A competitor analysis report is an incredibly important and valuable element of any marketing and/or digital marketing strategy; providing you with insight and information regarding your competitors and where you sit in comparison, as well as any ‘gaps’ in content, products or offering that they’ve left and you can fill. But what does a competitor analysis report look like and what should be included?
What does a competitor analysis report look like?
A competitor analysis needs not only to provide detailed information about your direct competitors, but also industry leaders and indirect competitors, also.
Industry leaders – the big players in your field – provide you with a bench mark via which you can compare your offers and your competitors, as well as goals, objectives and ideologies going forward.
Your indirect competitors – businesses who you share perhaps one or two offerings with – provide you with an insight into some of the areas you might or might want to touch on and can give you information on what a wider audience could look like, any ‘gaps’ in services or products, and some longer term goals; as well as style and form.
And then there are your direct competitors – those local, regional or even national players that compete in exactly the same space as you do whether in service, products and/or USPs and it’s these businesses that will make up the bulk of your competitor analysis report.
What should a report include?
A competitor analysis should include the following elements:
Aims & objectives: like a marketing strategy, your competitor analysis report should document your aims and objects, both when analysing your competitors and when creating actions & tasks going forward – this provides you, your team and stakeholders with a defined reason for the report and what you will be taking from it. This kind of report needs to be a working document that helps you, now and in the future, execute marketing activities going forward.
Competitor lists: list your competitors, their websites and any social media platforms they use, and label them appropriately depending on whether they’re direct, indirect or industry leaders, whilst also providing an overview of what they do and what they offer. This will help you create context for anyone viewing the document who is unfamiliar with these businesses, anyone new joining the team and, of course, yourself when you use this document in the future, as well as helping you identify how close a competitor they really are.
Website analysis: carefully analyses your competitors websites, paying close attention to:
- Style and design
- Form and structure
- Content (pages and blog/news section)
Within this, also consider running each of their websites through an auditing tool such as SemRush or Similarweb where you’ll see lots of valuable information such as:
- Top performing pages
- Keywords and rankings
- Backlinks
- Traffic estimations
Keyword research: following on from the above, using tools such as SemRush, Similarweb and Moz will provide you with an idea of the top keywords your competitors rank for and the keywords that seem to drive the most traffic; therefore what your competitors are writing about online. This will provide you with blog/article ideas and ideas around how best to restructure and/or rewrite your content going forward.
Social media analysis: understanding what your competitors are doing on social media will provide you with an idea of what you should – or sometimes should not – be doing with your own, what’s working for them and therefore what could work for you.
Making your report as detailed as possible will help you plan and strategise going forward; think of this report as the backbone for your marketing strategy – a way to compare and analyse your business, your offerings and your brand with what’s out there in order to make improvements and long term, positive changes.
And, if you need help with any of this from a seasoned professional – contact me!
Sophie Porter: Content Specialist 