Know Your Competition to Beat Your Competition
You can’t develop an effective marketing strategy in a vacuum. Understanding what your competitors are doing — what’s working and what’s not — gives you a massive strategic advantage. Competitive analysis isn’t about copying; it’s about finding gaps, opportunities, and differentiators.
What to Analyze
SEO Competitive Analysis
Identify which keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t. Analyze their backlink profiles for link building opportunities. Study their content strategy: what topics do they cover, how often do they publish, and what formats do they use? Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz make this straightforward.
PPC Competitive Analysis
Research competitors’ ad copy, landing pages, and keyword targeting. Tools like SpyFu and SEMrush’s Advertising Research reveal which keywords competitors bid on, their estimated budgets, and their ad creative history.
Social Media Analysis
What platforms are your competitors active on? What content gets the most engagement? How often do they post? What’s their brand voice like? Understanding their social strategy helps you differentiate yours.
Website and UX Analysis
Visit competitors’ websites as if you were a customer. Evaluate their messaging, design quality, user experience, conversion paths, and unique selling propositions. Note what they do well and where they fall short.
Finding Your Competitive Advantage
After analyzing competitors, identify gaps in the market that you can fill, strengths you can amplify, weaknesses in competitors you can exploit, and underserved audience segments you can target.
Creating a Competitive Analysis Framework
Build a spreadsheet tracking key metrics across five to ten competitors. Update quarterly. Include keyword rankings, domain authority, social media following, content output, and any observable marketing campaigns. Trends over time are more valuable than snapshots.
Turn Insights into Action
Competitive analysis is only valuable if it drives action. Use findings to refine your keyword strategy, improve your content, differentiate your messaging, and allocate budget to underexploited opportunities.
Get a Competitive Edge
Brandastic conducts thorough competitive analyses to inform winning marketing strategies. Get a free competitive analysis.
