In the process of creating a digital marketing strategy, most companies conduct a digital marketing competitor analysis.<\/p>\n
Digital marketing competitor analysis allows you to develop an understanding of the competitive landscape, your competitors\u2019 best marketing practices, and the pitfalls to avoid. Using this data, you can craft your own online marketing plan and get the ball rolling.<\/p>\n
In this article, we\u2019ll explore the why and how of digital marketing competitor analysis and look at how to improve your own digital marketing strategy using the\u00a0Semrush .Trends<\/a>\u00a0digital analytics tools. Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the basics:\u00a0What is digital marketing competitor analysis?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Competitor analysis<\/a>\u00a0is the process of researching your market to identify competitors, unpacking the characteristics of competitors\u2019 businesses, and analyzing their strategies.<\/p>\n Competitor analysis is typically carried out to identify the strengths and weaknesses of other market players, define your company\u2019s standing in relation to them, and highlight gaps and estimate your potential to fill them.<\/p>\n Competitor analysis in the digital marketing context has some unique characteristics because of the fast-changing nature of the online landscape.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Digital markets can evolve rapidly and technology allows businesses operating in the digital landscape to pivot in an instant. That said, unlike traditional marketing channels, digital platforms offer an abundance of data and metrics that can be harnessed to gain insights into competitors’ strategies.<\/p>\n Once you decide competitor analysis is necessary for your online marketing plan, you need to figure out who your competitors in digital marketing actually are.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been running your business online for a while, a few digital competitors may come to mind right away. But it\u2019s important not to rely just on your experience and intuition. You may be surprised by who you\u2019re actually competing with in terms of traffic acquisition.<\/p>\n Competitor analysis normally includes a close look at both direct competitors and indirect competitors. Then, there are brand competitors. We\u2019ll look at how to pinpoint competitors later, but for now, let\u2019s define our terms:<\/p>\n When it comes to digital marketing, traffic is the name of the game. Whether you\u2019re analyzing advertisements on social media, organic traffic from Google, or referrals from other domains, your competitors are those websites that are drawing traffic away from your site to their own.<\/p>\n Digital competitors in online marketing compete for the same audience through digital channels and strategies like social media, SEO, PPC, email, and content marketing.<\/p>\n On the other hand, non-digital competitors are focused on traditional channels like TV, print media, radio, billboards, and physical stores to reach their audience.<\/p>\n The key difference lies in the channels they use:<\/p>\n Remember, some businesses may be competitors only in the digital realm, without affecting your offline presence.<\/p>\n Track your digital marketing competitors 24\/7<\/p>\n with EyeOn by Semrush<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While your main competitors are not likely to change that much over time, their positions and the general market conditions will shift constantly.<\/p>\n Here are the key reasons to check up on other market players on a regular basis:<\/p>\n Digital analytics provides you with a wealth of information about your competitor\u2019s online presence, customer behavior, and campaign performance. However, with so much data available, it’s crucial to know what to measure and why. In this section, we\u2019ll explore key metrics and measurements that are essential for effective digital analytics.<\/p>\n What to Measure:<\/p>\n By understanding what to measure and why, you can unlock the power of data and leverage digital analytics to drive strategic decisions, improve performance, and achieve their marketing goals.<\/p>\n Semrush .Trends provides the unique ability to analyze your market landscape, your competitors traffic, their marketing strategy, their online activity, and their growth dynamics.<\/p>\n In this section, we\u2019ll use .Trends to do a quick digital marketing analysis of the credit card industry in just five steps.<\/p>\n As a starting point, get to know your competitors’ audiences. This will provide a foundation for your marketing strategy. Not only will it help you determine how your audience differs from your top competitors, it can reveal new valuable audiences you may want to target later.<\/p>\n Semrush\u2019s\u00a0One2Target<\/a>\u00a0tool makes it easy to understand the demographic, socioeconomic, and behavior breakdowns of your competitors. Here\u2019s a look at the Demographics report for the 5 top credit card companies in our market.<\/p>\n Overall, we can see that the majority of audience members for our domains are men aged 25-34. There\u2019s also a large segment in the 35-44 age range.<\/p>\n Looking at the individual players, however, we notice some distinctions. For example, it looks like Discover\u2019s audience in the 18-24 age range is larger than their competitors, while chase.com has a larger hold on the 25-34 age range. Knowing this can help us think about how we want to position our business and which audiences we want to approach.