How Can You Track and Beat 95% of Your Competitors?
“The Pandemic has ruined it all. We were sailing before it struck in March. Ever since life has been so tough for our marketers and other in-house teams.”
Marshall concerns were not unfounded.
Like his SME, there are millions of other businesses that are finding themselves in deep waters. Despite going strong in the face of competition across years, established organizations are now grappling in the eye of the storm. Covid-19 has struck badly and continues to leave its impact.
“What does one do? Competition is on the rise forever. It’s becoming difficult to create a solid differentiation to get ahead in the race to survival and success.”
He carried on with a clear tome of desperation.
Jack, his friend and digital marketer by profession, sat listening to him about ten feet away. Social distancing was important.
“When did you last update your digital marketing strategy?” he asked. “Have you considered tweaking your digital marketing approach during lockdowns?”
Marshall knew this was coming. “With so many emerging technologies in the market place, it’s kind of difficult to freeze on the most feasible one. I did try to find out what rival firms were up to, but what I got in hand was barely enough. Some of them seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.”
Jack could sense disappointment and helplessness.
“No worries. I guess you have not tapped the potential of a good digital marketing agency. Let me tell you how to beat 95 per cent of your competition with online marketing tactics.”
A Reliable Digital Marketing Agency: Your Friend in Need
- Competitors Research & Analysis
First and foremost, experience online marketers will brainstorm with you to know more about your competition.
Who are they?
Do you think there are no competitor firms in your line of business?
Are you aware of how rivals are influencing your sales?
These and other pertinent questions about competitor research will place you on higher grounds. Even if the competition you face is cut-throat, you will be able to survive with simple competitor analysis.
Competitor research should become an important part of your marketing strategy to:
- Get in-depth ideas about the digital marketing tactics of your competitors
- Fathom the social media strategies in their arsenal
- Create a list of their target audience, consumers and end-users
- Fish out the gaps in their digital marketing plans and use them to your advantage, etc.
In other words, you need to invest in competitor analysis to get into their stronghold, find the loops and exploit them. For instance, dig into their social media strategies and channels. Soon, you will understand their growth patterns, prospective and target audience, methods of communicating with them, and more. Accurate and relevant competitor research and analysis will pave the path for stronger social media channels. Once you have data-backed information, you will be in a better position to benefit from their loopholes, downtime and queries posed by their audience.
Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools that help you get the information you need. For example, Sprout Social, Phlanx, Social Blade, SEMRush, Ahrefs, MozBar, Buzzsumo and Similarweb are the tools that can be used to spy on your competitor’s social media activities.
Besides, digital marketing agencies know how to detect the organic performance of companies in competition with you. Expert digital marketers can find out the keywords used by your rivals for targeting customers. Along with other pertinent information in place, they can plan lucrative strategies to give your business the much-needed competitive edge.
Conducting competitive analysis provides the following benefits:
- Deeper understanding of the market space
- Effective targeting of customers
- More accurate forecasts of the market potential
- In-depth tracking of the economic climate
- Tracking of competitor pricing and products
- Knowhow of tertiary market possibilities
- Smarter methods if customer acquisition, and more.
- Local SEO
Local SEO ‘optimizes’ your web presence to bring in more business through the most-appropriate local searches. People looking up businesses such as yours, in your area of operations, usually resort to Google and other popular search engines. Local businesses are usually looked upon Google, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps, etc. If you are listed on local searches then the probability of lead generation and conversions is higher.
- 97 percent of total web searches are based on end-users looking for a local business.
- 88 percent of those searching local businesses are likely to visit or call within the next 24 hours.
- Voice search has been used by more than 58 percent of Americans to search for a local business.
To attain local SEO success, the experts at a digital marketing agency would optimize your website for mobile visitors. With your mobile-friendly site, many more searchers will be able to find your local business easily. To help your cause, they will help you set up a Google My Business profile to give due competition to others. In case they are still waiting to create their presence on Google My Business, you get an edge right away. Once done, your business details will be available on Google maps and in local Google searches. Aim for 5+ ratings to hog your share of the limelight on Google My Business.
Local SEO results for your business will show:
- Your opening and closing hours
- The exact location of your place of business
- When you are busy
- The business description
- The best ways of getting in touch
- Pictures of your premises, products, services and self, etc.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is an important medium of beating the competition by businesses across the globe. Regardless of their size, organizations are using this marketing channel to deliver the highest ROI consistently. Experienced marketing managers segment data and campaigns to send out the most relevant messages to their subscribers.
