Competitive Analysis – Importance In Digital Marketing For Small Business

Competitive Analysis OR Competitor Analysis

In this post of the Digital Marketing for Small Business Owners series. I’m going to be talking about upping your digital marketing game through competitive analysis.

At this point in the course, you’re probably a bit overwhelmed with the various strategies we’ve covered. Digital marketing is complicated, and all the moving parts need to work together if you want to be successful.

My favorite tip for people who are just starting out in digital marketing – and even for seasoned vets – is to learn from your competitors.

Your competitors are already rocking a digital marketing strategy – they’re spending time and money, and they’re getting results. So why not piggyback off of what they’ve done?

I’m not telling you to copy your competitors – if you’re only copying what your competitors are doing, you’re never going to beat them. But I am telling you to closely analyze what they’re doing. You can learn quickly, and once you understand the various strategies AND you see how your competitors are marketing, you can do it better and win.

I’ve mentioned the Semrush tools a few times in past lessons, but I wanted to really dig in and share the powerful tools you’ve got at your fingertips for competitive research.

On the SEO side of things, I already mentioned my other lessons on keyword research and link research – but there’s a killer tool for organic research called… Organic Research.

All you have to do is enter a competitor’s URL and you get to see all sorts of helpful information. See which terms they’re ranking for, which then helps you see what sort of content they’ve got that’s performing so well.

I love checking out the SERP features section.You can see how many featured snippets they own, if they’re showing up in local results, and so on.

The Top Pages report is killer – it’s the easiest way to quickly see what kind of content is performing well in organic searches. Then you can check out the organic competitors, and look at the same areas for each. Pretty quickly, you’ll have a solid idea of their SEO strategy and why each site is ranking well.

Semrush has killer tools for paid advertising analysis as well. Click the ‘Advertising Research’ link and enter a competitor’s URL. You’ll see a detailed report of the competitor’s paid search strategy.

You can see which keywords they’re ranking for, along with approximate cost and traffic volume. But the best part of this tool is the ‘Ad Copies’ tab. You’ll see a detailed list that shows the ad copy for all of the ads they’re running, along with how many keywords each ad is targeting.

If you don’t have much experience with Google Ads, there’s simply no better way to learn how to write compelling ads than using this tool to see what competitors are doing.

You can also click over to the pages report to check out their various landing pages, which helps you learn quickly how to design high-converting pages.

Want to check out the display ads that your competitor is running? Here are some great tools for that too!

Click on ‘Display Advertising’, and you’ll see an overview of their display strategy, including ads, sites that the ads appear on, and categories and interests that they’re targeting. Again, you can click to the ‘Ads’ tab and see copies of all of their ads, and to the ‘Landing Pages’ tab to check out their landing pages.

If you’re just getting started with digital marketing, you’ll be able to jumpstart your knowledge and skill level using these tools to analyze your competitors. You’ll learn how to write compelling ad copy, keyword targeting strategies, and how to create landing pages that convert.

Really dig in – check out as many competitors as you can. Tools like the Facebook Ad Library and AdMobySpy are really helpful here.

Don’t forget to check outside of your niche too – analyze other businesses as well. Even though they’re not competitors, you can learn a lot about digital strategies by checking out what other successful businesses are doing.

Don’t forget to check out the post – A Beginner’s Guide To Create A SEO Friendly Small Business Website

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Find the right mix for you

Whether you’re just starting off with digital marketing, or you’ve got some experience and you’re analyzing your current efforts, it’s important to find the right marketing mix for your business.

In past posts, I’ve covered the basics of all the areas of digital marketing – but that doesn’t mean you have to jump in with both feet and do them all.

Every business is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing. You know what your capabilities are – whether you’re doing things yourself, or you’ve got a team that handles the various tasks. You know how much time, effort, and money are available. The trick is to find the right mix to maximize your results.

Some companies are successful with only a website and email marketing (Also Read – Why A Website is Vital for Success Of Your Small Business?). Others rely heavily on a website and paid advertising. A few businesses even skip the website and rely only on their Facebook page and social advertising.

There is no right or wrong. You simply need to sit down and figure out what works for you.

First, think about your capabilities. Who’s going to be doing the work – is it just you? Do you have an in-house marketer, or even a team, or will you outsource everything to a marketing agency?

You’ve got to decide on your budget as well. Whether you’re handing things yourself or using an agency, you need to know how much you can spend on your digital marketing push.

If you’re handling things internally, that budget question isn’t just about how much you have to spend on ads – it’s about how much time someone is going to be spending doing the work. If you’re outsourcing to an agency, how will you allocate your budget? How much is dedicated to each area?

In pretty much every case, you’re going to have to start with a website. Like I mentioned in the website lesson, every other element of digital marketing relies on your website presence. You can’t do SEO or SEM without a site. Invest in your site – make sure it’s awesome, and that you’re able to easily make updates in the future.

Once you’ve got your site handled, you’ve got to prioritize your marketing efforts. Think about where your potential customers are and the best way you can reach them. If you’ve got a big budget, you can do everything… but in most cases, you’ll need to pick and choose carefully.

I’d always suggest investing in SEO – showing up in Google searches will always be a great way to bring in new customers. Get started today. Contact us for a Local SEO Proposal

A Little About Us

Volt Studios is an Award Winning Web Design and Local SEO Company In Toronto. We are dedicated to providing our clients with top-notch services. We provide personalized attention and advice that will help your business grow at an exponential rate. So if you are looking for an ALL in One Digital Marketing Agency in Toronto that offers World Class Web designing and Web developoment with guaranteed results, then we are the ones for you!

If you’ve got a limited budget for ads, just run a few tests. You’ll get results quickly, so you could test Google ads for a month, then Facebook ads for a month, then Instagram ads for a month, and so on. Find the ads that perform the best and start there.

Use the Semrush tools to see what your competitors are doing – they’ve already done all the work to figure out what’s effective, so take advantage of that history. Check out their marketing mix and you’ll see where they prioritize channels that perform better. If you’re limited to a smaller budget or amount of time, start on those channels, since you know they’re working for your competitors.

Even with a limited budget, you can bring in new business if you create effective ads. As you grow, you can either increase your budget on the platform you’re using, or you can expand and add additional digital marketing strategies into your mix.

The digital marketing community is incredibly helpful and nurturing – there are tons of Facebook groups, Twitter chats and groups, and even Slack channels you can join to learn more and get advice about any area of digital marketing.

So that’s it for the last lesson of the digital marketing for business owners module. We hope you learned something awesome.

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