Market research is a broad field that covers understanding the people who buy and use your products – your potential customers.

Market research includes competitive analysis as part of its area of interest, but market research is more than looking at your competitors.

Market research answers the “why?” questions about your products, customers, and competitors.  Research gives you explanations and reason and is more informative than statistics like 60% of your website visitors leave after 1 minute. Market research explains why they go and lets you form a strategy to change their behavior.

Market research methods involve collecting opinions and facts with standard tools:

The common methods of market research include:

• Human observation.
•  Competitor analysis.
• Talking to individuals and groups.

Getting information from groups of people can involve:

• Direct interviews – traditional market research technique.
• Focus groups – typical of product launches.
• Online forums -self-selected participation by interested users.
• Mobile market research – quick and involves people in a hurry.
• Online surveys – the modern version of the telephone interview.
• Desk research – seeking information collected by other people.

Market research is typically useful for the following activities:

• Brand Research – awareness, positioning, value, loyalty, and reach.
• Advertising effectiveness – reach, influence, and results.
• Customer insights – what do people want, need, and value.
• User experience – how easy is it to engage with your products?
• Targeting – who are you reaching, and who do you want to find?
• Product development – is there a market for this item?
• Customer loyalty – are you keeping your customers happy?

Your reasons for market research and the methods you use to gain answers to your questions are not isolated patches of activity. You mix and match techniques and goals depending on current and future business needs.

No business exists in a vacuum because all businesses interact with the market – your customers, competitors, investors, partners, suppliers, and everyone else. Companies that thrive and grow are aware of their competitors, their place in the market, and what their customers want and need. Knowledge has always been power, but in the digital age, you get a deluge of data – the analysis tools turn that data into market information. Three of the most useful tools for building your business knowledge are:

Competitive landscape analysis – knowing how you compare in the marketplace.

Competitor analysis – uncovering in-depth detail about your competition.

Market analysis – understanding your customers’ desires, problems, and needs

When buying online, consumers choose between a range of suppliers; no matter how niche the product when they go looking for a product, they get to compare prices and see alternative solutions to their problems that may suit them better.

For E-commerce competitor analysis, you need to be clear on why your product range meets customer needs. And then, from your competitors, you can find out:

Expected price – most online buyers use price comparison as a significant component of their decision.

Buying channels – market platforms like Amazon provide access to customers and ruthless competition.

Advertising – if your competitors are advertising products, they are in a prime position to attract attention in searches.

Organic search content – most people look at the top two or three results before making their decision, so your position matters.

Competitive intelligence is vital to your E-commerce business because you need to earn your place in the market with every online search and build customer loyalty through expert branding. But you start by seeing what everyone else is doing to carve out your space in the competition landscape.

Before you can start a competitor analysis, you need to know yourself. The benefit of a competitive analysis is the benchmarking of your performance to exploit areas where you have the advantage and address possible threats and weaknesses. You can’t compare yourself to your competitors until you know yourself.

The stages of a competitor analysis include:

• Identifying your competitors and choosing three or five for detailed analysis.
• Building a detailed biographical -style profile of each competitor.
• Understand their customer offer – what are they selling and why?
• Studying their methods of customer acquisition – how well do they sell?
• Studying their marketing – what do they do, and is it effective?
• Understanding their customers – are they engaged and loyal?

When you have a complete picture, you can compare your position and form your best strategy and plan for marketing yourself using competitor analysis examples.

Your competitors can sell identical products and services to yours. If you know that their products are the same as yours, you need to find the difference between you that makes customers buy from you and not them or prefer them to you. Your areas of difference can be a combination of:

Price and value-added.

Customer service and reputation.

Marketing and branding.

The products and services may be alternatives to yours – tea instead of coffee, you are still in competition for the customer spend, but you need a different approach. Now you need to sell your product range as superior to the alternatives. Other competitors are competing for a share of your customer’s budget with a completely different offer – read a book or play football? Again, your weapon is marketing to convince your customer that your products and services are more satisfying than the alternatives. Collecting product information is straightforward -brochures and websites will tell you almost everything you need to know. Your market research on your competitors’ products and services is from the customer’s view – how do your competitors meet customer needs, and are there any gaps in the market or your product range.

The most effective sales strategy is to convince the customer that you are offering the best value. When it comes to looking at your competitors selling tactics, you need to look at:

• Value offered – low prices, loyalty points, extra discounts.
• Loyalty – how do they build customer loyalty.
• Storytelling – how do they represent themselves.
• Relevance – how are they meeting customer needs.
• Performance – how easy is it to buy from them.
• Geographical sales areas.
• Sales channels – online, in person.
• Future trends – growing or shrinking.
• Market share and profitability.
• Reviews and customer feedback.

Your competitive market analysis will highlight strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ sales strategy and yours.

Marketing influences the buying decision. If there is only one brand of bread on the market, then a customer in need of bread will buy the product offered. However, if you have two people offering to sell an identical loaf of bread, the customer will choose and make a decision. The buying decision is not straightforward. There are plenty of value judgments around the simplest buying decision – add in more choices and options, and marketing swings the decision.
Marketing attracts attention and sells a story. The first place to look for competitive market information is your competitor’s website – what are their marketing tools? These include:
• Blogs.
• E-books and whitepapers to download.
• Podcasts, videos, and webinars.
• Static and dynamic elements.
• FAQ and articles.
• Case studies and news.
• Social media links
You can also look at advertising campaigns both in print and online. You are looking at what they are doing and how they are telling their story to potential customers.

Content is the digital product your audience consumes on your website and social media feed. Quality content attracts an engaged audience that converts into happy customers, among other marketing goals.

Your competitor research on content strategy looks for:

• Quantity – a sprinkling of blogs or a library of online resources.

• Frequency – how often are they publicizing or is it static.

• Variety – are they providing a mixture of online content or only blogs.

• Quality – is the content worth looking at, and does it have an audience.

• Approach your competitors’ content with a critical eye:

• Accuracy in facts, spelling, and grammar.

• Level of detail – useful or shallow.

• Tone, readability, and layout.

Who is doing the writing?

• Stock photos or unique?

Your competitor’s content is only valuable if it attracts, delights, and retains an audience.

Customers and browsers are not shy about sharing their opinion on content if they have the opportunity. You can check comments, reviews, likes, shares, and other interactions with competitor content. Look for:

The competitor analysis example of audience response gives you insights into those customers’ needs and pain points. It also gives you a starting point for structuring your content to be engaging and valuable to those customers in the format they like best.

Observing how your competitors promote their marketing content and the audience reaction is valuable market research for your marketing content promotion. The elements of the marketing promotion of content include:

• Keywords and phrases – density and type
• Highly shared content
• Active social media presence
• Backlinks from other sites
• Alternative text tags for images
• Internal linking to other pages

From markets research, you find potential new keywords, sites that could link to your content, and the best social media channels for your target audience.

Check your competitors’ websites for visible social media links and active promotion with calls to action. Then go looking for your competitor on all the popular social media channels and see how enthusiastic and popular they are on those channels by competitor research:

• How big is their audience of followers and fans?
• How active are they – daily or annual message?
• Are people engaging, or are they speaking to an empty room?
• What is their reach – reshares, retweets, and repins?
• Type of content – unique or from other sources?

Taking all this social media information, try and give your competitors a ranking – top performer, same as you or performing poorly? This ranking can help you focus on the need to compete, best social media channels, and help form your social media strategy to outperform the competition.