9 Competitive Insights & How to Get Them

Competitive insights (or rival insights) are pieces of accusation astir rival businesses that empower you to marque amended decisions for your ain business. 

To get competitory insights, you request to manually analyse the activities, plans, and results of different businesses successful your niche. Or usage specialized tools. 

Let’s research 9 cardinal competitory insights and however to get them:

Calculate the market share for each institution successful your industry. That way, you tin enactment each business’s show into position and place your biggest threats.

But don’t conscionable ore connected stock of revenue. See which companies predominate based connected applicable manufacture metrics, specified as:

• Unit sales
• Monthly progressive users
• Web traffic

That way, you tin enactment retired which helps companies win successful antithetic areas.

Let’s accidental you privation to measure your and your competitors’ stock of web traffic.

With Semrush’s Market Explorer tool, you tin rapidly find retired however web postulation successful your niche is divided betwixt domains.

Just click “Find Competitors” and participate your homepage URL.

Then, take your determination and click “Research a market.”

The instrumentality volition analyse postulation to your domain and up to 99 competitors’ domains.

In the “Growth Quadrant” module, you tin spot wherever you and your rivals basal successful the competitory landscape.

Scroll down to “Share of Visits” nether “Domain vs Market Dynamics” to spot each company’s stock of marketplace traffic.

2. Traffic Acquisition Channels

Knowing wherever competitors get their website postulation from tin assistance you place acquisition channels you’re missing retired on. And areas wherever you’re underperforming.

Go to the “Benchmarking” study successful Market Explorer to spot which channels thrust the astir postulation successful your market.

You tin prime up to 5 domains to compare. Analyze your biggest rivals.

Here’s a breakdown of the main postulation acquisition channels. And tactics to amended your show successful each one:

Further reading: How to Do a Digital Marketing Competitor Analysis

If your competitors are connected social media platforms that you aren’t, you could beryllium missing retired connected invaluable scope and engagement.

Most businesses nexus to their societal media profiles successful their website footer. So, you tin manually cheque what platforms they’re using.

But you tin get a amended (and quicker) knowing with the Market Explorer tool.

The “Social Media Distribution Strategy” graph successful the “Benchmarking” study shows the astir utilized platforms successful your market. And a elaborate breakdown for 5 selected domains.

Here’s a speedy overview of the platforms covered:

For much competitory insights, usage the Social Tracker instrumentality (part of Semrush Social).

You tin spot which rivals’ posts get the astir engagement connected Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.

And comparison prime audience, activity, and engagement metrics.

Then, usage the inspiration and insights you summation from evaluating your competitors’ show to usher your ain social contented strategy.

4. Product and Service Offerings

Analyzing competitors’ products and services tin assistance you place imaginable areas for innovation. And find ways to differentiate your offering.

You tin absorption connected elements similar quality, pricing, and features.

Let’s accidental you ain a yoga covering brand. 

You mightiness find that nary of your competitors usage the aforesaid high-quality materials that you do. So, you determine to absorption connected this unsocial selling proposition (USP) successful your selling materials.

And possibly you larn that 1 of your competitors offers a wide assortment of colour options. So, you're inspired to grow your ain colour offerings.

5. Target Audiences

Find retired which target audiences your competitors are pursuing. So you tin guarantee you’re not missing retired connected immoderate important segments.

You tin besides look for gaps successful the full market. And effort to capable them.

Competitors’ websites tin supply penetration into who’s being targeted—and how.

For example, Slack has dedicated landing pages for assorted departments and industries. Each 1 focuses connected antithetic merchandise benefits.

The institution besides creates contented for antithetic people audiences.

The fig of resources disposable for each conception indicates however important the conception is to the brand. While the contented itself provides penetration into Slack’s personalization strategy.

We tin besides larn astir Slack’s customers done its occurrence stories.

If you privation to prosecute the aforesaid kinds of clients, you tin usage these stories to stitchery utile accusation for your buyer personas (e.g., details astir their symptom points).

To spot which audiences really sojourn rivals’ websites, usage Semrush’s One2Target tool.

Just participate up to 5 competitors’ domains to spot breakdowns for:

• Demographics: Age, gender, and country 
• Socioeconomics: Household size, household income level, employment status, and acquisition level
• Behavior: Most visited societal media platforms, apical interests, and instrumentality benignant usage

In the “Audience Overlap” section, you tin spot the astir visited domains for each brand’s audience.

These could beryllium large places to gain sum (through nexus gathering oregon integer PR). Or to advertise your business.

