Obsessing over what your competition is doing isn’t healthy or helpful for you or your brand. But, that doesn’t mean you should ignore them completely. Knowing what to look for and when can be extremely beneficial for your brand and your marketing plans. That’s why our Marketing & Strategy team conducts competitive audits as a best practice when we take on projects like large websites, brand refreshes, strategic marketing plans, and other efforts.
Whether you’re planning on auditing your competition yourself or tapping a partner like CID, there are some important considerations to keep in mind.
Having a grasp on what your competitive landscape looks like can do a few different things for your business. It can help you identify opportunities that your competition isn’t taking advantage of, confirm what you don’t want to do, and give you some ideas that you may want to put your own spin on.
We usually look at 3 to 5 competitors because it’s not an overwhelming undertaking, and it gives a pretty solid look at where our client falls in the mix. Auditing competitors before we dive into a client’s website redesign, for example, can tell us a lot about where we need to take the client’s site.
By doing competitor audits, we can find out (among other things):
Keeping an eye on the competition isn’t just for larger marketing undertakings, either. We recently conducted an audit for a client that was interested in making some changes to their current social media strategy. So, one of the first things we did was take a look at what others in the industry were posting, when, how often, and where they were sharing their social content.
In comparing the other organizations we were able to identify where our client had some gaps and where they were leading the pack. The analysis didn’t result in a recommendation for a complete pivot, but it did identify some action steps our client could take to make their social media presence more consistent, user-friendly, and visually appealing.
If we hadn’t done the audit, our client might have chosen to change their strategy without having a solid reason to do so. Or, they may have decided to make some tweaks without having a good sense of what actually needed changing and still not be where they want to be.
Our team recommends performing a competitor audit when:
That isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should give you a good understanding of when it’s a good idea to check in on your competitors.
Your competitors (and yes you do have them even if you don’t yet know them) likely fall into one of two categories: direct and indirect.
Direct: A business offering the same product or service as your business.
Example: McDonalds vs. Burger King
Your direct competitors are probably the ones you’re likely to lose the most sleep over since you are offering essentially the same things to your audience, and you are both vying for their attention and spending power.
Since your success is largely tied to being able to differentiate your business from your rivals, having an idea of what they’re doing and saying is extremely important.
Indirect: A business that offers a product or service that can fulfill the same need as your company, but in a different way.
Example: McDonalds vs. Starbucks
Indirect competitors may not be on your radar but they should be. Just because they don’t offer the exact same thing as you doesn’t mean your audience won’t find them intriguing. Keep up with trends in your industry overall (not just your corner of it) and you’ll have a decent idea of what others in the space are doing.
You may discover that they are making claims your messaging can respond to, or tactics your business may want to try adopting.
One more category to consider your competitive audit is: companies outside of your own industry. Why? Inspiration, mostly. You know how we often say that “B2B that feels like B2C can be a differentiator” a lot?
Getting to that place means looking at B2C companies you admire and thinking about what they may be doing in their branding and marketing that you can adapt and put your own spin on. That could include anything from how their website is designed to offers they make or how they approach digital advertising.
Like a lot of things in marketing, the answer is “it depends.” In this case, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish for your organization. If you are starting a major undertaking like a rebrand, business or product launch, or website refresh it makes sense to look at a few aspects of your competition’s business.
When CID’s team performs competitive audits on larger projects like these, some of what we are looking for includes:
Brand: How does the organization look and present themselves? Is it uniform across their platforms? Is their logo fresh or outdated? What is their mission and can we see it reflected in their customer-facing marketing?
Messaging: What are they saying about themselves and how are they saying it? What is their tone? Are they consistent with their messaging everywhere we encounter?
Digital Presence: Do they have a website? Is it old or newer? Is it easy to navigate? Does it have calls-to-action in places that make sense? Where are they on social media? Do the images and copy used feel polished and professional?
Digital Performance: Is the website slow to load? Does it look good on mobile? How much engagement are their organic social posts getting? When you click a call-to-action, does it take you where you expect? What keywords are they ranking for?
Digital Promotion: What social platforms do they use and what is the engagement like? Are they running ads on social platforms? What does their PPC presence look like? Do they use promotional landing pages? Are their ads high-quality?
If we’re working on something like the social media strategy we mentioned earlier in this post, or digital ad strategy rather than a larger scale project we narrow the focus of the audit accordingly.
Once you have the information it’s smart to look at as much of it all together as possible. We use spreadsheets to compare and contrast our findings, but do what works best for you.
Note what you think is working well, what you think isn’t, what you’re intrigued by, and how everything you’ve observed from your competitors works overall. Giving each a letter grade or some other signifier can help you remember at a glance what you thought of everything.
You may want to enlist the help of an outside partner, too. That can be an agency like CID, but it could also be a colleague. Ideally, it’s someone who’s not as deep in the weeds as you are because they may notice things you haven’t, or offer a perspective that changes your mind about what works or doesn’t.
Identify tactics, approaches, or best practices you’d like to add to your own efforts as well as those you definitely do not.
Finally, remember that no matter what the competition does, your brand is its own entity. Don’t change your marketing or brand simply because someone else happens to be. That kind of thinking leads to “shiny object syndrome” and tends to cause chaos and disorder more than anything that could be good for your brand. Plus, defining your brand against a competitor puts the competitor in control of your brand narrative, not you.
The bottom line: Staying aware of your competition is extremely beneficial and can help you make smart decisions about your organization and how you want to shape it as long as you don’t lose sight of who you are as an organization along the way.
Inspired to do a competitive audit of your own but aren’t sure where to start? Contact CID to get our team working for you.
Creative. Strategic. Crategic? (We'll workshop it.) Rebecca's part of our award-winning marketing & strategy team where she turns ideas into words and words into content.