B2B SEO
Competitor Analysis

How to Perform an Effective B2B Competitor Analysis

Manoj Palanikumar
|
September 5, 2024
How to Perform an Effective B2B Competitor Analysis

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Key Takeaways

If you’re not performing competitor analysis, you're likely missing out on opportunities to surpass them. A B2B competitor analysis enables you to know your competitors inside and out. It allows you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of companies in your industry compared to your own, helping you identify ways to improve and excel.

This gives you the competitive edge you need to drive growth, innovation, and success. In this article, you will learn how to conduct an effective B2B competitive analysis for your business.

What is B2B Competitor Analysis?

A B2B competitor analysis is a strategic process that identifies, assesses, and analyzes your business competitors in the market. It evaluates their strengths, weaknesses, market position, products, services, pricing, marketing strategies, and customer base to make informed business decisions and drive growth.

By understanding your competitors, you can: 

  • Identify market opportunities and gaps
  • Develop effective marketing and sales strategies
  • Improve product and service offerings, and 
  • Enhance market position and share

When conducting a B2B competitor analysis, you should consider examining various aspects of your competitors' strategies, such as:

  • Key terms they target: Identify the keywords and phrases they focus on in their SEO and advertising efforts.
  • Content type and frequency: Analyze the type, format, and topics of content they produce and track how often they publish
  • Client base: Understand who their clients are, including industry sectors and key accounts.
  • Product offerings and features: Review the range of products or services they provide and the specific features or benefits of each product they offer.
  • Sales process: Explore their approach to selling, from lead generation to closing deals.
  • Lead magnets: Identify the tools they use to attract and capture leads, such as free trials, eBooks, or webinars.
  • Pricing structure: Analyze how they price their products or services, including any tiered pricing models or discount strategies.

To effectively record this analysis, consider creating detailed spreadsheets, CRM, mind maps, or a dedicated database/software/or a tool where you can log each of these elements for every competitor. This allows for easy comparison and tracking over time. As you can see, conducting a competitor analysis involves covering a lot of ground. But why should you invest time in this research? Let’s find out. 

How to Perform an Effective B2B Competitor Analysis

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to perform an effective B2B competitor analysis.

1. Set clear objectives

Setting objectives is a crucial first step. Clear objectives help you focus on your business ensuring that the analysis aligns with your overall business goals and provides actionable insights.

Your objectives serve as a compass that guides your competitor analysis efforts. It helps you allocate time, manpower, and resources effectively. It also helps focus your efforts on where they matter most.

With clear objectives, you can gather the most relevant information, stay aligned with business goals, and ultimately, use the insights gained to make informed strategic decisions. This makes sure you stay right on track and create a purposeful business strategy.

2. List your competitors

Listing your competitors means you have to look beyond the obvious. Although your direct competitors operate in the same market niche, you should also consider indirect competitors as well. Your direct competitors offer similar products or services to what they offer. On the other hand, your indirect competitors offer a substitute for the products or services you offer.

When listing your competitors, make a list of companies that customers count as alternatives for your business. Analyze each of them to know which is closest to being your competitor. Find out the kind of businesses they cater to, the niche of most of their customers, their preferred demographics, and what digital platform they thrive in.

Once you've done that, identify the competitors that are getting the kind of results you want to achieve. Find out their annual reports, customer feedback, market position, and level of brand awareness.

3. Take a look at their target customers

Your competitors' target customers are another key vital segment you can't overlook in your B2B competitor analysis. Identifying your competitors' target segments and analyzing their value propositions helps you understand their market focus. You can leverage this insight to identify potential opportunities for differentiation and refine your own customer targeting strategies. A thorough analysis of who your competitors are serving and how they're serving them enables you to make more informed decisions and strengthen your position in the market.

4. Check their product or services (features and benefits)

Your competitor's website is a great place to check their products or services. You can get information about the kind of audience they attend to, product features, and lots of other information. Getting information may require more than just a Google search. You may need to reach out to their customers and conduct surveys that will provide useful information. Additionally, media monitoring can help you get all the information you need from social media sites.

5. Evaluate their pricing models

Pricing strategies are the methods and techniques that businesses use to determine the optimal price for their products or services based on factors such as market demand, cost, value proposition, and competitive advantage.

Observe how competitors adjust their prices in response to market changes and assess the impact on their sales. Benchmark their pricing against industry standards to see where they stand in the market. Use these insights to adjust your pricing strategy, ensuring you remain competitive while protecting your profit margins.

6. Review their content marketing strategy

Reviewing your competitors' content marketing strategy helps you understand how they communicate with their audience, what content resonates most, and how they position their brand. You can analyze the types of content they produce, their distribution methods, engagement levels, and SEO practices to gain valuable insights and enhance your content marketing efforts while staying competitive in the B2B market

7. Conduct a Swot Analysis

SWOT refers to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

  • Strength: What advantage does your competitor possess over your business?
  • Weakness: What areas are your competitors lacking?
  • Opportunities: What factors can you take advantage of?
  • Threats: What external factors pose a threat to the business?

After conducting a SWOT analysis for your competitors, compare it with your own SWOT analysis. This comparison helps you understand where you stand relative to your competitors. It also allows you to identify areas where you can leverage your strengths, improve your weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and mitigate threats.

8. Seek feedback and improve

Seeking feedback and continuously improving your B2B competitor analysis helps ensure that your findings remain relevant and actionable. By gathering input from internal stakeholders and external experts, reviewing your methods, and staying adaptive to market changes, you can refine your strategies and maintain a competitive edge.

