7 Common Competitor Research Mistakes To Avoid

Do you feel that your competitive research efforts are not yielding the desired results? Are you worried that something is going wrong somewhere?

Well, then keep reading… Here are seven common mistakes that you must avoid while conducting competitor research. 

Get Started

Claim up to $26,000 per W2 Employee

• Billions of dollars in funding available
• Funds are available to U.S. Businesses NOW
• This is not a loan. These tax credits do not need to be repaid

The ERC Program is currently open, but has been amended in the past. We recommend you claim yours before anything changes.

1. Failing to identify your competitors or preparing a shortlist – The competitors’ landscape is humongous. You must identify as many of them as possible and not just the biggies. You have to run intensive research by checking product and service wise, not just the by the earnings calendar. Your list must have all the names irrespective of whether the names are of big businesses or small ones. Do not ever underestimate any business because tomorrow, a small business can develop itself to steal away a big piece of the market space. Carry out the SEO analysis carefully because a company might not be known widely but, their SEO strategy might be working too well, and they have earned the top position in the SERP.
2. Falling behind the market trends – You have to keep a tab on new products, services, competitors, new technology, and whatnots of the market. Your sales team cannot go out of touch with: what is happening in the market; else you will lose power and position.
3. Inability to stay updated with news and blog posts – If your competitor is making it big and going out there. If more people are recognizing the brand, and you do not know about it, then it is bad news for you. Remember, the links that redirect to the company website from blog spots and news articles facilitate the skyrocketing of the search ranks. Hence, needless to mention that they will perform better than you.
4. Being careless with analysis or skipping it altogether – Analysis takes a lot of time, and so companies make this mistake by doing it once in a while or not doing it at all. Today, it is an essential requirement to know what is clicking with the customers and what is not. The analysis is mandatory before launching any product/service, pushing any new sales, preparing for a new market campaign, and more. The bottom line is, know your competitors well, what they are doing, their approach, know everything about them, and try to surpass them. Keep yourself updated, read the news, know what is happening in your vertical because there is every possibility that you might have missed out on new ways of engaging with potential clients and understanding what they need.
5. Failing to keep the alignment strong – The marketing and sales team must work in conjunction with one another. Both the teams are responsible for making it bigger and better. If the teams fail to achieve synchronization, then competitive research makes no sense because all the hard work will fall through due to lack of communication.
6. No keyword research, no Google search rank research means failure – You know what is happening out there right? You cannot possibly waste your time guessing what keywords your customers might want to search? So, to do it more constructively, use the ace tools such as Google Analytics or Google keyword planner, and so on. You will get the right details stating what your customers are actually searching for.

   Keyword mistakes are common; the habitual error being – the assumption that customers are searching for the specific product or service by the name that you have used to describe it. Please get this straight- you have to understand how the keyword analysis works and what customers are actually searching for. There is no scope for assumptions whatsoever. You can lose your position because web crawlers are always trying to promote the content and pages that are well-optimized with trending searches. 

7. Not acknowledging the performance of your competitors – As long as the market will breathe, there will be competitors. You have to track your competitors if you want to earn that extra edge. Demeaning a competitor, not keeping track of the activities, and their performance is a downright foolish thing to do. Your approach should be objective, and you have to find out their strengths. You have to be flexible enough to accept that maybe they are performing better than you by generating engaging content. They are selling their products/services better, maybe. It might be so that their social media presence is more relevant than yours. Whatever it is, you have to keep an open mind to look through and adopt the changes whenever or wherever required.

Complacency is a terrible mistake that is difficult to avoid but, if you try you can overcome it. Once you do, you will know that your business will go a long way. So, good luck with the changes.