Speaker 1: Do you want to stay ahead of your competition? Are you tired of reacting to changes in the market or customer needs instead of being ahead of the curve? You can avoid all of that frustration by doing regular competitor analysis. Let me show you how. Hi, I'm Morgan, a digital marketing professional with Life Marketing. If you haven't completed a competitor analysis before, you're in for a treat. I'm going to walk you through the process, including what I ask myself and use a fake business so that you can see how it would apply in a real situation. Let's get started. First off, what is a competitor analysis? It's exactly what it sounds like, which you're probably not surprised by. You're looking at everything that your competitor is doing, at least the stuff that you can see. This isn't really a corporate espionage situation, and you're considering how your business compares. Now, why should you bother doing a competitor analysis? There are a lot of good reasons to perform an analysis for your competitors, and it's a common step in creating a new business or starting a marketing strategy. But I feel there's a bit of confusion around what the purpose of a competitor analysis is and how to complete one. You can look into any aspect of the business that you want, and you can use a competitor analysis for a lot of planning purposes. But some of the most important reasons to perform a competitor analysis are as follows. You can identify the things that your competitor is doing correctly. This will give you an idea of what you should be doing too. We're not talking copying, we're talking inspiration. You can also identify the things your competitor is doing wrong or incorrectly. This will give you an idea of gaps in the market and needs that you can fulfill. You'll be able to identify the ways that your company, product, or service is different from your competitors and establish your value proposition. That's what you bring to the table that's unique from what anyone else does. It also gives you an idea of what to expect for growth. It allows you to see what customers are saying about them, your competitors I mean, or what questions they're asking, problems they have, or solutions that they want. Let's look at how often you should perform a competitor analysis. I'd recommend doing an in-depth analysis at least once a year, but I like to put this on my calendar to do every six months or so. That way I don't spend too much time doing something that's outdated or falling short of what my client's competitors are doing. So let's get into how to perform an analysis and what I ask myself and look for. I'll show you how to do this using a made-up brand. We'll call it Morgan's Cafe. Very creative, I know. I'm including information on each step, questions to ask, and examples when they apply, and some ideas. So the first step will be to find your competitors. You need to know who else is offering something that could replace your product or your service, and these people should be in your area. And sometimes in your area means in your digital space. We call these your direct competitors, and they should be your main focus. If you don't know where to start, do what your customers would do. Search online. You can search for your business type or search keywords that you think your customers would search when they're trying to find you. You can do this on social media or on search engines, and you'll see lots of options pop up. Here's a search for coffee shops near me, showing all of the competition that Morgan's Cafe has. Next, you'll outline what your competitors do or provide. Now that you've found your competitors, take your time to browse their website, read their social media, watch their YouTube videos, and scour their blog to find out what your competitors provide. You want to know basic things, like what their product or services are, what their shipping policy is, what their return policy is, et cetera. You also want to look through any freebies or offers that they have available to get an idea of what's going on. Next, describe how your competitors sell and does it work. It's time to look at the sales process. I recommend walking through the steps here like your customer. Browse products, look at the product page, add a product to your cart, and start the checkout process. Or buy an item to see the process through from start to finish, including packaging and shipping times. Look at their social media feeds, subscribe to their newsletter, and read through emails that you receive. Abandon your cart to see if you get a reminder. Search keywords online and review any ads that show up. Look at reviews and read comments for customer feedback. I'll go into each of these a little bit more later. Basically, are people engaging with the posts? Are customers leaving good reviews? Are there common complaints that you see often? Can you tell how many sales they've made? Notice that I said to describe this process. I actually write it out, full sentences, full paragraphs. Make it feel fancy if you feel like it. But actually be able to describe this process as well as you would be able to describe your own.

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Speaker 1: Next, you'll analyze your competitor pricing and how they structure the product. You browse through product pages and shopping during the last step. But now we get to go for a deeper dive. Start with the product page and pay attention to pricing while you explore. Here's what I look for specifically. How many images or videos they're using and the style of those. Is it moody? Is it on a white background? How does it feel? What is the layout of the page generally? Where is everything located? What is the copy like? Is it long, short, descriptive, bullet points? Do they use very romantic language? What product or service information is included? What other elements are on the page like email lists or links to blogs or other articles? Are there suggested products? Are there reviews? How do I add the product to the cart? What is the price of the product? How does it compare to other products or services that their competitors are offering? How much is shipping? Next, scour your competitor's digital marketing strategy from paid to organic. Here's a note. You'll notice that some of these steps are overlapping with others. You're completing a number of these steps at the same time, so don't worry about keeping them strictly in the order that I'm presenting them now. A lot of them happen all at once, but you'll spend some time on your competitor's social media channels. Most businesses will list their social profiles on their website, but you can also manually search the most popular platforms for your competitors. Here's what I would list out. I would list all of my competitors and then the platforms that the company is using. I also mark down how often they're posting and what type of content they're posting. For example, carousels, videos, reels, or stories. I'll find them on search engines like Google, YouTube, and Pinterest to see what comes up, and I'm looking for paid and unpaid things here. I also like to pay attention to the time of day that they post. I'll note the average number of comments and likes. I'll also make note if they respond to comments and what the tone of those responses are. Next, I'll read customer reviews, comments, questions, and complaints. This is the time to read through reviews and comments to see what your competitor's customers are saying about them. Not only will you get to hear accounts of their experience, but you'll have a front row seat to any customer complaints or questions, which can help you when you're developing your strategy or offerings. For example, let's say that Morgan's Cafe competitors close at 3 p.m. on weekends and customers have been leaving comments asking them to stay open later. Morgan's Cafe can adjust their hours and run an ad campaign advertising longer weekend hours to pick up some of those customers who may be looking for an afternoon caffeine fix. Next, you'll perform a SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is what you do at the end of all of this legwork so that you can put all the information that you've collected, combine it with specifics for your business, and make a plan for developing new marketing strategies or new products. SWOT, S-W-O-T, stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And I did a full video on performing a SWOT analysis that you should check out after this. Links will be in the description box. Now, it's easy to focus on all the tasks that you need to complete for your business or all of the ideas that you have for products or creating content, but you don't wanna get so focused on your own business that you're not keeping an eye on your competitors and adapting your plan so that you can stay relevant and top of mind. I hope this walkthrough helped. Thank you so much for watching. Leave any questions that you have in the comments, and I'll see you next time. Happy marketing.