How to Do Better in Digital Marketing Than Your Competitors
Published 3rd of June, 2022
https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-tablet-computer-3082341/
You know you need to do better in digital marketing than your competitors if you want to stay ahead. But how do you actually achieve that? Here are some of the best ways to outperform your competition and stay on top of the digital marketing world.
Anyone who works in the digital marketing area is trying to get their company more customers, and do better than their competitors. It's how the world of business works, and digital marketing is no different. There's no shame in admitting this either. Every business has competitors, and everyone is trying to have an edge over the others.
But if you're serious about doing better at digital marketing than your competitors are, how do you go about actually doing this in practice? Here's what you need to know.
Identify Your Competitors...All Of Them
The first step is identifying your competitors. And not just the big names in your industry that you're already aware of. You need to also look at companies that might not be direct competition, but could still be stealing some of your potential customers.
For example, if you're a luxury car company, you might think that your main competitors are other luxury car companies. But what about ride-sharing companies like Uber or Lyft? They're not selling the same product as you, but they could be taking away some of your potential customers. Also, young start-up companies might be hungrier than more established brands, which means they might have a new take on digital marketing too. You'll definitely want to know about these types of businesses, as they could quickly become your competitors in the near future.
The point is, you need to identify all of the companies that could be stealing your customers, even if they're not direct competition.
Analyze Your Competitors' Digital Marketing Performance
Once you know who your competitors are, it's time to start analyzing their digital marketing performance. This will give you a good idea of where they're excelling and where there might be some opportunities for you to do better.
There are a few key areas you'll want to focus on, and you'll want to come up with some kind of system to score or rate what they’re doing, as well as note down some specifics about their approach and tactics. Just some of the things you'll want to look at are:
-Their website design and user experience
-Their blog content
-Their social media presence
-Their email marketing campaigns
-Their overall digital marketing strategy.
Of course, you'll also want to look at any other areas where they might be getting customers from, such as offline marketing or word of mouth. And see what you can find out about their suppliers – are they using external expertise such as a creative agency or an SEO expert to help them? It's important to get a well-rounded view of their approach and performance.
This should give you a good idea of where they're doing well and where there might be some areas that you can improve on. Remember, your goal is to do better than them, so don't just copy what they're doing. Try to find ways to do things better or differently.
Create A Digital Marketing Strategy
Now that you know where your competitors are excelling, and where there might be some opportunities for you to do better, it's time to start putting together your digital marketing strategy.
Your strategy should have a few key components, such as your objectives, your target market, your unique selling proposition, and of course, your budget. And if one of your goals is to do better than your competitors, look at your analysis to see which of the competitors came out best. Then look at the specifics of what you admire about their approach, to feed into your own goal setting process.
It's important to make sure that all of these elements work together to create a cohesive and effective strategy. For example, your budget will play a big role in deciding what tactics you use and how you use them.
Create Metrics That Incorporate Competitor Stats
Finally, you need to make sure that you're incorporating competitor data into your overall performance metrics. This will help you to not only track your own progress but also see how you're doing in relation to them.
For example, let's say that one of your objectives is to improve website traffic from organic search. You should track not just your own website traffic but also that of your competitors. And then look at things like market share and the rate of growth to see how you're performing. Of course, you won't be able to get hold of all the data on your competitors' performance that you might like. But there is plenty out there to help you compare your performance on a like for like basis. In particular, many social media monitoring tools allow you to research data on social media profiles run by people other than yourself.
Things like this will help you to not only track your progress against your objectives but also see how you're doing in relation to your competitors. If you're doing better than them, great! If not, you can use this information to help you adjust your strategy and tactics.