credit card industry using Semrush .Trends:
1. Explore Competitor Target Audiences for Insights
Start by getting to know your competitors' audiences. This will help you determine how your audience differs from your top competitors' and may reveal new valuable target audiences for your business. Semrush's One2Target tool makes it easy to understand the demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral breakdowns of your competitors' audiences.
For example, you can use the tool to analyze the top credit card companies' demographics and identify key audience segments.
2. Analyze Competitor Activity Across the Market Landscape
Use Semrush's Market Explorer tool to gain an overview of the competitive landscape and identify the top performers in the credit card industry. The Growth Quadrant in the Market Explorer Overview report allows you to analyze traffic growth and identify leaders and game changers in the market.
3. Unpack Competitor Traffic Acquisition Strategies
Focus on your top competitors' traffic acquisition strategies using Semrush's Traffic Analytics tool. Analyze their traffic sources and identify trends in their Referral, Organic, Direct, and Paid Search channels.
4. Review Competitor Activity Related to Campaigns and Promotions
Analyze your competitors' top pages and promotions using Semrush's Top Pages report. This will give you insights into the products or services they are promoting and the channels they are utilizing for their campaigns.
5. Set Up Ongoing Competition Tracking
Continuously monitor your competitors' activities using Semrush's EyeOn tool. This tool allows you to track competitors 24/7 and receive alerts for their website updates, search ads, social media posts, and social engagement.
Analyze Competitor Activity Data with Your Own Goals and Strategy in Mind
Once you have gathered insights from your competitor analysis, it is important to assess how their actions align with your strategy and goals. Filter out ideas that do not align with your brand or goals, communicate the competitive intelligence to relevant departments, and make necessary changes to your marketing plans and strategy if needed.
Remember, competitor analysis is an ongoing process, and staying informed about your competitors' activities is crucial for staying competitive in the digital market.
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