6. Popular Webpages

Analyzing your competitors’ astir visited webpages helps you enactment retired which products, services, and contented types are fashionable successful your niche.

To get started, participate a rival domain into the Traffic Analytics tool.

Then, caput to the “Top Pages” report. And take the clip scope and determination you’re funny in.

You’ll find the pursuing metrics for each page: 

To reappraisal the contented connected immoderate page, click the icon to unfastened the URL successful the “Page” column:

Then, use immoderate rival insights you stitchery to your ain concern strategy.

For example, you mightiness consider:

• Stocking products that make tons of leafage views
• Creating your ain versions of blog posts that make tons of entrances
• Mimicking seasonal landing pages that pull tons of visits successful December

Further reading: How to Do a Competitive Content Analysis

7. Google Keyword Rankings

Looking astatine competitors’ Google keyword rankings (i.e., erstwhile and wherever they look successful hunt results) is 1 of the champion ways to spot SEO opportunities. Because you tin spot what’s moving for your rivals and effort to outperform them.

To get started, participate your domain and a competitor’s domain into the Keyword Gap tool.

Then, take your state and click “Compare.”

Scroll down to the keyword array and prime “Weak.” 

This volition amusement you hunt queries that the rival outranks you for. You tin spot your nonstop positions successful the corresponding columns.

To improve these positions, you’ll astir apt request to optimize the ranking pages.

Next, spell to the “Missing” tab. To spot keywords the rival ranks for but you don’t.

To gain rankings for these keywords, you’ll astir apt request to make quality content from scratch.

But you should lone people keywords that are applicable to your concern and people audience.

If you request assistance prioritizing, absorption connected the pursuing columns:

• Volume: The mean fig of searches the keyword receives per month. The higher the volume, the higher the imaginable traffic.
• KD%: The keyword trouble score, which measures the keyword’s competitiveness. The little the score, the easier it should beryllium to gain a precocious ranking.
• Intent: The wide intent down the search. Typically, keywords with transactional hunt intent are much apt to make conversions.

Further reading: How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis

8. Advertising Strategies and Results

Knowing wherever competitors advertise (and what results they’re getting) doesn’t conscionable alert you to advertizing opportunities. It helps you recognize your competitor’s positioning strategy—i.e., however they’re portraying their marque to consumers.

We urge that you use:

• Advertising Research to analyse competitors’ substance ads connected Google Search
• PLA Research to analyse competitors’ Google Shopping ads
• AdClarity to analyse competitors’ display, video, and societal media ads

For example, let’s instrumentality a look astatine Slack’s advertizing enactment successful AdClarity.

We tin spot that the institution spent an estimated $27K connected video and banner advertizing successful the U.S. during December 2023 (they weren’t moving societal ads astatine this time). And generated astir 5.7M impressions.

The “Top Ads” conception shows what messaging and visuals Slack utilized to pull interest.

While the “Top publishers and apps” conception shows wherever the ads were placed.

9. Reputational Strengths and Weaknesses

It’s important to recognize what consumers deliberation astir your competitors. Because you tin effort to emulate their strengths. And capitalize connected their weaknesses.

For example:

• If your main rival is praised for having large lawsuit service, you mightiness privation to follow immoderate of their policies yourself
• If your main rival is criticized for poor-quality service, highlighting your ain five-star reviews could assistance you get much customers

Third-party reappraisal platforms are immoderate of the champion places to stitchery rival insights.

Identify sites that your people audiences usage (e.g., Google and Yelp). Then, work done caller reviews astir your competitors and effort to place communal themes.

We besides urge looking astatine references to your competitors online.

Search those marque names successful Google and research the results to spot what radical are saying. (You’ll request to skip past the brand’s ain website, societal profiles, etc.)

The “News” conception tin beryllium a peculiarly bully spot to find caller commentary.

See what radical are saying connected societal media sites, too.

Like this:

Alternatively, streamline the full process with the Brand Monitoring app.

Just adhd a competitor’s sanction to spot wherever they’re mentioned successful the property oregon societal media. And whether the sentiment is positive, negative, oregon neutral.

In the “Analytics” tab, you tin way the wide sentiment balance. And look astatine trends implicit time.

Start Gathering Competitive Insights

Whichever methods you usage to stitchery rival insights, bash it connected an ongoing basis. Because the sooner you place changes successful the competitory landscape, the sooner you tin enactment connected them. 

With Semrush, it’s faster and easier to get the integer selling insights you need. 

Find retired for yourself by starting your free trial.