Why competitive analytics and online marketing should go hand-in-hand
As an online marketing professional, you probably still come across companies who once set up a website and then unquestionable considered that part of their marketing done.
Eventually, these companies too, will learn to make their online presence an integrated part of their marketing approach. In this article, we examine why competitive analytics is essential to your online marketing efforts, and what kind of difference it makes in the long run.
There is a growing tendency amongst small- and medium sized companies to move away from marketing agencies and taking care of their online presence themselves, as they come to the realization that an agency can only pursue their marketing needs to a certain depth.
Sure, they will send in that monthly report and tweak their graphics in a way that looks favorable, but in the long term they will not innovate or adapt as an internal marketing department would.
Monitoring your own performance only paints a narrow picture
If you manage an internal marketing department, chances are that you have Google Analytics set up to monitoring on-site traffic on your company’s website. You probably also have a system for newsletters along with an online channel or two, just to stay on top of things.
By looking at the monthly numbers and metrics, patterns will emerge, annual cycles will make themselves known and over time, you have started benchmarking your performance month-by-month and year-by-year.
This is a great way to gradually see your online marketing efforts evolve with ever-increasing efficiency. As long as the numbers are alright, in theory everyone is winning right?
In marketing terms, the efforts of studying your own statistics religiously is the equivalent of running the Olympic 100 meter dash while you stare at your feet the whole time. You have no idea what your competitors are up to, other than the occasional signals you get from your market, and statistically it is very likely someone is outperforming you already in different areas.
Competitive analytics is the next level in your marketing strategy
To get the whole picture of your market and to know what your closest competitor is doing in the same area, you need to start benchmark performance and gather intelligence from not only your own company, but also from your closest competitors.
That sounds like a complexed and time consuming task, and it is. Luckily there’s online tools that can give you a push on the way and one of those is Outsmart. With Outsmart you can easily set up one, two, three or even more direct competitors to your business and track their online marketing efforts week-over-week or month-over-month.
Don’t blindly chase yourself and your own performance, get to know your competitor and use their strategies for your own success.
By setting up reporting tools like Outsmart, which is specialized in collecting and reporting on your competitor’s performance, you get to see exactly which competitor that is outperforming you and who’s not.
You will be able to learn what your leading competitor is doing right and it will help you to identify common patterns across your whole market field, and which you can use to adjust your own marketing- and content strategy processes appropriately.
Alright, so how do I measure all this and use it to my advantage?
Engagement is king
To improve your online marketing efforts, you also need to understand how your content is attracting your audience, so on-site traffic metrics of your website like Google Analytics is sadly not enough.
It will only give you a broad picture of how your audience is interacting with your website and how long they will stay there. It says nothing about engagement or what content that attracted their attention.
With Outsmart you can get the full picture of all your marketing efforts in one place, you will be able to see what content that engaged and attracted your audience, both from your own and from your competitor’s online marketing channels.
Engagement is the new king, it will give you black and white on content that works. Engagement brings audiences to your website and other marketing channels, it gauge their loyalty, affinity and it creates advocates for your brand.
Don’t just create content out of nowhere, use conversation, amplification and applause rate values to identify and measure the quality of content, utilize competitive intelligence and analytics to discover content that engage with your target audience.
Learn what your leading competitor is doing right, find content that brings engagement and discover your own inspiration on how to create the next buzz. Build an online marketing- and content strategy process around competitive intelligence and leverage to your advantage.
Measure and track your competitors and outsmart them wherever you can with competitive analytics.
Competitive analytics at your service
Want to monitor your competitors too? Outsmart has you covered. In a few quick steps, you can start to benchmark yourself against your closest competitors and their metrics. You will be able to set goals and baselines for your performance and growth based on your direct competitors.
Sign up for free today and don’t let your competitors leave you behind.
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