Marketing Ideas That Derive From Competitor Research

Depending on how big your contract is with a company, any digital marketing company that you have approached for a quote should have considered your competitors. If you are not paying massive amounts of money for the contract, then try not to expect too much; nonetheless, you should expect to see at least some research referencing your competition.

Budget

Obviously, the more money you are going to invest in the project, the more time and effort your marketing company can put into competitor research. You should not try to save costs here even if you think you know what your competitors are doing. The simple reason for this is that you could end up squeezing your marketing team for research time. This could result in them missing that one unique selling point that is helping your competitor edge you out of sales.

Timeframes

Make sure you ask how much time is needed for competitor research. For example, we hired a company called stuartkerrs, and they gave us timeframes according to our budgets, which was a nice and reassuring touch to their service. Also, ask them what this covers because you want to make sure that you are doing everything in your power to beat your competitors.

For example, a checklist for adding new pages should contain elements such as these:

• Add meta title and description
• Compress new images
• Check H1, H2, and H3 headers are added
• Check content keyword density
• Proofread all content
• Time to set up social media

This is just an example list, so you can expect more points to be added. Now if an SEO company is telling you to do this or asking if you do this, then you know you are in good hands. 

Google has spent a lot of time updating its algorithm to focus on on-page SEO. Mobile and desktop page speed, as well as giving information about the page content, have become essential to Google’s algorithm.

Without these processes in place, large websites can quickly become a mess. This can only mean one thing for the website owner – when an SEO is needed to come in and fix the website’s on-page SEO, it is going to cost him or her a hefty fee to have the entire site fixed.

Setting Clear Milestones

Competitor research should be broken into clear milestones with specific deadlines. At the outset of your contract, discuss with your marketing company the expected time it will take to research your competitors, analyse their strategies, and present you with key insights. 

These insights should form the foundation for your digital marketing plan, including adjustments to your SEO strategy, content creation, and social media presence.

A good timeframe should allow for an initial phase where your marketing company focuses on gathering data, such as keyword rankings, backlink profiles, social media activity, and website performance. 

This initial analysis could take anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on the number of competitors involved and the complexity of the industry. Afterward, a detailed report should be presented with actionable recommendations, which could take another week to prepare.

What Do We Hope You Have Learned About Digital Marketing?

In short, we have covered some of the points that most guides to hiring a digital marketer do not cover. We have not looked at the most obvious points, such as price or the services they offer. Instead, we have covered how you should avoid digital marketing companies that do not pay attention to detail and from this, they should be able to show you where your digital marketing could improve, even if it means small changes to the way your business configures its website.

In addition to these points, at least some competitor research should be presented to you. Do not accept any marketing plan that comes with no competitor analysis because, otherwise, you have no proof of concept. If your competitors are already successful, then your marketing team should be using a similar approach or techniques to differentiate your company’s digital marketing.