They are deriving the following benefits of email marketing to help their clients remain ahead in the race.
- Higher Return on Investment
- Instant impact through a sense of urgency
- Easy to spread the word to a global audience
- Leads and messages can be forwarded by subscribers on the click of a button
- Email marketing software can be tracked and clicked-through to know the conversion rates.
- Campaigns can be improved upon with the help of measurable metrics
- Email campaigns can be spruced with fancy templates, drag-and-drop features, videos, logos and images.
- Email marketing promotes impulse buying. Backed by attractive calls to action and direct checkout links, newsletters sent by emails get prompt results.
- Content Creation
Content is one of the best ways of overtaking your competition. You can beat them at their own game by running successful content marketing campaigns. Invest in relevant and accurate content to tell users why they should look at your services and products and not those of your rival companies. The best thing about using content as your marketing tool is that there are unlimited ways of using it. Digital marketers can create landing pages and ad copies to make your paid campaigns give good returns.
What’s more?
SEMrush can provide insights into the organic content of your rival firms, their landing pages, ad copies and backlinks. You need not find all this data manually; SMRush will do it for you automatically.
- Use the converting keywords of your competitors to optimize your content.
- Create interesting and unique posts, blogs and articles with these keywords inserted naturally.
- E-books with relevant SEO elements in place can be used profitably for your paid ads.
- Focus on the different types of content published by competitor websites. Are they posting customer reviews and testimonials regularly? What about product recommendations?
- Learn to differentiate between the content that gets maximum user engagements from the ones abandoned by readers. Format your content accordingly.
With proper competitor content analysis, you will understand where your site is falling behind. Thereafter, improvise on the content to get deserving returns.
- Creatives and Presentation
Are you going back to competitor websites to take a look at their presentation skills? Do you want to replicate their website design and creatives to a large extent? Success in online marketing is all about creating a good first impression. It is the first thing viewers notice after reaching your URL. Given their importance, you may want to invest in the best creatives to make your competitor’s website fade into oblivion.
To make the right difference, research on the different types of titles, fonts and layouts that can add to the wow factor of your site. Are they good enough to highlight your products and services adequately? Besides, decide upon the best quality, design and style to add to the appeal of your website. The overall impact should be good enough to lure users and absorb them readily.
These days, it’s common to find website owners playing around with different creatives. These include and are not restricted to home page banners, graphic ads, e-book designs, lead magnets, email designs, infographics and so forth. A good digital marketing agency can be your guide in your quest for the creatives that are bound to click with your audience.
- Backlinks
According to SEO experts, your pages need backlinks to get high search engine rankings. However, it is not easy to get backlinks. They have to be earned. You cannot borrow or buy them at a cost. To beat the competition, you may want to check out the expert advice given by digital marketers on online forums and their personal blogs. The tips and tricks to earn backlinks will help you plan your marketing strategies.
For instance, if your rivals are ranking higher than you, then it’s important to resort to simple yet efficient tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush and Open Site Explorer attributed to Moz.
- These helpful tools will show the sites that are redirecting traffic to the websites of your competitors
- Proper research will enable you to sketch out a list of high-authority and relevant websites for backlinking purposes.
- Once you shortlist the websites, reach out to their owners to backlink with your business website. Don’t be surprised if they have backlinks to your rival websites. It’s a business. They will backlink to your site as well.
Are you still wondering how this strategy can help? Researching on backlinks improves upon your content strategy. You will find it easy to understand which content is more engaging. Resultantly, you can create links to suit your purpose.
- Traffic Analysis
Getting traffic to your website is a critical part of digital marketing. Digital marketing companies have the knowhow to understand the marketing strategies of your competitors. They can find out about the advertisements and other features that are added to the rival services and products to draw traffic. Once you have these insights, online marketing experts can make it easy for you to draw more traffic to your website.
The blogs by Neil Patel are quite knowledgeable and resourceful. They can guide you in your traffic generation attempts. Once people start visiting your site, the leads and conversions will rise. This, in turn, will boost your profits and ROI.
Way Forward
“Digital marketing trends are subject to change. You have to decide upon the trends that are best for your business and implement them judiciously,” Jack concluded.
Marshall looked up with a more confident look on his face.
Marshall looked up with a more confident look on his face.
