Since you’re done understanding your ideal clients and having a clear idea of how to reach them, it’s time to take a look at what you’re up against. Before you do anything else, learn about your competitors and their marketing strategy.
A comprehensive competitor’s analysis will do the trick. How to do that? GoSEO will help you.
What is a competitive analysis?
To craft unique and evergreen content, you must analyze the existing content created within your niche.
This means you need to check what your competitors are doing, the content they’re creating, how they promote their website and content, which keywords are driving traffic to their website, etc.
A competitor’s analysis will help you create a blueprint for your strategy by telling you the exact tactics and strategies that work for your competitors. We recommend following these steps when performing a competitive content marketing analysis:
1. List your competitor’s content
List the content that your competitors are creating for their website, blog, and social media accounts.
List all the content types that your competitors are using:
New posts/sections, article marketing content, eBooks/eBook promotion strategies, videos, infographics etc.
Check what kind of content medium and every content site they use. By identifying the content type you want to emulate, you’ll be able to understand what the content looks like, what format type appeals the most and the keywords or topics used.
2. Assess content quality/quantity
When you’re done with the competitor’s listing, assess the quality and quantity of the content types.
Identify the high-performing content that gets lots of social shares, comments, likes, and traffic. The high-performing content is content that fulfills your audience’s needs and provides an immediate solution to their problems. Also, make sure to list what topics they’re ignoring or not covering at all in their content marketing strategy.
Take note of how frequently your competitor publishes new content. Are they always creating new posts? If not, why are they not creating content?
Is the quantity of their content high enough for your audience’s needs and to compete with other existing competitors’ websites?
How often is your competitor updating their blog post? Are they constantly updating their blog posts, or are they very irregular in updating their blog posts?
These questions are crucial for determining the time frame of their content marketing strategy.
3. Find the content marketing gaps
List the topics that you believe your content marketing strategy needs to cover. If you see that some topics or content types are being ignored, it’s time to decide if you’re going to create content for those gaps.
To do this, you need to go to the micro level. Take note if your competitors are expensive in creating content for a particular topic or if it’s an issue that is gaining popularity, such as how to grow your social media following (or you want to get more followers on your Instagram account).
If you see that there are some gaps your competitors are not covering at all, it’s a good idea for you to see if you can fill those gaps. It’s also a good idea to explore those topics in detail.
Wrap Up: Make it a habit to create data-driven content
Competitive content marketing analysis for B2B is really essential to creating high-performing content. If you don’t know what content your competitors are making, you can’t compete against them.
Doing a competitive analysis will lower your chances of failing by helping you:
If you’re aiming to succeed in creating high-quality and data-driven content, run a competitive analysis every quarter or before starting a new blog post or content.
The information you’ll gather from this process is gold for your next blog post strategy.
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