All have heard of the technique Benchmarking used to compare products and services that implement a company with another market leader.
This technique is intended to obtain relevant information with three objectives: to learn, to innovate and improve. At present, this technique not only supports offline business strategies that implement, but has also revolutionized the online marketing strategies of brands.
Currently online, companies measure actions taken by competitors, in order to measure the growth in their communities, their offers to the public and observe the level of influence they have gained by their followers.
In online mode brands know that competitiveness is latent, and for this reason many agencies, small businesses and even leading companies know they must offer valuable content that captures your audience, but above all know they can do to remain on the market.
Benchmarking analyzes potholes online competition to see which markets have more space to compete. The main global trends for this type of benchmarketing is the consumer, and that consumer trends have changed, the online shopping optimizes the time of purchase, the virtual has become something real, online shopping continues to grow and the millennials walk evolving with technology.
Some of the online benchmarking actions that are usually carried out are:
1. Establish indicators analysis: At this stage the scorecard is configured with indicators, both quantitative and qualitative, to be analyzed each competitor performing a complete analysis to specific areas such as search engine optimization, social networking, branding, usability, contact channels, etc. The indicators vary considerably, then we show some examples:
SEO
– Incoming Links.
– Pages indexed in search engines.
– Meta tags used on the website.
– Loading speed of the website.
– Influence of social networking website.
– Content.
Social networks
– Presence on social platforms.
– Activity.
– Community.
– Engagement.
– Content.
– Visual aspect of the channels.
– Special actions (campaigns, advertising, apps …).
Branding
– Naming.
– Brand identity.
– Claim.
– Tone.
– Messages.
– Perception.
2. Extract information: Part of this process is to observe every detail of the competition, during this process it is important to also note those aspects that stand out and make screenshots to provide visual examples of each competitor, its contents, strategies. We try to monitorizas what they say about them, then do the same.
3. Comparison and analysis of all information: We proceed to analyze every detail of the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. We proceed to perform SWOT analysis not to serve as a guide to take steps to improvements, opportunities and provide any kind of threat.
In conclusion, this type of benchmarking helps us to measure how influential are in the community, measure our strategies, measuring trends of our users, measure the media where they interact, so we know how beneficial are against competition and benefits obtained with our content.
