Identify your competitors

Identify your competitors

1. Run a Google search on each of the product or service categories you offer and write down all the companies that appear on page 1 per product and service, in a spreadsheet.

For multiple services or products, narrow down the list to 2–3 product categories you want to focus on.

2. Add columns for products, whether they’re a direct competitor or offer complementary products/services, their relative price point, target audience, tone and voice of web copy, and value proposition.

Visit each company’s website and/or review their social profiles to find the information.

3. Search for your product or service category on social media platforms and record the brands that are most talked about.

Analyze the types of paid and unpaid content you find, including customer comments. Look for trends, popular content, and who appears to be an influencer.

4. Search for your brand on sites like Reddit and Quora to find popular questions, criticism, and comments about your products or services.

Note the name of brands and companies that people present as an alternative to your business.

5. Create a spreadsheet for each of your competitors with columns for Marketing Strategies, Target Market, Where They Advertise, How Much They Bid on Ads, the Platforms They Use, and the Resources They Can Access.

6. Open the Facebook Ad Library and search for each brand name to see all the ads they run on Facebook.

7. Use a competitor analysis tool, like SpyFu, to see your competitors’ PPC campaigns and where they advertise.

8. Plug your competitor into a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to learn about their organic performance and content marketing efforts.

9. Browse competitors' content to see which keywords they target then search those keywords to get an idea of each competitor's rankings and how they compare to your own.

10. Divide your competitors into categories like Direct Competition, Social Media Competitors, and Market Reach/Visibility Competitors.