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Competitor Pacing Online Competitor Analysis

Competitor pacingMore leads and more sales come from being seen first, higher and more frequently than other choices.  When people search for your product, be it in search engines, social media, forums or elsewhere, you should appear higher than your competitors.

For every position higher in search engine rankings your website will get roughly double the visitors.  And as they are from search engines these are some of the best visitors, people who are actually "searching" for something, something which you can provide.

The same applies for appearing in rankings in social search or industry verticals such as review sites, directories and guides.

So being higher than your competitors, before your competitors and more frequently than you competitors is a crucial step to building up your online presence.

Knowing your competitors' online image and status is important, before you launch any online marketing campaign. You want to know:

  • Who are your top online competitors? Sometimes this is obvious, other times not so much.
  • Where are your competitors on the internet? Facebook? Twitter?
  • Are they getting many "Likes", "Follows", "Shares" etc?
  • Are they ranking well on Search Engines for the products or services that you provide?
  • Are they actively advertising online? If so what type? PPC or Social Media and/or search engines? Can you beat them and still have positive ROI?
  • Are your competitors getting positive comments in online forums, discussion groups or review sites?  Are they actively using reputation management to deal with negative comments?

Once the position of your competitors is well understood this information can be actively used to improve your own digital brand presence, looking for opportunities that may not be initially obvious.

How to increase sales by analysing your competitors' situation

Be an alternative to your competitors

Wherever your competitors are, you have to be there also so that your brand/company is the alternative, and preferably the leading choice. When the potential customer is not happy with them or just look around for options or comparison, you are their next choice. Therefore, knowing your customers' "location" online is one crucial way to make sure that you have not fallen behind.  This doesn't just mean their website, but also social and other areas as well as what search terms they are either ranking naturally for or are targeting via advertising.

Appear in places that your competitors haven't thought of

Then once you have identified all the areas where competitors are located you can identify more possible places for your own presence. Be creative, think of places where your customers do their product research, or comment on what they have found. Ones that your competitors have not found are best, be there first there and establish a positive image of your company. 

See what your competitors do, then do more and better than them

Not just literal competitors in your own market, but also those in different geographies or related disciplines may have created concepts that can be applied to your business as well.  Making a comprehensive list of all the activities of both local and remote competitors, then cross-referencing this with your own presence gives you a road map for your own development.

Internal Training

WL Media HK can either perform these processes directly and create an action book for your company, or we can provide in-house training that will get your team on-board with the necessary skills and techniques to do it themselves, now and in the future.  An in house seo training workshop working with actual data from your real customers and competitors will bring not only immediate benefits by identifying immediate action items, but also prepare the company staff to follow-up and keep pace with your competitors.

Competitor Pacing

Keep pace with your competitors, outrun them slightly but don't waste energy to doing more than that.  It's only necessary to be one step ahead so we call our approach "pacing" in analogy with how you would win a marathon.  Stay just ahead of the competition and keep something in reserved for when they have a surge.

To learn how the Online Competitor Analysis can improve your online internet marketing contact us today. 


 
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