How to benchmark competitors for company analysis?

Conducting a benchmark analysis is a fundamental step in developing a company’s marketing strategy. Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, services and products of the companies that compete with your company can help you identify a market opportunity to direct your activity towards. In this way, if your brand manages to stand out, it is likely to meet a set of audience needs and increase your conversions.

In this post, we’ll show you how to conduct a competition analysis in four simple steps and what it should include to make it as effective as possible. Let’s get started!

What is a benchmark? 

Competition analysis is a tool used to evaluate the companies competing with your business in order to gain a competitive advantage over them. This study will help you identify opportunities in the market and locate your brand within the sector. Some of the components it should include aiming to achieve the best results are:

• Geographic location. Knowing where your competitors are located is important, as well as whether they operate solely as a physical store, an online store, or a combination of both business models.
• Communication analysis. It’s essential to understand the communication strategies that companies in your industry are using. Review their website, social media profiles, SEO strategy and more. This will help you see what’s working for them and identify gaps where you can start creating content. For instance, if you have an ecommerce business and notice that your competitors don’t have a blog on their website, you can incorporate one into your strategy.
• Product catalog. Identifying the types of products and services your competitors offer to the public, the prices they set and whether they apply discounts or promotions should be an essential part of your competitive analysis.
• Strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to know both the strengths and the areas where your competitors could improve. You can incorporate their strengths into your own business, while working on the weaknesses you identify to turn them into a competitive advantage.
• Customer reviews. Reading the feedback from customers who have already purchased from your competitors will allow you to identify their strengths and weaknesses. If multiple reviews highlight fast delivery or product quality, these will be key strengths to note.
• Company culture. Analyzing the mission, vision, and values they choose to identify themselves as a company can give you insights into their way of working.

Why do a benchmark? 

If you want to do something that other companies are not doing and ensure that differentiation, work on the benchmark. With an analysis of the competition you will get benefits, like those we list below. 

Identify business opportunities

Understanding the activities of other companies within your sector can lead you to discover a market that is either unsaturated, new, or poorly served. This creates a business opportunity where you can start generating value for your audience.

Be updated

Maybe with the competition study you can discover market trends that you were missing. Being up to date is important at this time when trends change so fast. So, your target will perceive that your company is not left behind and that they can find there what is trending. 

Create more effective content strategies 

Observe what works and what doesn’t for your competitors in their marketing strategies. You can start by looking at their social media presence, knowing which platforms they use can provide insights into their target audience. Analyze the content they publish (you can categorize it), their engagement levels and how they interact with the audience. A useful tip is to adopt the perspective of the customer and consider what might attract them.

Analyze how they work SEO. For instance, pay attention to the meta titles and meta descriptions of their products. Additionally, look at how they categorize their catalog and their blog efforts. The website will be another important aspect to evaluate. It’s advisable to assess the messaging, design, images, colors, and the steps in the purchasing process.

What you detect that gets good results can be incorporated into your content strategy or tried on topics that you think may be relevant to the audience and have not been covered before. 

4 steps to do a benchmark

1. Select the competitors 

Finding your brand’s competition is the starting point. Even if you know the name of many of them, we advise you to do a last search to define the list of companies to include in the competition analysis. You can search by keywords for more accuracy.  

In addition, to make the conclusions of the competition study useful for your strategy, it is advisable to take into account companies of different sizes. So, don’t just stick with big corporations and consider including competitors in different categories: 

• Direct competitors. Those who sell a product or service similar to your company’s and target the target audience you have defined for your brand. 
• Indirect competitors. In this case they sell products or services different from your line of business, but focus on the same target as your company. 

2. Creates a competition matrix 

Before starting to analyze the competition, it’s important to get organized and know how you’ll approach the benchmark. You can create a competitive matrix or in other words, a document to gather all the information from your research. For example, a table or a spreadsheet can be useful and help streamline your work. In the first column, list your competitors, and in the following columns dedicate each one to the categories you’ve established for the analysis.

3. Compare strengths and weaknesses 

With the information you’ve gathered, it’s time to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of your competitors. After that, you can compare them with those of your own company. It’s advisable to conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to outline both internal and external factors affecting your brand. The context in which your company operates is also important, as it will help create a more robust strategy.

4. Brand your competitive advantage 

Finally, you’ll have to extract results and see what makes your company different, what is its competitive advantage. This will be the point to work on in order to enhance and maintain it. 

Want to know more? At Redegal we can help you with the analysis of your company’s competition and much more. Shall we talk?