Why You Need a B2B Competitor Analysis?

Boost product development and enhancement 

A B2B competitor analysis provides insights to innovate and refine your product offerings. It reveals market gaps, offers improvements, and provides insights into industry trends and customer preferences. This enables you to innovate, differentiate, and provide suitable products that meet customer needs.

Enhance customer relationships

Are you aware of what your competitors are doing to address your target audience's specific needs and preferences? Competitor analysis provides insights into how others in your industry are meeting these demands. By analyzing their offerings and how they cater to the market, you can identify opportunities to customize your services in ways that better meet the unique demands of your audience. This approach helps you to enhance your service quality, improve communication, and better align with customer expectations.

Discover new growth opportunities

A B2B competitive analysis helps you identify untapped markets, emerging trends, and potential areas where your competitors may be underperforming. You can spot gaps in the market that your business can exploit, innovate in areas where others are lacking, and develop new products or services that address unmet needs, thus capitalizing on future growth opportunities.

Take data-driven decisions 

60% of B2B organizations will transition from intuitive decision-making to data-driven approaches by 2025. Utilizing B2B competitive analysis tools and techniques allows you to gather and interpret valuable data. 

Whether you’re refining performance marketing strategies, revising pricing structures, or improving product offerings, having detailed competitor data significantly enhances the accuracy and impact of your decision-making process.

How Competitor Analysis Drives Success In  Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Here's how competitor analysis helps in building a strong digital marketing strategy:

Identifying industry trends and gaps

Staying ahead of the curve is crucial. By analyzing competitors and assessing what is working or not in your market, you can identify industry trends. For instance, if you operate in the content marketing industry, trends like Google algorithm updates can help you gain valuable insights and refine your own products to meet customer needs. This helps you stay up-to-date and ensures that your business strategies align with industry standards.

Competitor analysis unveils gaps that your competitors are not addressing in the market. By understanding what’s working for them and where they may be falling short, you can identify gaps in the market that your business can fill. This insight empowers you to offer unique value propositions that resonate with your target audience, setting you apart from others in your industry. 

Understanding target audience

Competitor analysis provides you with insights into your competitors' audience. You want to know who they are, what they are looking for, and how they interact with your competitors. Use tools such as SimilarWeb or Quantcast to get their demographic information such as age, gender, location, and more. This helps you refine your own target audience and tailor your offerings to better resonate with their needs and preferences.

Benchmarking your performance

With competitive analysis, you can compare your performance to that of your competitors and measure your performance. Key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, social media presence, customer satisfaction scores, and market share help you set realistic goals and identify areas for improvement. 

Refining your SEO strategy

B2B competitive analysis enables you to analyze your competitors’ SEO trends and strategies, including their keywords, backlinks, and content strategies. With this analysis, you can improve your SEO efforts. For instance, you can identify high-performing keywords that you may have overlooked and adjust your content strategy to improve your search engine ranking.  Additional SEO metrics that you can track in your competitor analysis are:

  • Domain authority
  • Page load speed
  • Organic search traffic
  • Bounce rate
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Content Quality and Freshness
  • Mobile usability
  • Local SEO performance
  • Backlink Quality

Want to supercharge your B2B SEO strategy? Check out our latest blog post on Conducting a Comprehensive B2B SEO Audit. It’s packed with actionable insights and a detailed step-by-step guide to help you identify strengths and areas for improvement in your SEO efforts. 

Enhancing social media tactics

B2B competitive analysis also enables you to gather data from your competitor’s social media profiles and compare them against yours. You can analyze your competitors’ social media activity, including the platforms they use, the frequency of their posts, and the type of content they share. 

You can also compare key metrics such as audience growth, engagement metrics, or best-performing content. This enables you to determine your position within the industry and refine your strategy to better meet the needs of your audience. 

Partner with TripleDart to Create Your Competitor Analysis

There you have it! You’ve learned how to create a powerful B2B competitor analysis for your business. However, if you find this task challenging, TripleDart is here to help. As a leading B2B SEO agency, we can craft a robust competitor analysis that provides unique advantages and growth opportunities for your business.

Additionally, our expertise as a top PPC agency ensures that your paid campaigns are optimized to their fullest potential. Book a call with us today to get started!

FAQs

What is a B2B Competitor Analysis?

B2B competitor analysis is a process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating your competitors in the B2B market.

Why Do You Need a Competitor Analysis?

You need a competitor analysis to understand the competitive landscape, identify market gaps and opportunities, and make informed decisions to stay ahead of the competition. This enables you to drive growth and achieve business goals.

Should You Copy Your Competitors?

While it's important to monitor and learn from your competitors, directly copying them is rarely a good strategy. Instead, focus on differentiation, innovation, and understanding your unique market position. By doing so, you can create a sustainable competitive advantage that is tailored to your strengths and the needs of your customers.

Manoj Palanikumar
Manoj Palanikumar
Manoj, with over 9 years of experience, has had the privilege of working with and advising more than 50 B2B SaaS brands. Specializing in organic growth strategies, Manoj has consistently driven predictable pipelines and revenue for his clients. As a growth advisor, he has helped B2B brands achieve sustainable, long-term growth through SEO, content, and organic strategies. His expertise has been sought by renowned brands such as Zoho, Glean, Helpshift, Monograph, HowNow, and many others, enhancing their organic acquisition and revenue.

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