How to Identify Competitors

In any respected activity and sector, before conducting a marketing strategy, it is important to identify your own competitors.

A competitor is an individual, company or organization that is a rival operating in the same market and sells to the same target audience similar or alternative products/services.

The presence of one or more competitors in the reference sector causes a reduction in the prices of goods and services and pushes companies to reduce costs and become more efficient.

How to identify competitors

Identifying and analyzing competitors is an activity that must be carried out before any advertising made for the sale of products and services.

Thanks to the data emerged from the analyses, the company can rework its business strategies in order to create a new commercial proposal that differs from the competition.

Your product must be perceived as unique and original, so as to indeed break down the competition.

There are two different ways to identify your competitors: online and offline.

How to identify your online competitors

By conducting online searches, you can find many tools that help you identify online competitors.

We start with a search on Google, looking for who operates in the interested sector, after which we will need to understand if the type of article can be sold on online platforms.

Can the product or service be purchased on marketplaces similar to Amazon?

Let's make an example.

Who are your competitors if you sell clothing?

One of the many competitors could be Zalando, or other similar online shops like Privalia.

Once you have identified who your online competitors are, it is necessary to list which small or large retail stores, that is the GDO that sell clothing and operate around you.

However, many people prefer to touch the fabric with their hands, try it on before buying it, and this is where the situation gets complicated.

It's not just about understanding where the product can be found but also considering how people would prefer to purchase that product.

Analyzing the competition: Online tools

Having a good web positioning is important to differentiate from competitors.

The best tools for conducting a thorough analysis of the competition are:

Mention

A freemium tool, meaning some features are unlocked only upon payment, very useful for brand monitoring. It compiles updates online mentioning a certain

keyword. It's a very accurate analysis tool, just type the keyword of interest into the queries.

SEMrush

If you're interested in SEO competitor analysis, this tool is one of the best. It is used to compare your own website with that of a competitor. Once you've entered the domain URL, it will analyze traffic, the most clicked queries, and ranking. Moreover, it is also freemium.

Seo Zoom

Allows you to analyze a keyword, a domain or a URL. The tool presents you with statistics related to the site's trends, its performance and positioning.

How to analyze competitors on social media

Social networks are an excellent starting point for implementing a positioning strategy. 

How to Perform a Competitor Analysis on Facebook

As for Facebook, the analysis is based on how many "likes" a competitor's page has and how many interactions it could have.

There are two useful tools to make things easier:

• Likealyzer: is used to check the status of a Facebook fan page. Just enter the URL of the page and the tool will return a number from 1 to 100, like a rating. The higher the number, the better the performance;
• Fanpage Karma: This is a paid tool that is used for conducting a much more detailed competitor analysis. Fanpage Karma compares the numbers of Facebook pages that you want to analyze in order to improve your own page's publication and engagement...

target and audience reactions.

How to conduct a competitor analysis on instagram

The Instagram competitor analysis revolves around sharing content from a page and the creation of new hashtags.

The most commonly used online tools are:

• Phlanx: a paid tool that is very easy to use. It allows you to study all the profiles of competitors simply by entering the URL of that particular page into the search bar. The result is a percentage that measures user engagement, averaging followers, likes, and the number of comments;
• Social Rank: allows you to analyze competitors through keywords for which you want to position your Instagram page. A search is performed for the keyword, and from there, you can sort the competitor profiles found based on value, user engagement, or number of followers.

How to identify your offline competitors

Obviously, this depends on the type of service offered.

Let's take an example.

Mr. Rossi is on vacation in Milan, and he is looking for a bar.

If you are in Milan and feel like having a coffee, are you willing to walk a few hundred meters to find a bar?

In this case, the purchasing process is very simple and quick; it starts offline and concludes offline.

Therefore, if the product purchasing process starts offline and ends in the same way, you can compile a list of competitors simply by observing around the interested location to see who sells products similar to yours.

Conducting a detailed analysis of your competitors is a delicate task that requires time investment, but if done well it will be able to give your business something original, different, and unique compared to all the sellers and products available on the market.

Leverage your competitor analysis with Framework360

Once you have collected your analysis data, and identified the competitors in your sector of interest, you can take advantage of the capabilities of Framework360, the most innovative and comprehensive Italian platform for digital marketing, to create your own personal website, and launch your e-commerce site, standing out in the market by making it unique and effective.

All you need to do after setting up your environment on the platform is to install the e-commerce plugin, among the many features offered by Framework360, to thus have a dedicated section for configuring and managing independently all aspects and steps of an online sales site, in a way that is as simple and intuitive as it is effective. 

The platform also offers numerous additional functions for online marketing and the management of your own web portal, including a customization section, a client module and messaging, and even a section for tracking and reporting data and information regarding the performance of your site.

All this and more with Framework360