<\/p>\n One2Target can also provide insights into audience overlaps. For example, in the Audience Overlap report, we can see discover.com has the largest audience overlap with chase.com.<\/p>\n The potential audience Discover could gain by targeting Chase\u2019s audience is a massive 48.3M people. And using the visited domains report, we can find out where Chase\u2019s audience spends their time online to inform our ad and partnership strategies.<\/p>\n For example, if we wanted to target a younger demographic, we filtered the list by the Computer & Video game category and here\u2019s what we uncovered.<\/p>\n Looking at domains that chase.com\u2019s audience overlaps with in the computer and video game category, we discovered a few potential targets for ads and partnerships.<\/p>\n For example, 3.7M users who visited chase.com also visited twitch.tv. This presents a potential audience of 5.6M individuals we might reach with a target ad campaign or partnership with this site.<\/p>\n Using\u00a0Market Explorer,<\/a>\u00a0let\u2019s get an overview of the competitive landscape and see which players are making the biggest gains. The Growth Quadrant found in the Market Explorer Overview report is your go to for competitive landscape analysis.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a look at traffic growth for top players in the industry.<\/p>\n Here, we discover americanexpress.com has seen a 31% growth in traffic over the past year, pushing them from the Game Changers category almost into the Leaders category.<\/p>\n You can also select different metrics to define your X and Y-axis to see how different competitors have experienced growth or declines along various criteria. For example, we selected Traffic for our X-axis and Purchase Conversions for our Y-axis.<\/p>\n Here, we found a different competitive layout. For example, capitalone.com has seen solid growth in their Direct Traffic and a 870% increase in purchase conversions.<\/p>\n By identifying what competitors are showing the best results for different kinds of metrics, you can figure out who to watch and where to look for insights to apply to your own strategy.<\/p>\n We identified americanexpress.com as one of the fastest growing domains in our market. Let\u2019s turn to the\u00a0Traffic Analytics<\/a>\u00a0tool to better understand their traffic acquisition strategy.<\/p>\n The Traffic Channel by Type widget is a great place to start examining competitor traffic. It allows you to choose a specific traffic channel, view the traffic trend over time, and track growth month by month.<\/p>\n For example, it looks like americanexpress.com has seen a strong uptick in Referral traffic over the past year. November, December, and January were especially strong months for Referral traffic.<\/p>\n Likewise, they\u2019ve been investing in their Paid Social strategy. They saw a massive 140% growth between October and December of 2022.<\/p>\n Once we discover the channels where they\u2019re seeing growth, we can dig deeper with the Traffic Journey report. Here\u2019s a look at the breakdown of their Paid Social traffic by platform.<\/p>\n Looks like their driving a huge amount of traffic from youtube.com and reddit.com. It seems these platforms are especially impactful when it comes to their Paid Social marketing, which is a key piece of information we might bring to our own strategy.<\/p>\n Now that we know the Paid Social channel is key for americanexpress.com\u2019s strategy, let\u2019s turn to the Top Pages report to take a look at what products they\u2019re promoting through this channel.<\/p>\n We organized the table by the Paid Social channel to bring the highest performing pages to the top of the list.<\/p>\n Here, we discover a promo for a business line of credit. It looks like the promo started in November 2022, and continued strong through March 2023. Traffic to the page has dropped off since April of 2023. When we follow the link, this is the page being promoted.<\/p>\n By exploring the top pages being promoted across various channels on competitor sites, you can understand what they\u2019re offering, how they are positioning the offer, and what channels they\u2019re using.<\/p>\n The combination of these insights can go a long way in helping you improve your own offers, positioning, and overall ad strategy.<\/p>\n Track your digital marketing competitors 24\/7<\/p>\n with EyeOn by Semrush<\/p>\n<\/div>\nWhat Is Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis?<\/h2>\n
Who Should You Analyze as Competitors in Digital Marketing?<\/h2>\n
Direct Competitors, Indirect Competitors, & Brand Competitors<\/h3>\n
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How Are Digital Marketing Competitors Different from Other Kinds of Competitors?<\/h3>\n
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Why Is Ongoing Competition Tracking Important?<\/h2>\n
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Digital Analytics: Deciding What Competitor Activity to Analyze<\/h2>\n
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How to Do Competitor Analysis in Digital Market Using Semrush<\/h2>\n
1. Explore Competitor Target Audiences for Insights<\/h3>\n
2. Analyze Competitor Activity Across the Market Landscape<\/h3>\n
3. Unpack Competitor Traffic Acquisition Strategies<\/h3>\n
4. Review Competitor Activity Related to Campaigns and Promos<\/h3>\n
5. Set Up Ongoing Competition Tracking to Stay in the Loop<\/h3>\n