How To Find Your Competitor’s Weakness
When we say to “find your competitor’s weakness” we aren’t telling you to look for their Achilles heel. Any weakness you find in your competitors isn’t going to bring their company down, nor should that be your ultimate goal. What you’re really looking for in your competitor’s weakness is a way to better your own marketing campaign. Let’s take a look at exactly what that means.
Why You Should Look for Your Competitor’s Weakness
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Looking for your competitor’s weaknesses helps you develop a competitive strategy. Your competitive strategy helps your business succeed, especially in a market with a lot of similar companies. If you can find the edge to attract an audience to your brand better than those other businesses, you have a much better chance of succeeding. Competitor research can help you do that.
How To Find Your Competitor’s Weakness
Here’s a list of steps to help you understand the weakness of your competitors:
1. Conduct a Content Audit
The first step is to conduct a content audit of your competitors. This helps you see what type of content they’re creating and how it’s helping or harming their content marketing campaign. When conducting a content audit, look at the different blogs or articles that your competitor creates. Where do they currently rank on the search engine results page (SERP)? Do they create a certain type of content more than another? Is there any type of content they’re not creating at all?
That last question is one of the most important. That’s because it can help you find unique and original content for your own marketing campaign. For example, let’s say your competitors have a strong blog presence but haven’t written white papers. White papers might help your business find an untapped area to market its products or services.
2. Find Low-Hanging Fruit
“Low-hanging fruit” are keywords that your competitors rank for and you don’t. Essentially, they’re easy keywords for you to target. That’s because you know your target audience is already searching for them and other businesses are generating traffic because of them. Once you find “low-hanging fruit” opportunities, look at how your competitors are targeting those keywords. Is there a way you can target them differently? Is there a unique perspective you can give to each topic?
3. Discover Gaps in Your Content Strategy
Gaps are any area of your content campaign that you might not have thought about. Conducting a content audit and finding “low-hanging fruit” are just two ways that you can find gaps in your content strategy. Finding gaps and closing them helps you stay competitive. But don’t just look at your own, look at your competitors, too. Like in the above example, let’s say your competitor isn’t creating white papers. That might be a huge oversight in their content marketing strategy.
But it’s also important to be mindful of your target audience. It’s possible that your competitor isn’t using white papers because they know your audience won’t resonate with them. Instead of making any type of content that your competitor isn’t, make sure your audience wants to read it. That can help you make the most of your content strategy gaps and ensure you’re developing content your readers want to see.
4. Find Potential Syndication Partners
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Potential syndication partners are other companies and brands who might host your content on their websites. Most often, these brands work in a relevant industry compared to yours. That means they target a similar audience without becoming a direct competitor. Because they aren’t a direct competitor, they might be open to a partnership or relationship where they host some of your content and a link to your website, which can direct people to your business. For example, let’s say your business sends customers monthly subscription boxes of houseplants. A potential syndication partner might be a landscaping or pest control business.
Now, looking at your competitor’s weakness is important, but it might be just as beneficial to look at your own. In fact, no competitor analysis is worth its time if you don’t have your own content audit to compare it to. After all, as Star Trek: The Next Generation once put it, “Who Watches the Watcher?” Without knowing how your current content is performing, there’s no way to figure out how to improve it. Luckily, there’s a way for you to research your competitors, as well as your own content, easily without wasting your company’s time or money.
CopyPress currently offers a free content marketing analysis tool that compares your website and content with your top three competitors. Our tool provides you with everything you need to understand your content’s current performance and helps you find your competitors’ weaknesses. Not only do we give you powerful audits of your content, but we also find you “low-hanging fruit” opportunities and potential syndication partners to contact. Request your content analysis today to see how you can start boosting your marketing efforts and soar above the competition.
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Kevin Doory
Director of SEO at Auto Revo
CopyPress writer
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